Hacker Cinema
Seattle is Dying
2019 · Film · documentary · 60 min
KOMO Anchor Eric Johnson takes an in-depth look at the impact the drug and homelessness problem is having on our city and possible solutions in "Seattle is Dying," a news documentary that aired on KOMO-TV in March, 2019.
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16 comments on Hacker News
This person has a longer record than a “couple” fights. I’m not the person you replied to but I support life imprisonment unless there is certainty of there being no future victims. It could be you, or me, or our family members that suffers due to an irresponsible release of a dangerous person. And it happens all the time, unfortunately.
As an example, in Seattle there was a documentary called “Seattle is Dying” that covered the trend of crimes and repeat offenders, due to the city’s lenient restorative justice policies. A person featured in that documentary had been arrested nearly 50 times and convicted more than 35 times. But he was nevertheless released back into the streets, due to progressive restorative justice policies. He ultimately murdered his girlfriend before killing himself, inside the infamous CHAZ/CHOP autonomous zone:
https://komonews.com/news/operation-crime-justice/travis-berge-suspect-in-cal-anderson-murder-led-troubled-drug-fueled-life
> short of putting them in jail and when they come out they're just going to be using drugs in public all over again.
The "Seattle is Dying" documentary describes a treatment program called the "MAT Program" (medically assisted treatment) that is used in Rhode Island prisons. They interview several people -- both leaders of the program and former addicts -- who speak positively about it: https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?si=ZkMQb3tb5P_Ztbvs&t=2645
This is exactly what happens in virtually all cities with progressive “restorative justice” policies. Many of these cities have district attorneys (city prosecution office) who effectively excuse crime by removing consequences such as jail time or fines. Many are funded by George Soros’s nonprofits, who are trying to normalize this type of criminal justice policy across the nation [1]. Unfortunately, this removal of deterrents induces additional crime - both in terms of frequency and severity from existing criminals but also in attracting criminals from other areas to these locations.
I’ll dive into Seattle as an example of what happens. There was a great documentary made about Seattle’s chronic issue with repeat offenders cycling through the system without consequence or deterrence, titled “Seattle is Dying” [2]. One of the people featured in this documentary, Travis Berge, racked up over 100 police contacts, dozens of civil infractions, 47 criminal cases, and an attempted rape, just in the five years he lived in Seattle. He was repeatedly released and continued to victimize others. A year after this documentary came out, shortly after CHAZ (the infamous “autonomous zone”) and in the same park that was part of CHAZ, he ended up murdering his girlfriend. Former judges and politicians commented that this entire saga was preventable [3] but neither current politicians, nor the city attorney, nor activists who attacked this documentary admitted their fault. Instead they continued with the same policy of not prosecuting crimes.
Downtown businesses in Seattle have repeatedly mentioned complained about the continued scourge of widespread shoplifting, loitering, trash, and other problems of blight that have made business difficult in Seattle. It got so bad that businesses were simply giving up on reporting crimes, just like private citizens have also given up [4]. Because the city ignored these issues, the business associations did their own work and put out a deeply-research report covering the pattern of prolific repeat offenders, titled “System Failure” [5]. This report was ignored by local politicians and attacked by progressive activists, journalists, and the homeless-industrial complex local to Seattle. The business association put out another similar report titled “System Failure 2” six months later [6], but it too resulted in no action from the city, simply because acknowledging the problem would be an indictment of the political ideology governing Seattle.
Fast forward to 2020 and there was widespread lawlessness spurred on by the George Floyd incident. Extremist activists repeatedly provoked/attacked the police, destroyed businesses, set fires, and engaged in other crimes daily (like blocking highways). There were also notable incidents like CHAZ, which was a display of brazen contempt for law and order. At the end of this year, it came to light that the city attorney had removed all consequences even for the very few that were arrested [7]. The lack of cooperation from the city attorney’s office (in holding arrested suspects accountable), threats of defunding from an activist city council, and general lawlessness led to hundreds of police officers quitting [8], further exacerbating all the issues with crime.
