First things first. Help victims of criminal violence keep their assailants in jail and prison and get the help and support they need. More victims of criminal violence suffering than victims of police violence.

The city doesn't do enough to assist victims of police violence; they do zilch to help victims of civilian violence.

@2 your comment reminded me of an op-ed in the Times last month about a victim advocate who quit because victims are further victimized the by the "justice" system

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/why-i-can-no-longer-work-on-behalf-of-crime-victims/

Wouldn't trust busting SPOG be more effective than an ineffective OPA?

@4: A better test would be to trust bust the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) as PTAs have been quite ineffective lately.

Oscar Perez Giron was a convicted felon who was barred from possessing firearms. He had one anyway, and fought with a King County Sheriff's Deputy who was assigned to Sound Transit Police. When Perez Giron pointed his gun at the deputy's head, the deputy shot and killed him.

Oscar Perez Giron was not a "victim of police violence." He was a violent felon who pointed a gun at the head of a law enforcement officer and as a result was justifiably shot and killed. He was a perpetrator of violence, not a victim of it, and if his case is the best The Stranger can come up with to try to justify public resources for events like this, then there is truly no case to be made at all.

@7: Also, Perez Giron was in the US illegally. Had we had deported him after his felony conviction, he might still be alive, and if he had instead died violently there, deporting him would at least have saved his family the money they spent returning his body to Mexico.

Expanding on your point, it seems whenever the Stranger cites an example of someone “wronged by the system,” some actual journalism reveals our system wronged the person primarily by being too lenient. Actual enforcement of our laws the Stranger disdains, by our LEOs the Stranger hates, would have produced a better outcome. Perez Giron died many years ago, and the Stranger has yet to question why they keep citing examples such as him.

@7 — the Perez Giron case is journalism about as bad as I’ve ever seen from The Stranger, and that’s saying something. Ansel Herz wrote the article that Ashley linked to, trying desperately to make the Perez Giron shooting into something it very clearly was not. If you read the comments of that post, you’ll see (ahem) me commenting that SPD’s spokesman is very clearly telegraphing what happened and The Stranger’s narrative is not going to be supported by the evidence, but they plowed ahead with it anyway.

What Ashley didn’t link to was Herz’s follow up post, which shows Perez Giron pointing his gun at the deputy’s head before being shot and killed. It also shows Perez Giron’s companion — who was also armed — trying to take the deputy’s gun away from him. In the comments of the follow up post appeared someone who credibly claimed that Perez Giron was the prime suspect in an armed robbery of his friend in the run up to his death.

https://www.thestranger.com/news/2014/07/09/20070142/video-of-oscar-perez-girons-fatal-confrontation-with-police-at-sodo-light-rail-station

Notably, Herz posted the video in a brief 4 sentence Slog post, did no correction or reflection on his original post, and then Perez Giron was essentially never to be discussed again. Until now, anyway, when The Stranger undoubtedly assumes that people won’t remember what actually happened in the case.

So now this year we’ve had the following Slog takes:

1) it’s bad for parents to want their kids to be able to have a safe walk to school. The City of Seattle should prioritize homeless encampments engaged in rampant criminal behavior over kids walking to school.

2) King County should allocate resources to pay the families of violent felons who are justifiably shot and killed after pointing a gun at a sheriff’s deputy’s head. To provide this money, we should reduce funding for public safety, so King Couny should prioritize dead violent felons who died while trying to shoot and kill cops over funding for cops.

To those of you writing and deciding to publish takes like these, just remember: there’s still time to do something worthwhile with your life. It’s not too late.

“Hightower says she wanted victims of police violence to LEAD the workgroup, since they’re best equipped to say which resources might have helped them.”

“In light of the growing mistrust felt by both Hightower and some of the other affected people MEANT TO BE PART OF the workgroup…”

And therein lies the problem.

Whatever the issue - homelessness, victimhood, whatever - the people with so-called ‘lived experience’ (i.e. plain old ‘experience’ masquerading as something exceptional) feel entitled to a role (leadership of an organization or workgroup) rather than their appropriate role as someone to be consulted.

Yes, victims of police violence are best equipped to say which resources might have helped them. That doesn’t equate to having the experience or ability to establish or lead a workgroup intended to develop and implement public policy.

@9 the whole "lived experienced" thing has worked so well for us in the past though....oh wait

https://www.thestranger.com/news/2023/05/16/78994609/why-did-marc-dones-resign

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/regional-homelessness-authority-clamps-down-on-dysfunctional-board/

https://sccinsight.com/2021/07/29/the-black-brilliance-research-project-beginning-to-end-part-1/