I’m at ground zero

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Every day I go to work I see the park where this admitted Socialist Seattle Council person gave her speech the other night:

Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.

This week, Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers.

There are people, ironically, selling communist newspapers on many of the street corners near here.

One street over, 3rd Avenue, is what Barb L. calls, “Mugme Street”. The Seattle Police department says that location is one of the crime hot spots in Seattle. All the warning alarms go off in my head as I walk on that street to get to my bus. Things “just aren’t right” there. It is rare not to see at least two cops on that street when I briskly walk through “the danger zone”.

The SPD and King County Sheriff’s Office just finished doing some street cleaning in the park and on Mugme Street:

Just in time for the holidays, Seattle Police and King County Sheriff’s Office have wrapped up more than 30 drug dealers and suspected gang members following a months-long undercover operation around Westlake.

“This operation was about helping downtown businesses and their customers as well as Metro Employees and transit riders downtown,” says Sgt Thomas Flanagan from the KCSO’s Metro Police Unit.

In September, members of SPD’s Gang Unit, Narcotics, West Precinct Bikes Anti-Crime Teams and deputies from the King County Sheriff’s Office’s patrol and Metro Units began Operation Happy Holidays after receiving numerous reports of drug dealing and gang activity near the 3rd Ave corridor. For months, police documented hand-to-hand drug deals and purchased crack cocaine, powder cocaine, pills, and marijuana in the downtown core and developed cases against 40 people. This week, police began making arrests.

Last night when I was leaving work I saw two police officers with a guy up against the wall just outside the parking garage for our building. They were going through his pockets.

This morning I looked around some. I didn’t see any of the usual shady people hanging around. Maybe it will stay clean around here for a few days.

I really wish I could earn the kind of money I’m addicted to back on the farm in Idaho. This is ground zero for criminals and, redundancy alert, Marxists.

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10 thoughts on “I’m at ground zero”

  1. 3rd & Pine is the place you want to be if you want to get drugs, right at the bus stop. Or coincidentally, the place you don’t want to be if you like low crime rate areas.

  2. A couple times a month due to volunteering on a board I have to walk through the sketchy plaza in front of Oakland City Hall at dusk and then back after dark. Despite the Oakland Police Department’s Internal Affairs division being right on the plaza, I’ve yet to see a cop around, and open drug deals are pretty common. After the initial frisson of “Right in front of City Hal??l!!” wore off, now I’m a jaded Oaklander and they’re just obstacles to avoid.

  3. I lived in Baltimore, MD, for a decade and decided that one absolutely certain truth about the city was that drug dealing could not go on as publicly as it did without corruption of the street-level police officers by the dealers.

    That it took “SPD’s Gang Unit, Narcotics, West Precinct Bikes Anti-Crime Teams and deputies from the King County Sheriff’s Office’s patrol and Metro Units” to develop cases over “months” on street dealers should tell you the same thing about Seattle.

    A total of 30 arrests were made? Wow, I’d have thought that street dealers could be arrested at any given time by any patrolman walking a beat or driving a neighborhood, based on their working knowledge of their assigned areas. I’d like to know how many are prosecuted (some will trade knowledge for leniency), how many plead to lesser charges (easier on the prosecutors and defense attys), and how many actually go to jail for sentences longer than 1 months, until after the holiday shopping rush is over.

  4. There is a major process failure of some kind when it comes to drug dealers, cops and Progressives (incremental Marxists). On one hand they all work together to demoralize and destabilize society. It’s like a single gang of zombies, each troop with their own role to play, working against the American Ideal.

    On the other hand, the drug dealers and their customers are among the few real capitalists left in society as they operate, or at least attempt to operate, outside of the taxation and regulation system, and the legal system oppresses them to such an extent that they’re a “criminal element” where otherwise a criminal element would not exist. They’re the modern bootleggers in a new and far more virulent form of Prohibition, only this Prohibition didn’t seem to require a constitutional amendment like the last one did.

    They all have one thing in common though, which is the desire to be “free” (to do wrong) and so they are all allies, or soulmates.

    It may be that you’d make less money if you got out of there, but you’d need a lot less money if you got out of there. And so it’s a quality of life issue. Look at some of the very rich who live miserable lives, and some of the poor who are relatively happy. It can go both ways of course but the point is; Money ain’t everything, so long as you have enough to live a decent life.

  5. So if you were going to move to WA and had a relatively limited amount to plunk down on a house where would you live? I’m kinda leaning towards somewhere on the I-5 corridor between Vancouver and Olympia but my wife would like to live nearer Seattle. Ideally we’d like a place with .5 to 2 acres and under 150K because that way we can pay cash and not have to work full time. There are a couple interesting places on Whidbey Island but then we are looking at nearer neighbors, not an awful thing just not ideal. By the way what the heck is the deal with cabins on “leased land”? I assume this is kind of expanded mobil home lots or state land.

  6. Scott,

    .5 to 2 acres for 150K or less? I haven’t had my laugh for today – so thanks. Oh, and cabins on leased land the land is usually on the reservation (from my experience, altho there might be some on state land) – not an ideal situation, but probably the ONLY way you’ll get a house with your criteria.

    But then again, some would argue that you’re leasing the land even if it’s off the reservation. Property taxes after all…

    Now to reply to Joe, which is who I was originally going to reply to – man, I feel for ya. I’m on the west side of the water, and would love to escape to ID … but alas, the job situation there is not exaclty plentiful. Especially for Java Programmers… seems ID is a C#/.net haven.

    Ah well, I have just over 19 months until I can escape this place (one kid left in HS).

    If you ever get over to the west side of the sound, email me and I’ll buy you a cuppa, or a beer someplace.

  7. Joe, BTW, I used to commute through near where I think you’re working … 2nd and Cherry was where I caught the bus to Bellevue…

    “A more wretched hive…”, well, you know the rest.

  8. “So if you were going to move to WA and had a relatively limited amount to plunk down on a house where would you live?”

    The FAR northeast corner of the state, or the hills southwest of Asotin in the southeast corner of the state. I’d avoid the areas west of the Cascades like the plague, but better yet move to Idaho.

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