All these things add up slowly over time. It’s hard to notice the deterioration “live” as it is happening, but if you compare Seattle from 10 years ago to what it is today, the change is truly astonishing and depressing. To me, the consequence of not enforcing the law was always obvious, but I am guilty of not putting in an effort to speak up against what was happening. Most people who disagreed with what was happening also laughed it off, and didn’t take it seriously. This issue in LA with the railroads could just as easily happen in SF, Portland, Seattle, or other locations that have adopted a similar approach to managing crime.
1. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/george-soros-criminal-justice-reform-227519
2. https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is-dying
3. https://mynorthwest.com/2169605/retired-seattle-judge-berge-murder-preventable/
4. https://mynorthwest.com/1538741/uwajimaya-seattle-prolific-offenders/
5. https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/system-failure-prolific-offender-report-feb-2019.pdf
6. https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/System-Failure-Part-2-Declines-Delays-and-Dismissals-Sept-2019.pdf
7. https://komonews.com/news/local/city-attorney-charges-brought-in-8-out-of-261-protest-related-arrests-in-seattle
8. https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/spd-warns-of-staffing-crisis-after-66-more-officers-leave/281-040a65b1-3165-4f24-8652-a5d10860aac7
I don’t know. On the one hand I get what you’re saying, that CHAZ was “peaceful” during the day in that it resembled a sort of low-tier art fair. On the other hand, it was an incredibly lawless hijacking of public property. Daily, thousands of people who use those roads or surrounding amenities (parks, businesses) were forced to find alternatives that took longer and were more crowded, right in the middle of the pandemic. This re-routing included public transit and emergency vehicles. This type of violent takeover can’t be justified by surface-level “peace” during the day in my opinion.
We should also remember that people died in CHAZ and its immediate surrounding areas. For example Travis Berge, who was a well-known repeat offender featured in the documentary “Seattle is Dying” (https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is-dying), killed his girlfriend there (https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/09/17/blm-chaz-protester-suspected-of-murdering-girlfriend-it-didnt-end-well-n254639). The father of another man who was shot and killed there is now suing the city for negligently abandoning that area (https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-lawsuit-chop-chaz-zone-shooting-death).
Not to mention, CHAZ set the tone for how the city has been governed and its politics thereafter. In 2020 there were near-daily blockades of roads and tunnels, none of which were legal, and yet there was little consequence for any of the rioting. For example, one article noted that out of 261 rioters, only 8 faced charges, and exactly zero those faced any real consequence subsequently (https://komonews.com/news/local/city-attorney-charges-brought-in-8-out-of-261-protest-related-arrests-in-seattle). Meanwhile the city police was forced to build a concrete barricade around their main police station because of the lawlessness and city leadership forcing them to not take necessary actions. It got to the point where BLM protesters were setting white people’s houses on fire when they were sleeping in it (https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-blm-activist-arrested-for-arson-and-burglary), and staged protests outside white neighbors’ homes demanding they leave the neighborhood (https://nypost.com/2020/08/14/seattle-blm-protesters-demand-white-people-give-up-their-homes/). All this, became normalized and accepted by city government, in part because of CHAZ.
Fast forward to the present day and we see how much worse things have become. Hundreds of police officers have quit because of defunding and bad policy. Most will never come back no matter what bonuses are paid. The city has roughly half the number of police officers the average city would have per capita. Crime is everywhere. Businesses are shutting down due to it - look at the International District for a taste, where ironically minority business owners are the ones suffering. Trash is everywhere. RV ranchers are everywhere. Tents can be found in numerous parks and green spaces, leaving behind trash and needles. Property crime, like bike thefts, car breakins, car thefts, burglaries, and so on are common to the point no one bothers to even report them, since there’s no one to investigate and insurance requires a deductible anyhow.
You might call it a ridiculous juxtaposition. But CHAZ was exactly the harbinger and enabler that those complaining about it thought it would be. Seattle was a very safe and very clean city less than 10 years ago. I don’t recognize the city as it is today.
