Seattle Police and 911 Response Times

Seattle was one of the first places to go all in on Defund the Police. Well, mostly in. And the police noticed. They started leaving, and new people didn't want to join the force.

Now there is a funny thing about reality; it it true, even if you don't want it to be. One thing that is true is that you need cops to respond to 911 calls. If you don't have cops, the wait for that response is going to be long. So what would you do if you called 911 and it was a long time before someone came to rescue you? Do you have a Plan B?

That is what is the situation unfolding in Seattle. Seattle Police recruitment falls short as response times increase

Due to officers being spread thin, police call response times have increased, with the highest priority calls taking an average of 10 minutes to get a response. This is slower than the city’s goal of having seven minute response times for all priority one calls.

10 minutes is a long time to wait if you have called 911 before bad things have happened, and you are waiting for the police to "save you." It is also plenty of time for a bad guy to get away if the call came after the bad things had already taken place.

The city's recruiting efforts are falling short? Color me shocked.

Since 2020, the department has lost 515 officers and hired 190. Many have retired, but others said in exit interviews they did not feel supported by the city during the “defund the police” movement following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The city is still losing an average of 9 officers per month, and that is the good news; it was between 13 and 16 officers per month not that long ago.

And before someone takes offense to the "defund the police" statement. Yes. They did try to defund the police. Seattle’s botched experiment with defund the police keeps getting worse

The City Council initially cut the police budget by about 17%, never reaching the 50% goal. But the agency has been in a tailspin ever since.

That article is a little amusing because the people passing the laws in Seattle can't even be bothered to read the laws about parking tickets, and so they screwed that up to the tune of about $5 million.

And the situation has gotten so out-of-hand that the post office has had to stop mail delivery in at least parts of the city. Mail theft in Seattle has become such a bad problem that the United States Postal Service paused deliveries to the 98118 zip code.

Around 900 customers in the area from Columbia City to Rainier Beach were told to pick up their mail from the local post office, prompting massive lines.

The hat tip goes to Law Officer: Seattle police are fleeing while 911 response times increase.

The City Is In Crisis With Rising Crime & Fewer Police