12th and Jackson (Little Saigon)
  • Charles Mudede
  • THE HEART OF OPERATION ROCK-N-HOCK 12th and Jackson (Little Saigon)

The Seattle Blotter reported this weekend that a three-month operation in the center of Little Saigon (around 12th Avenue and S. Jackson Street) ended with the police dragging 25 people into the massive American legal system. The operation exposed an underground network of criminal activity allegedly involving drugs, stolen smartphones and iPads, Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) fraud, and large amounts of shrimp and rice sold out of vans in alleys.

Selling illegal drugs or dodgy shrimp is a crime, and catching citizens in the act of breaking the law is the heart of police work. But doesn't it seem like we are always catching those who break the laws at the bottom of society and never those who break them at the top of society? No one was arrested at WaMu for its 2008 collapse. No one. And yet the shady practices of those bankers did 1000 times more damage to the city than all of the purported illegal activity on 12th and Jackson combined.

No charges will be filed against the leadership team of Washington Mutual Bank, which failed in 2008 amid a cloud of suspicion that improper lending had been occurring there. Announcing the decision late Friday, a U.S. Attorney's Office spokesperson said in a statement that a federal task force examining the WaMu failure did not find evidence of criminal violations.

If the police have a case against the person who sold the black-market shrimp, that person will likely end up with something none of the bankers of WaMu have: a criminal record.