Better 100 rapists go free than a single black predator be treated harshly

the 9mm Biden Persuader — recommended for use whilst awaiting the police

Seattle defunded its police force, and can no longer afford to investigate sexual assault cases

Does it matter that many of the rapists’ victims are also back? Not to woke white suburbanites. That indifference may change as crime spreads out of the ghetto.

Seattle police’s sexual assault and child abuse unit staff has been so depleted that it stopped assigning to detectives this year new cases with adult victims, according to an internal memo sent to interim police Chief Adrian Diaz in April.

The unit’s sergeant put her staffing crisis in stark terms. 

“The community expects our agency to respond to reports of sexual violence,” Sgt. Pamela St. John wrote, “and at current staffing levels that objective is unattainable.”

Law enforcement agencies here and across the country have grappled with labor shortages during the pandemic and since the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd. But Seattle’s failure to staff its sexual assault unit stands out from other local police departments and raises questions about the Seattle Police Department’s priorities, advocates say.

Behind the scenes, police leaders confronting an ongoing staffing crisis shored up patrol and positions that respond to homeless encampments, while some investigative units shrunk.

Now the department’s lack of attention to its sexual assault unit is threatening the viability of cases, as delayed investigations and evidence collection possibly hinder their outcomes.

In the memo, St. John went on to say that she was not “able to assign adult sexual assault cases” that came into her unit. Cases involving children and adult cases that had a suspect in custody — a fraction of adult sexual assaults reported to police — were being prioritized. The unit just had too few detectives.

Those concerns bear out in fewer referrals from the sexual assault unit to prosecutors. King County prosecutors say they’ve communicated with the sexual assault unit about understaffing concerns, but little has changed.

But hey, don’t worry, everyone’s getting screwed, not just rape victims.

[Assistant Chief Deanna Nollette] defended the sexual assault unit’s low staff numbers, saying units across the department felt the impact of the losses. The sexual assault unit wasn’t even the most affected, she said. “I could bring anybody in here from anywhere in the department and they would tell you the same story,” Nollette said.

The staffing crisis at the Seattle Police Department is not new. The department has been losing officers since the beginning of 2020, and staff levels plummeted to a new low at the end of 2021. Whereas 2020 began with 1,290 officers in service, by March 2022 those numbers dropped to 968 — well below the department’s own projections and what the city expected to spend on salaries.

Last year, my daughter Kate, a resident of the equally-woke city of Portland, Oregon, and whose own car has been broken into 3 times, called 911 to report that her neighbor’s car was being broken into as she spoke, right on the street. The dispatcher told her that they no longer responded to that category of call, but she was free to file an on-line complaint if she wished, and “someone will come around” at some unspecified date.

When a government loses its ability to protect its citizens, preserve their property, maintain order, and educate their children, how long can it retain the consent of the governed? Citizens conditionally relinquish certain of their rights and liberties to a government; they can take them back, too.