Some jurisdictions do, particularly in smaller cities like suburbs, where police staff aren't fully occupied with higher priority calls. However, many bigger cities are simply too understaffed compared to the past, and ignore property crimes as you say. This is especially true in West Coast cities like SF, Portland, and Seattle.
For example Seattle has lost hundreds of police officers in the last year due to the push for defunding, hostile attitudes towards police from activists/local politicians, and the opportunity to have a less stressful/better paying job elsewhere after a very rough year dealing with near-daily rioting. At present, the city has only around 1000 officers and it is expected to lose some more due to the vaccine mandate. This is around half of what the average city has per capita, and in the last decade the effects of a lenient city attorney, crime-friendly local government focused on "restorative justice", and falling per capita officer counts has led to a massive increase in crimes. Just like in SF, people have given up on even reporting them since even if someone is arrested, the city attorney will just release them anyways, and insurance claims require a deductible. Even businesses have given up on crime reporting (example: https://tinyurl.com/4nhn45bw).
A good overview of the Seattle situation can be found in a couple documentaries, "Seattle is Dying" (https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw) and "The Fight for the Soul of Seattle" (https://youtu.be/WijoL3Hy_Bw). The city's transformation from a safe clean city to what it is today took place in a decade. I expect it can also be fixed just as quickly with only a small set of changes like a) doubling the staff counts at the police department b) replacing the activist city attorney with a moderate c) enforcing existing laws d) cleaning up drug dens and theft rings masquerading as homeless encampments e) increasing the number of patrols and beat cops f) using technologies like facial recognition.
There is a really great documentary on dealing with drug issues in Seattle. It's called "Seattle is Dying" and it's on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw
The short of the video is that you need rehabilitation for these drug users AND you need accountability. When you pick up a drug user, you give them two options: rehab or jail. Fail out of rehab, go to jail.
Unsurprisingly, most people pick rehab. In either case, the problem is solved for the rest of society.
We give people the resources and help to solve their problem without letting them jerk the rest of us around. It seems like a fair compromise to me.
I don't have any experience with the housing issue in California, but got involved a while back trying to find pragmatic solutions in Seattle.
The situation is a mess and there is an entire "homeless industrial complex" complicating matters here, rife with fraud, misspending and cronyism.
Every year it seems like many millions of dollars more are spent on this issue but it keeps getting visibly worse.
At first I was in the "Housing First" crowd, but after my experiences I would say I more firmly believe in "Rehab First".
A local news station released a great documentary called "Seattle is Dying". It has 10 million views since released a couple of years ago. https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw
The sequel is "The Fight For the Soul of Seattle". https://youtu.be/WijoL3Hy_Bw
The same thing has happened in Portland and Seattle, both cities with increasing amounts of property crime, increasing amounts of homeless campers taking up public spaces, increasing amounts of harassment from vagrants, widespread open drug-abuse, increasing amounts of blight as pristine greenbelts are trashed, and a revolving door of criminals who are released into the public without consequence by a permissive city leadership. Calls for "restorative justice" always mean being soft on crime, which removes deterrents for crime, and therefore enable increased crime. It's all so obvious and predictable, but these cities are such extreme political echo chambers that no other perspective is really represented or considered at all.
In Seattle, these policies were spurred on by motivated progressive activists who aggressively shouted down all dissent in protests, council meetings, and in social media. The rush of transplants from outside Washington state changed local politics significantly over the last decade, importing a lot of SF's policies as the voting constituency changed. As a result, Seattle experiences all the same blight SF does, but with a time delay of a few years. There have been a couple great documentaries about the deterioration in Seattle such as "Seattle is Dying" (https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw) and "The Fight for the Soul of Seattle" (https://youtu.be/WijoL3Hy_Bw) that provide a great overview of the issues. The business community also wrote two comprehensive reports about the failure of restorative justice policies as well, called "System Failure" (https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/system-failure-prolific-offender-report-feb-2019.pdf) and "System Failure 2" (https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/System-Failure-Part-2-Declines-Delays-and-Dismissals-Sept-2019.pdf).
