"Instead of subsidizing police housing, the council might consider funding or asking private businesses to fund subsidized housing for people living unsheltered, the very people that the cops spend a significant amount of time hassling off the sidewalk."

No that won't work Ashely because businesses are running out of business and being robbed and trashed by the very people who spend a significant amount of time on the sidewalk hassling and scaring customers away from said businesses.

Let's just ignore the crime statistics which say the city council is just trying to scare us

How is it only March and I’m so over this city council?

Obviously this will inspire the unhoused population to apply for vacant cop jobs thereby killing two birds with one stone. The Stranger is just too salty to rightfully appreciate the pure genius of the new pragmatic-not-progressive Council

@4
Yes! Just give our unhoused neighbors some guns, and ….
oh wait they already have guns

I wonder if recruiting officers who would like to live in the city they are employed by, as opposed to some creepy subdivision in a dump like pierce county, where they spend their off time bitching about the residents of Seattle, might bring in higher quality law enforcement.

Seattle is going to end up like Detroit. Boeing is on a downward spiral amid the disaster that is happening in the city. There are no affordability issues in Detroit. There are no job issues in Detroit too because there are no jobs.

Subship dear, I hope you did some warm ups before attempting that stretch.

@6: Or maybe your stereotypes are incorrect. Seattle is priced out of just about every municipal employee's reach. Also, cop-bigots shouldn't expect cops to live and thrive in Seattle when wokey lefties here scream ACAB and trash SPD at every turn.

Maybe you’re right, but I’m done betting my money on it.

"After all, though surveys show that most people want more cops, those same surveys also show that people want police alternatives."

The link goes to an older story at the Stranger, which claimed a majority of King County residents wanted police alternatives. As commenters on that story (myself included) pointed out at the time, a majority of that survey's respondents did NOT want police alternatives, in part because they feared funding for police alternatives would come at the expense of hiring more cops.

So, on the topic of police and alternatives, the Stranger has been reduced to recycling old lies. (All the while wondering why the policies and politicians it supports keep getting rejected by Seattle's voters.)

if Billionaires can buy
(formerly-) Supreme ct. 'justices'
Motorhomes, and get whateverthefuck
They want why not give our poor Po-po
brand New 800hp Po-po Motorhomes? re-
plete with jails cells on the roof,* a small spa and
just pay them for 24/7/365 'service'? stop 'thinking'
outside the box & just put them IN motorized Big Boxes

I'm confident our Military
has plenty of Miitary Vehicles
we might re-appoint for the Urban
Warfare, coming soon to all fascist
neigborhoods anywhere near You:

there's Way
Too dang Much
Dissent, these days.

*that'll keep the
(alleged!) Miscreants
Quiet, out in the Weather,
where we can all See them

*don't forget
the Blue Lites!

One need only look towards Haiti to see the utopia of a world without cops.

Maybe if the Seattle City Council spent more time on subsidizing housing for the homeless, and a variety of housing solutions, depending on the population, Seattle would be a more attractive place for police officers to work in, and to begin with.

But otherwise - yes, I am fully opposed to subsidizing housing for cops who make a decent living - or anyone who makes a decent living.

The new city council: what a bunch of clowns.

As @11 said, The Stranger is lying when they say surveys have shown that people want police alternatives. The April 2022 article Ashley links to claims that a survey of King County residents showed they wanted police alternatives. When you clicked the link and actually read the survey, one of the key questions asked if people think King County should invest in an alternative non-police response. The answer? 45.07% agree or strongly agree. 50.96% disagree or strongly disagree. If The Stranger had any integrity, they would have retracted the 2022 article and issued a correction. Instead, they left it as published.

In other words, The Stranger lied then, and is continuing to lie now. It’s the left wing version of Fox News.

Why does The Stranger love crime and lawlessness so much?

@6, few law enforcement officers chose to reside in the community they serve. This is arguably good for both the officer and the community they serve; in that it minimizes the probability of putting oath of office and individual friendship in conflict.

