A young resident who recently moved from Ukraine stands excitedly with her family’s new car; Photo from KOMO news
A few days ago I posted a blog entry about our two 11th district legislators helping bury the House bill that would allow police to crack down on car thieves. Then 12 hours later six teens stole and recklessly crashed a car into another car after running a red light at the corner of Airport and Rainier, sending three of the teens to Harborview in critical condition.
Today KOMO news informs us that the teens stole the car from a resettled Ukrainian family that had already endured a difficult year, and desperately needed their car. Furthermore, they had not been able to secure insurance for it, since the wave of spiraling car thefts has made Kias nearly uninsurable for new owners. Without reasonable law enforcement, the pain just goes on and on.
The car above recklessly destroyed after a theft, a victim of the exponential increase in auto-thefts since the legislature has forbidden police from chasing car thieves; Photo from KOMO news
Renton’s 11th District Representative Steve Bergquist has asked his district for their top safety priorities, and dozens of Renton residents responded. Representative Bergquist shared the results of his online survey here, and summarized them in his E-newsletter.
Many readers gave detailed comments about their concerns, including paragraphs of specifics, and they are included in the survey results.
Italics are quoted from Representative Bergquist’s newsletter:
Thank you so much to those of you who responded to our community safety survey in the last E-Newsletter—I really appreciate you taking the time to share what kind of support is the most meaningful to you and your family.
In response to the Supreme Court’s State v. Blake response, SB 5467 received the highest percentage of votes in support. This bill would encourage substance use treatment in response to possession and require a jail sentence if individuals do not comply with treatment. The only bill that received a higher percentage of votes in opposition than support (the only bill most survey respondents did not like) was SB 5624, enacting decriminalization of possession and providing support for expansion of substance use disorder treatment programs.
(Legend above: Blue was supported by survey respondents, orange was opposed.)
Respondents indicated that greater confidence in law enforcement, more police presence, knowing that people’s basic needs are met, removal of institutionally racist practices, and having lots of people out and about are the things that make them feel safest in their communities. People responded that inattentive drivers, car thefts, mass shootings, the presence of homelessness, gun ownership, and drug use make them feel unsafe in their communities.
Representative Bergquist then extends a personal invitation for residents to make an appointment to meet with him and our other 11th district legislator David Hackney.
Join my 11th LD seatmate, Representative David Hackney, and I for a Mini Town Hall on Saturday, March 18th from 1-4pm at Refuel Café (401 Olympia Ave NE Ste 102, Renton, WA). Please email my legislative assistant, Syd, at Syd.Locke@leg.wa.gov to sign up for a 15-minute time slot to chat with us between 1pm & 4pm. Sign up to swing by, say hello, and enjoy a coffee on us!
I appreciate Rep Bergquist extending this invitation, and encourage residents to take this time to get to know our legislators and personally discuss your concerns and ideas with them. The issues on the survey are timely, as Representatives Bergquist and Hackney will soon be voting on many of them including key drug legislation (fixing “Blake” decision) and police pursuit legislation, both of which have recently been addressed by bills passed last week in the Senate and forwarded to the House.
Architectural rendering of new Hilltop Heritage school on Duvall Ave NE
Serving in any public office can be a hard job, and school board director can be one of the most difficult since the job is about people’s children. Renton school board directors do not get paid for their service. It’s important to keep this in mind when contentious issues arise. I’ve heard a petition is being circulated, so I thought people may want to know more about why.
While I was not personally in attendance at the Wednesday Renton School board meeting, some Renton parents say they were surprised by the quick 2-0 vote from a normally five member board that will set future elementary school boundaries.
Everyone in Renton who’s frustrated with our escalating crime rates should watch the above brief video in which Senator Mark Mullet (D, 5th District, Issaquah) makes an impactful speech in yesterday’s State Senate debate on police pursuit. Senator Mullet brings honor and intelligence to this debate, and specifically expresses the needs of our city even though he only has a small part of Renton in a corner of his district. Senator Mullet deserves Renton’s gratitude.