The response from city leadership? Gaslighting, denial, and absolute arrogance (https://www.seattle.gov/cityattorney/news/seattle-isnt-dying) as they continue to ignore the needs of tax-paying law-abiding residents in favor of vocal activists and criminals. I don't think long-time residents have any confidence that Seattle will return to the peaceful, beautiful city it once was given how things have changed and how they continue to get worse. It's gotten to the point where even businesses have just given up and don't report crimes (https://mynorthwest.com/1538741/uwajimaya-seattle-prolific-offenders/), which results in skewed crime figures that don't tell the real story. And just like SF, now businesses have begun closing stores due to unchecked criminality (https://komonews.com/news/local/bartell-drugs-closing-in-downtown-seattle-over-crime-concerns).
More recently, we've seen these policies and political attitudes spread to bigger cities like LA and NYC. LA's district attorney George Gascon now faces a recall (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/us/george-gascon.html). In NYC, residents and businesses are furious because the DAs dropped charges against hundreds of looters without any charges (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9705219/Fury-New-York-prosecutors-DROP-looting-charges-against-hundreds-arrested-summer.html). As for Chesa Boudin of SF, although he faces a recall, I am not confident it will succeed due to how much support he has from progressives, and because of the money pouring in to defend him from outside of SF (see https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/These-charts-show-who-is-funding-both-sides-of-16082178.php).
There is this documentary called "Seattle is dying" by KOMO news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw
The situation in this documentary is similar to SF.
There were more deaths and more crime than what is just officially attributed to CHAZ. CHAZ also left behind a massive tent encampment that took over Cal Anderson park (adjacent to CHAZ), which at one point was used for riot staging. Police found a weapons cache hidden inside a tent that appeared to be for the homeless but wasn’t (https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-antifa-stored-weapons-in-seattle-occupied-park/). The sprawling homeless camp became its own controversy, with black bloc/antifa affiliated activists trying to set up a new autonomous zone following something similar in Portland (https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/12/18/296959-n296959). All this chaos and the park being taken over as an illegal homeless encampment provided cover for a homicide-suicide (https://thepostmillennial.com/homicide-suspect-in-seattle-slaying-was-arrested-and-released-more-than-34-times/). The person committing the homicide was Travis Berge, a repeat offender who was featured in the documentary “Seattle is Dying” as a prime example of permissive restorative justice policies don’t work (https://komonews.com/news/local/travis-berge-repeat-offender-out-of-jail-but-drug-struggle-remains). He killed a woman that was allegedly his “girlfriend” before killing himself.
I've lived on the west coast my whole life, so I don't know much about other types of cities. Suffice it to say, all the major cities on the west coast have a lot of empathy for the downtrodden, such as the homeless and drug-addicted and they don't want to treat people who have such problems as criminals. But you could argue that they've gone too far with empathy. You should look up this documentary "Seattle Is Dying" by a local Seattle news station (KOMO4). They've actually done 2 parts to it, several years apart. Really shows you what's going on the west coast and how excessive compassion can have unintended consequences. Myself, lean left of center politically, but it's become very clear to me that liberal policies are just not working for the cities along the west coast (Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, etc). Now, this article talks about NYC, which is on the other side of the country. And we all know that Chicago, quite possibly the democrat-affiliated major city, has been infamous for its crime and corruption since the times of Al Capone. So it seems to me that there is a pattern of very left-leaning cities creating policies that come from a good place but end up having disastrous consequences.
>Is there alot of crime in Seattle
Yes. There's a documentary called "Seattle is Dying" that covers a lot of it (particularly the open air drug use), but you might have a hard time finding it because of the recent riots, economic collapse, etc.
While The Stranger is obviously pretty left-wing, KOMO, KIRO and MyNorthWest are pretty right-wing, actually. KOMO in particular did the Seattle is Dying[1] documentary that was ultimately pro law-enforcement (framing the homelessness debate largely as a problem with judges not sentencing detained criminals, leading to a reduction in arrests as police felt they were useless). Jason Rantz[2] gets a fair bit of publicity out here as well for his conservative coverage of this stuff.
