When news broke this month that the Seattle Police Department’s sex crimes unit is too short-staffed to properly investigate rapes, some of the city’s left-leaning media outlets rushed to absolve anti-police activists of blame. Instead, publications like The Stranger and The Seattle Times suggested police were the ones failing survivors.
Yet some of the same activists being shielded from criticism have been pushing for the police department’s Sexual Assault Unit to be defunded since at least last fall.
Oops.
In September 2021, activists unveiled their 2022 “Solidarity Budget,” which called for a 50% reduction in funding for the police department’s Sexual Assault Unit. The budget proposal was endorsed by a long list of Progressive groups, including the King County Young Democrats and the King County Department of Public Defense.
The budget claims that prosecution of rape cases “does not work for the vast majority of survivors, especially Black, Indigenous, migrant, criminalized, young, drug-using, disabled, homeless and sex working survivors who do not call the cops because they are more likely to get a negative or no response.” Writers argue that the work of the sex crimes unit “is often used to justify continued police funding.”
It should be noted that the Sexual Assault Unit also handles cases involving child rape and molestation.
So, what would activists do with the $4.15 million they proposed cutting from the unit’s $8.3 million budget? Invest it in community programs.
“Support for survivors of gender-based violence to overcome abuse means ample affordable and decent housing, living wages, paid leave, childcare, access to transportation, health care, counseling, services for children that foster healing from trauma and strengthen resiliency, and civil legal services – all critical services that Seattle has demonstrated support for, but that remain underfunded, especially when compared to the policing budget. People who perpetrate gender-based violence should be held accountable - but arrest and incarceration does not equate to meaningful accountability that truly repairs harm.”
Backers of defunding the Sexual Assault Unit include twice failed political candidate Nikkita Oliver, who was endorsed by The Stranger in 2021 (the same publication now aggressively arguing that activists aren’t to blame for low police staffing and, should you suggest they are, you are “unhinged.” The article was written by Will Casey, a former spokesperson for the Washington State Democratic Party who worked on the campaign of police abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, who once called cops “serial killers.” The Stranger also used to employ the Seattle Times reporter who broke the story on low staffing in the Sexual Assault Unit – a story that distanced defund supporters from scrutiny. The same writer actually ENDORSED Nikkita Oliver for mayor in 2017 while working for The Stranger, suggesting Oliver wasn't "that radical." Should anyone really wonder why those writers are so quick to vilify the police and give activists a pass?).
And lest one argue that activists seeking to defund the Sexual Assault Unit this year wouldn't support doing so without alternatives in place, remember that the very same activists pushed for a 50% reduction in the SPD budget in 2020, despite warnings that it would leave the city without a public safety net.
Oliver, a Socialist-endorsed abolitionist, led efforts to try to convince the Seattle City Council to defund the police department in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In fact, Oliver was a backer of the first iteration of the Solidarity Budget that year, which directly influenced proposals introduced in the Seattle City Council.
While the budget the city passed that year failed to meet all their demands, writers of the Solidarity Budget took credit for cuts to SPD.
“This year is the first time in Seattle’s history that we are shrinking, rather than growing SPD’s budget, via eliminating 35 unfilled positions and civilianizing functions like 911 response and parking enforcement. This is a step in the right direction, but it can’t be a stopping point: if we are truly reckoning with how to build healthy and safe communities, hiring new police officers will not help us reach that goal.”
The 2020 debate around defunding, marked by unrest and the abandonment of a police precinct, kicked off an exodus of officers from the city that has left the department short staffed across the board. Any attempt to suggest Seattle’s anti-police climate is not tied to the staffing crisis is negated by countless exit interviews in which officers cite vitriol from politicians, activists, and the press for their decision to leave.
Let me be clear: The Seattle Police Department has a duty to ensure serious cases like rape are investigated fully, even if there are fewer detectives assigned to such cases. It is of paramount importance. But to ignore or downplay how activists who claim to care about survivors have instead made getting justice more difficult is – as I stated in a June 6 commentary – nothing short of media malpractice.
