In recent days, two very troubling reports have come from our law enforcement community in Washington state. Public safety is supposed to be at the top of our priorities, and yet sadly there are significant problems for our law enforcement officers.
The “defund the police” effort has had horrible, negative consequences in our communities. Furthermore, the legislature passed laws handcuffing the ability of officers to pursue criminal suspects or pull people over for traffic citations.
In Seattle, it was discovered that the Seattle Police Department are no longer assigning adult sexual assault cases to detectives. This is unacceptable, and clearly horrible for the victims of these crimes. Apparently the SPD has lost 100 detectives since 2019 – a 40 percent decline from the 234 detectives they had 3 years ago. Furthermore, the Special Assault and Child Abuse Unit had 12 detectives three years ago, and are down to just four presently staffing the unit.
The Washington State Patrol announced that from January until May 17th, there have been 934 documented cases of individuals refusing to pull over for WSP officers. They flee the scene instead.
A Vancouver police officer told me this is very accurate. In his 14 years, he’s never seen this level of people openly fleeing like this. ”Every single day I work, I hear at least one officer have someone flee from them. But it’s usually 3-4 times during my shift.”
We must allow our law enforcement to do their job. We must give them the tools, the training, and the manpower to protect our communities.
