Thanks to the liberals’ “Defund the Police” movement in 2020 and BLM’s campaign to disparage police, the Seattle Police Department has lost more than 700 officers in the past five years and is at its lowest staffing level since the 1990s.
The consequences of this? From Fox 13 Seattle:
From the article:
“A triggered alarm system at a property in Seattle will soon require more information to get an officer’s attention. Seattle Police Department (SPD) announced a new policy for responding to alarm calls.
SPD’s interim police chief, Sue Rahr, announced the updated standards in a letter dated Sept. 13. She wrote that, beginning Oct. 1, “SPD will only dispatch officers to calls from alarm companies with supporting evidence, such as audio, video, panic alarms or eyewitness evidence that a person is illegally entering or attempting to enter a residence or commercial property.”
“The challenge with that is it’s only two weeks’ notice. We have to notify all of our customers, we have to change how we monitor those alarms, we have to change dispatchers on how they respond to alarms in Seattle,” said Woodman. “We’ve been told that [SPD] has been working on this for eight months, but they never reached out to the industry or the monitoring companies. So, we are asking that they now work with us and just give us some more time.”
Woodman and others from Washington Alarm gave public comment on Tuesday during Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee meeting and full council meeting. They voiced their concerns, not only about the short notice from SPD, but also the impact on customers who don’t have audio or visual capabilities on their systems.
Woodman said households on fixed incomes, for example, would take on a big financial burden to update their alarm systems. She said the update would be even more costly for businesses. “An 80,000-square foot warehouse, for instance. To put cameras inside and outside could cost upwards of $100,000 for a new system,” said Woodman.
“Law enforcement and the security industry can work together to come up with a solution that benefits our customers in a way that doesn’t leave them stranded and vulnerable at the most dangerous moment,” said Ashley Barber of Washington Alarm.
“Our fear is that the business owner or building owner is going to go down to that building and see what is going on. And with no police there, we could potentially be in a dire situation if there’s actual criminal activity going on at the property and they don’t have police to back them up,” said Woodman. “Other cities that have done this [have seen] the crime has gone up. And we certainly already have an issue in the city of Seattle with crime, and we would not want to see crime go up.”
Read the whole article here.
Yeah, don’t hold your breath waiting for the police in Seattle to back you up. That isn’t how most of us roll:
Alas, in demorat-run Seattle your options are limited. They never learn, do they?
DCG