And just in case it needs to be said: The idea of defunding an already short-staffed unit that investigates heinous sex crimes against kids and adults should be seen as the final straw for voters who, until this point, have been too afraid to turn away from Seattle’s activist class.
SOURCES:
BRANDI COMMENTARY: https://twitter.com/BrandiKruse/status/1533927571410264066
THE STRANGER REBUTTAL: https://www.thestranger.com/cops/2022/06/08/74782442/blaming-spd-for-failing-rape-victims-isnt-media-malpractice
2022 SOLIDARITY BBUDGET: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1meeXTETSLaZEwdS9Ec2SF1_aTZOKs1JJhArY3J3wDvU/edit
2017 ENDORSEMENT OF OLIVER: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/07/12/25280763/the-case-for-nikkita-oliver
2021 ENDORSEMENT OF OLIVER: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2021/10/13/61926578/the-strangers-endorsements-for-the-november-2-2021-general-election
Everything you need to know about what happened this week during the legislative session in Olympia.
If there were ever an episode we’d be removed from social media over, this is it! Citizen sleuths look into Washington’s spending, and what they find is gag worthy. National civil rights complaint filed on behalf of Tumwater basketball player. Is Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell being punished for his bad basketball joke?
Prefer to listen? https://audioboom.com/posts/8656992-doge-washington-digs-up-dirty-dirty-dirt-2-20-25
Brandi Kruse and Zach Abraham dive into all things Department of Government Efficiency in this weekly series. On this episode: Elon wants to open up Fort Knox to check for gold. $4.7T in untraceable payments. Vampires getting Social Security!? Trump considering DOGE Dividends for Americans.
These remarks were delivered to the Snohomish County Lincoln Day Dinner on May 17, 2024.
The following remarks were delivered to the Whatcom County Lincoln Day Dinner on March 23, 2024, in Ferndale, Washington.
I struggled with what to talk to you about tonight.
Well, that’s not true. I didn't struggle with what to talk to you about – I struggled with whether I was brave enough to say what I wanted to say.
When I'm invited to speak to groups, I don't want to offend anyone or be too controversial. So, I reached out to a few of your fellow party members to ask whether any topics were off limits or wouldn't go over well with the crowd.
I got some good advice.
Then I decided to ignore that good advice entirely.
Too much is at stake to be polite.
As we sit here tonight, we are in the final battle of a war.
A war that has pit sanity against insanity.
Pragmatism against idealism.
A war that has sacrificed the public good, in favor of a twisted idea of progress.
It's a war that began long before I moved here 15 years ago. It started silently and it was mostly waged in the shadows.
Most of us didn't even realize that a war was being fought. We were too caught up in our own lives and our own problems. ...
If there were ever an episode we’d be removed from social media over, this is it! Citizen sleuths look into Washington’s spending, and what they find is gag worthy. National civil rights complaint filed on behalf of Tumwater basketball player. Is Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell being punished for his bad basketball joke?
[Video] Only students designated as females at birth can participate in girls competitions, WIAA says
Source: News8000com WKBT News 8
https://share.newsbreak.com/bm02e0qe
Silent Majority Foundation sues to challenge the validity of a masking rule that led to charges against election observers. Teachers’ union deletes post targeted at female athlete. Happy Aromantic Sexual Awareness Week! Seattle animal shelter gets political.
When I first started dating my husband in 2018, I avoided asking who he voted for in the 2016 presidential election. Part of me already knew the answer, but I wanted to bury the uncomfortable truth: he’d voted for Donald J. Trump.
If I’d asked him the question then, I’m not sure we’d be where we are today: happily married and head-over-heels in love.
When we met in the fall of 2018, I was a political reporter at the local FOX-TV affiliate in Seattle and President Trump was less than two years into his first term. While I’ve always been right of Seattle’s hard-left politics – it was difficult to break free from the groupthink of a newsroom. Especially a newsroom in one of the bluest cities in America.