Now I'd say your statement about "extremely biased and partisan" is accurate, but the implication was that it's exclusively in a pro-protestor sense, and that's really not the case.
I say this as someone who lives on the political fringes and generally disagrees with both sides of the partisanship.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw [2] https://mynorthwest.com/category/jason-rantz/?
There seems to be a lot of bussing of homeless across state lines.
This is something that needs a nation wide resolution. Cities can’t deal with this...
We do need mental health facilities and subsidized homes for the chronic homeless in cities where cost of living is less.
I might be a little biased saying this but I see the future in orchards and small urban gardens that is mostly automated. I don’t mean factory farms and row crops that are thousands of acres.
It is not so much that they can be used for labour but to give them a purpose and really low skilled jobs. Not bending and picking strawberries in California..but maybe picking strawberries in an indoor covered greenhouse farm in the mid west.
The rehab centers and mental facilities can partner up with semi automated farms. I say local farms and orchards because that’s all I know and i can’t think beyond growing food. I am sure there are other low impact/low skill/low stress jobs in other areas out there that isn’t challenging to people who need a purpose but still can’t be fully functional productive members of the work force.
I saw a documentary recently called Seattle is dying. While outwardly, it seemed to be about the homeless, it is really about substance abuse and mental illness(sometimes they go hand in hand) and criminal activities related to drugs.
I don’t understand how asking people who are not capable of making sound lifestyle choices to manage their lives in high cost tier 1 cities like Seattle and San Francisco with subsidized housing really helping them? Even normal people with a job can’t find affordable housing in the Bay Area.
Our farmland is owned by companies from other counties like Saudi Arabia and China. Why can’t California or Seattle or Utah simply buy land in the cheapest parts of the USA and run facilities there to give people a resting and healing place? You can house a lot more people in a less stressful and cheaper place if it’s about drug rehab or mental health treatment. Of course, they need oversight. It’s not like it would be run like a private prison..I am aware of how bad some of them are..
In a lot of cases, it’s the stress of urban life and inability to cope with work/money/emotions that make people resort to drugs or a mental breakdown. They don’t need to be in the same pressure cooker environment.
In my Bay Area town, they are looking to set up a navigation center for 45 beds where they’d be there for 6 months. It would cost 2-3 million a year. Approximate number of homeless is 600-1800(because they are being shuttled around the Bay Area through the Bart system..so it differs from day to day..the city inflates numbers at highest to get more funding). 45 is nothing when you consider that the lowest estimate is 600.
What will 2 million a year get for us in the cheapest part of the country? Nevada bussed people from their mental institutions to California. How much land would 2 million dollars get in Nevada? If California would give Nevada that money it would save California hundreds of millions of dollars.
This fiscal year, San Francisco spent $70 million dollars just to clean the streets of feces and needles and vomit. Just for street cleaning. In one year.
The situation is insane.
This sounds like something right out of the "Seattle is dying" propaganda documentary that released lately. Living in White Center, I don't experience any of this. People act like its the lower 9th ward or chiraq or the walking dead around here, and it just isn't.
Seattle, by itself, cannot solve the homeless problem, we can only hope to maintain it to some extent, many of its root causes are far outside of our city limits. 80% of our nation is paycheck to paycheck, until that changes neither will homelessness. We need more housing of all kinds immediately, even if it means imminent domain, and we need clean needle facilities. We also need to give the wealthiest employers in king county a choice, pay better wages or get taxed, and ownership and investors must take the pay cut and the cost cannot be passed to the consumer. Landlords need to have some limits, they are driving the costs up enormously. Free markets were supposed to be free from usury and rentiering, not protections for them.
The "Seattle Is Dying" documentary mentioned in the article: https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is-dying
I watched this a few weeks ago, and it was extremely eye-opening.