Hacker Cinema
The Fight for the Soul of Seattle
2020 · Film · documentary · 90 min
“The Fight for the Soul of Seattle” examines the role of Seattle’s City Council in allowing the situation to reach what many experts consider epidemic levels under the guise of a compassionate approach to people who suffer from substance addiction and who commit crimes to feed their habit. It documents the heartbreaking condition of people on the streets, and the crushing decisions Seattle entrepreneurs are forced to contemplate as their life savings and dreams are destroyed by theft, vandalism and a dwindling customer base. This documentary also explores potential bold solutions to treat those living on the streets and pair them with agencies and assistance that can provide a clear path away from the endless circle of addiction and crime.
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3 comments on Hacker News
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.
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).