We called the police to report fireworks earlier this week. We even had heard the kids saying they'd be back the next night (they were!). The cops told us to water our roof so our house wouldn't burn down. It was pretty much the best police work EVAR.

Mother Nature is watering all of our roofs.

Just to put a fine point on the Times' Sonics editorial: Motherfucking cocksucking shitbag fucking douchebag son of a bitch.

And I'm only talking about Frank Chopp. Happy 4th everyone!

Cocksucking is not an insult, #3!!

Mind your manners.

Yeah, it seems kind of stupid to ban something and then to essentially admit that you really aren't going to enforce the ban. So, to me what the police are saying is that those who want to shoot off fireworks have free reign as long as they don't catch anything on fire or hurt themselves. And those who don't like it, well unless the idiot neighbors actually succeed in burning your house down, you are shit out of luck. So, go blow shit up, it's the American way.

Seattle has the smallest police force of any major city in the US.

Until that changes, what is the point of banning fireworks or cell phones while driving or anything? It it isn't a violent crime in progress, they aren't staffed for it.

@ 5: but make sure you don't smoke any weed. That's the danger the cops are watching out for.

Traffic signal retiming will be bad news for pedestrians. They always make the cycles longer which benefits cars (hard to get a decent number through a short cycle because people in cars hog so much public space in addition to emitting nasty stuff into public air). Pedestrians on the other hand are better off with short cycles becuase synchronization is of no value to them, and you can get any number of waiting pedestrians through the shortest of cycles given that a pedestrian only takes up the space of his or her own body. In short they've just made Seattle even more pedestrian unfriendly than it's been. Hypocrites.

@6 - Yes, they have much more important things to do, like telling clubs to turn down or remove scandalous pictures from their walls, and making people stop feeding vegan food to the homeless.

After the recent Stranger article about the thinly spread police force I was actually feeling somewhat sympathetic to our cops, but lately it just makes their law enforcement priorities seem that much more whacked.

@8 -- don't worry, Kinaidos, Seattle traffic engineers have proven many times over that they are totally incompetent at signal timing. I expect any "improvements" they make to reduce overall traffic speeds, not increase them.

@10 My sister is visiting from Denver and yesterday when we drove downtown and ended up waiting through several light cycles because of pedestrians crossing, she asked why they didn't do what Denver does, and stop all traffic, let all pedestrians go, then let traffic go.

I believe a slightly longer light will allow cars who are waiting to turn the chance to turn after the pedestrians cross, so I'm hoping it might work. However, as you said this is Seattle, so it'll probably foul things up instead.

@8

I don't think we should think of it as a matter of whether you are sympathetic to the plight of the police or not. It's more a question of whether or not the cops are there to find your stolen car or deal with dozens of non-violent crime problems that we all need help with.

Given we don't have an cops to spare, it is all the more outrageous that Mayor Nickels used the police for the club crackdown political theater. They could have been finding my stolen laptop, among many other useful things.

@10

Fnarf, I can't find any evidence that anyone has ever reduced traffic congestion, though many, many places have synchronized lights. I don't think it matters how competent your traffic engineers are.