Forget defunding police and emptying prisons. When it comes to woke justice, a proposal before the Seattle City Council will blow those out of the water. It would simply legalize most crimes.
In late October we began hearing about a proposed ordinance that would simply legalize the criminal behavior that constitutes 72% of all crime and covers the reason why 90% of the inmates are in jails.
In short, the woke cancel-culture crowd would cancel most crime.
Currently, 90% of prisoners in Seattle’s jails are in for such crimes as “misdemeanor assault, theft, harassment, trespass, stalking, car prowl, and 100 other Seattle criminal laws.”
The proposed law change, which just received another hearing on Tuesday, would give “blanket immunity” to people committing crimes because they’re high on drugs, are poor, or have some real or imagined mental illness. No doctor’s note is necessary. If a man knocks over a Safeway grocery store, for example, the perp could just say he’s poor and get a pass.
Attorney Scott Lindsay, who first sounded the alarm, is the “former public safety advisor and special assistant for police reform to the City of Seattle and former senior counsel to House Oversight Committee Democrats.” He wrote at Change WA that this proposal is serious business.
You may be thinking, this sounds like hyperbole. Sadly, it is not. The legislation, analyzed in detail below, provides an absolute defense – meaning the defendant cannot be convicted and the case must be dismissed – to all non-DUI/domestic violence (DV) misdemeanor crimes in any of three circumstances:
- Substance use disorder – if the defendant can show “symptoms of” a substance use disorder (e.g., drug or alcohol addiction) (note: the defendant need only show symptoms, not a medical diagnosis);
- Mental disorder – if the defendant can show “symptoms of” a mental disorder, defined broadly as “any organic, mental, or emotional impairment which has substantial adverse effects on a person’s cognitive or volitional functions” (e.g., depression, anxiety, etc.); or
- Poverty – if the defendant can show they committed the offense to meet “an immediate basic need related to an adequate standard of living for the actor and/or other family” (e.g., stole merchandise in order to sell for cash the defendant claims would be used to meet a basic need).
The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal labels these criminals the new “untouchables.”
In effect, the legislation would create a new class of “untouchables,” protected from consequences by the city’s powerbrokers.
[…] This is the latest and most brazen effort in the city’s campaign to establish what might be called a “reverse hierarchy of oppression.” The underlying theory is that society has condemned the lower class to a life of poverty and stigma, which leads to addiction, madness, and indigence. The poor, in the logic of Seattle’s progressive elites, are thus forced to commit crimes—including violent crimes—to secure their very existence. Therefore, as society is the perpetrator of this inequality, the crimes of the poor must be forgiven. The crimes are transformed into an expression of social justice.
In other words, the rich are the reason people are poor and therefore must pay for the transgressions of those who understandably must commit crimes to get by. Rich people deserve to be crime victims, right?
Such a radical change upends the rule of law and objective truth and condemns the city to more of the disastrous activity we saw in the recent KOMO News documentary “Seattle Is Dying.”
City Councilmember Lisa Herbold, chairperson of the Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee, attempted to hide the measure by dealing with it as a budget amendment issue in another committee. When her subterfuge was outed, thanks to Lindsay sounding the alarm, she was shamed into bringing the proposal before her own committee. It got its first airing there on Tuesday.
After defunding the Seattle Police Department, The Post Millennial reports that crime has spiked by 250%.
Seattle’s trying what California has disastrously done. The state legislature and voters cut loose prisoners and decriminalized many felonies. The result was a flood of new homeless and more crime. To victims, the crime rate is worse than ever, but to the state, it’s lower because those crimes don’t count anymore. If this passes, Seattle will claim a lower crime rate too and take a victory lap. Count on it.
That which is rewarded is repeated. Seattle council members should know that by not prosecuting most crimes they’ll get more. It’s axiomatic. It will be open season on Seattleites. God help them if this passes.
Victoria Taft is the host of “The Adult in the Room Podcast With Victoria Taft” where you can hear her series on “Antifa Versus Mike Strickland.” Find it here. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, MeWe, Minds @VictoriaTaft
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