Donald Trump had declared the “fake news” media the enemy of the American people and, in turn, we waged war against him, too.
To be clear, not all our coverage was unfair. It’s the media’s job to hold politicians accountable and there’s no doubt, when it came to Trump, the Fourth Estate took that job seriously. The problem, as I’ve come to realize, was they took it less seriously when it came to Democrats. They still do.
During my years at FOX 13 News, I like to think I did my best to hold Washington state progressives accountable for their failures on homelessness, crime, and the anti-business policies that were driving companies like Amazon to move jobs elsewhere. But, in truth, I spent far too much time as a local news reporter covering the White House. I even convinced my bosses to send me to the border in 2019 to cover the so-called family separation crisis – an unusual expense for a local newsroom to agree to. It’s worth noting that local FOX affiliates are different from the network and don’t necessarily share the same conservative bias. Ours certainly did not.
My family and friends knew I was vehemently anti-Trump. I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and often chided my older brother for flying a Trump flag outside his home in Minnesota. By 2019, I’d moved in with my then-boyfriend – but still avoided talking to him about Trump and left the room when he’d turn on his favorite network news show.
In hindsight, I had what the right calls Trump Derangement Syndrome. And my diagnosis had the potential to be terminal.
But things started to turn at a most unexpected time.
The January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol had a different effect on me than you might expect. Rather than deepen my disdain for Donald Trump, it opened my eyes to disturbing depths of hypocrisy that I cannot unsee.
I’d just spent six months covering acts of leftwing political violence in Seattle that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
I watched as cop cars were torched in the streets downtown. My security guard disarmed rioters of stolen police rifles. Stores were looted to the studs – bare manikins left strewn in the streets. Officers were assaulted and hit with improvised explosive devices. My crew was mobbed in what later became known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHOP) – six square blocks surrounding a police precinct that were taken over by armed anti-police extremists. A few days into the occupation, rioters tried to light the precinct on fire after putting quick-drying cement on a door to lock officers in.
Those are just a few examples of what unfolded in Seattle during the racial justice movement of 2020. Our mayor at the time, Jenny Durkan, famously referred to it as a “Summer of Love.” The acts of that summer were ignored and even supported by many in our city’s Democratic leadership. Then-Councilwoman Tammy Morales scolded anyone who questioned the behavior of criminal demonstrators.
“What I don’t want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told that looting doesn’t solve anything,” she said during the unrest.
Our state’s chief law enforcer at the time, Attorney General Bob Fergson, stayed mostly silent about the destruction happening on our streets. He had by then made a national name for himself by suing the Trump administration dozens of times and had his eye on the governor’s office (which he went on to win in 2024). There was no way he’d risk angering his base by condemning leftwing extremism. Instead, he issued a short statement focused on criminal justice reform.
The media downplayed the violence, too. Even my own station took great pains to excuse or ignore criminal acts and play up non-criminal elements of the protests.
No such pains were taken with J6ers.
That hypocrisy was the beginning of my yearslong red pilling.
In 2021, frustrated by new management and our coverage of both the riots and the pandemic, I quit my job in news to launch an independent show.
The biggest supporter of me walking away from my $185,000/year dream job?
My sweet, Trump-voting boyfriend.
I married him in the fall of 2023, five years after I almost let his support for Donald Trump steal the joy we now share. There’s little doubt that had I asked him in the early days of our relationship who he’d voted for in the 2016 election, I would have ended things.
Typing that now makes my heart hurt.
This past November, I voted for Donald. J Trump for the first time. And yes, my husband did too.
Today, more than any other emotion, I am full of hope and optimism for our country – finally free from the echo chamber that once soured me on Trump and his agenda. But I am also battling a tinge of guilt. Guilt for the viewers I let down in those early days of the Trump administration. Guilt over the wonderful life I almost cost myself.
For that, I offer a sincere apology to our 47th President (and my husband, for that matter). And I offer this advice to anyone upset by a second term of Donald J. Trump: Never let politics stand in the way of your happiness. And never be too stubborn to change your mind.