@13 gonna stop right there with the racist lies, since Haiti's troubles are intimately linked to colonialism imposed by the US and France, resulting poverty, the 2004 coup against Aristide, US businesses and individuals selling weapons to both sides, and compounding the problem further and further. Don't even start with me on Somalia. We helped Ethiopia invade in 2006 as the moderate Islamic Courts Union was ending the civil war, but that meddling created Al-Shabab and extended the violence another 10-20 years and counting. Wikipedia has details you can read that will shock you.

I lived for a time in one of those creepy subdivisions in Pierce County, South of Puyallup (We were getting Maison Vel Du-Ray ready to move in, and I had sold my house). It was all Seattle and Tacoma cops, military, and Mr. Vel Du-Ray and I. We never had any problems with the neighbors, but they would talk about the "animals" that lived in Seattle and Tacoma. They had no respect for the people who paid their taxes. (they also all slept around on each other. It was like a soap opera)

Many places required residency to be a municipal employee, but that was ruled unconstitutional in WA in 1970 or thereabouts. Fun fact: You used to have to both establish residency (one year) and sign a loyalty oath to obtain city employment.

@18.....I have no doubts as to what you say, but keeping it into the here and now Haiti is a prime example of the dangers of anarchy; things are out of control in Haiti. In our country, the BLM riots were a sample of things to come all over the world. Gangs will soon be the new world order.

@20 the leader of the gang rebellion is a former cop. He did his first massacre while on the job.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Ch%C3%A9rizier

@6
Pierce County is a dump…
Seattle/King County isn’t?

@18: A minor nit. Just about every country in the western hemisphere was once under colonial rule, so it's more about the ruthless slave trade and sugar plantations practices.

This is what the neo-Gilded Age looks like. Where society protects a handful of money hoarders at the expense of everyone else and the masses are too stupid to do anything about it other than arguing amongst themselves.

Perhaps the city council should consider improving Harrell's awful One Seattle Comprehensive Plan (the blueprint for housing in Seattle for the next 20 years for those who might not know) to create enough housing so that police (if they wish), teachers, nurses, social workers, other city employees, baristas, retail workers, and lots of other people could live in Seattle instead of being priced out.

@25 but they don't want poors (i.e. people who can't afford a million dollar SFH) living here they just want their capitalist paramilitaries to protect them and will throw them some scraps if it keeps them happy

@25, @26: As I pointed out in a recent and relevant comment thread, “… why should Seattle try to plan for 200,000 new units over twenty years? That production rate would require a sustained level of output which Seattle has not demonstrated any ability to meet.”

(https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/03/14/79427423/only-one-council-member-slams-mayor-for-inadequate-growth-plan/comments/2)

@27 is your point that, because something would be difficult to accomplish, the government shouldn't allow the community even to try? And if the answer is "yes" how does that stance translate to, for example, providing hiring bonuses, etc, to try to get SPD to 1400 sworn officers?

@28: My point is that plans should be realistic. Planning to allow for something to be done is not the same as a realistic plan to actually get it done.

“…to try to get SPD to 1400 sworn officers…”

For many years prior to “defund,” the Seattle Police Department consistently came close to having 1,400 officers on payroll:

“The number of officers within the Seattle Department hovered between 1,200 and 1,300 for seven consecutive years before dropping to 1,094 in 2020, according to data from the city of Seattle.”

(https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/mayor-bruce-harrell-new-seattle-police-recruitment-plan-staffing-reaches-30-year-low/281-e98429ee-fc88-47f6-8890-b961393e2047)

By contrast, Seattle has reached the annual pace of 10,000 new housing units only four times in the last 28 years, often with large year-to-year variations, https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/OPCD/Demographics/AboutSeattle/Citywide_Permit_Report.pdf

Cops are paid enough, so that's not the problem. No raises are needed. Seattle Police risk their lives arresting criminals who are often violent, get them into the justice system, and then those criminals get out with no time served. It's well known that the justice system in Seattle is considered a "revolving door." This is pretty shitty for the people that risk their lives to keep us safe.