Thanks in part to Senator Mullet’s critical support and his compelling speech to the full chamber, the State senate surprised many of us by getting SB 5352 approved in the full chamber (26 to 23) after it had languished in committee for many weeks. This bill will now go back to the House, where the legislators had just buried their own version of the bill the day before. They would ordinarily now consider this Senate bill (unless opponents devise a way to procedurally bury it), and Renton officials and residents should encourage them to pass it.
Three teens are in critical condition after a stolen car driven at high speed crashed into another car Wednesday morning in Renton. Photo: KOMO news
A few weeks ago Renton Council members and Mayor Pavone traveled to Olympia to discuss legislative issues including the law limiting police pursuits that has caused a skyrocketing number of stolen cars to be driven recklessly through our streets. Would-be car thieves have figured out police can’t chase them, so they have been stealing cars and racing them hazardously, often ending in accidents, smash-and-grabs, or other crime sprees.
Representatives Steve Bergquist and David Hackney assured our city delegation they would both reliably support a sensible House bill restoring some police pursuit authority, and were even listed as co-sponsors of HB 1363 that did this. But yesterday they voted against a call for a vote of their bill on the house floor, potentially killing it for this session, and deeply disappointing several Renton elected officials and many of their Renton constituents.
Julie Andrews (yes, like Mary Poppins) cares for a flock of five hens in Renton Highlands. They are each paying her back right now with an egg a day. With the days getting longer, most of Renton’s backyard flocks have completed their annual molt and have started laying at full speed.
Homes in Medina and other small cities won’t be impacted by HB 1110; the legislature exempted them (photo from Google Street View)
The State House of Representatives just passed a sweeping housing bill, HB 1110, that some are bragging finally gets the NIMBYs (Not in My Back Yards) to stop blocking new housing. Except the legislature didn’t actually do that. The truly wealthy enclaves in our area, like Medina, Hunts Point, Yarrow Point, and Clyde Hill are not impacted at all, as they fall below a city size threshold included in the law. And anyone who owns a home covered by an HOA, which is about 80% of our newer homes these days, and includes many found in expensive areas including all gated communities, typically won’t be impacted either.
Washington’s finest! New police recruits from across our state graduate from the Washington State Police Academy in Burien Washington in June 2022. The Washington legislature is currently working on new ways to sue police academy graduates if their training proves inadequate.
Washington legislators are in charge of police training in our state, but they want to sue officers and cities, and not themselves, when this training lets the public down. Note these police officers can already be sued today if they are acting in bad faith.
To hear some state legislators complain about police officer training, you might never know that the legislature itself has been in charge of overseeing the training of these new officers for the past 50 years. Since 1974, every new officer gets 720 hours of training in the state police academy, overseen by the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission (WSCJTC). Cities pay them for this service. The training covers all the necessary basics, including what they need to know about criminal law and the state constitution, using tasers and firearms, chasing suspects, conducting traffic stops, and other necessary skills. Here is the syllabus. The WSCJTC also provides numerous specialty follow-on classes, in such varied areas as dog handling, accident reconstruction, and police supervision, so the WSCJTC maintains a lifetime role in training police officers. The WSCJTC reports directly to the governor and legislature, not to local mayors or city council members. So individual legislators only need to look in a mirror to see someone responsible for police training.
This month the legislature is focussed on developing a way that people can sue these police officers when police training proves inadequate– either because the training failed to cover a unique legal or crisis situation the officer found themself in, or because the training directed the officer to make a wrong decision. The new legislation, HB 1025, is artfully written to still preserve immunity from lawsuits for the State and the legislators, the ones overseeing the academy classes. Only the police-officer students and their employers will be sued when the state training turns out to be inadequate.
Can you imagine how you would feel if you learned that a college or school where you earned a degree was trying to get you sued because the education they gave you was inadequate? How angry would you be? That’s what the legislature is cooking up for our police officers.
Thanks to our tumultuous legislature, new legal dilemmas are presented to officers everyday. For example, should an officer run after a suspect that just sold a lethal dose of fentanyl to a 12-year-old? What happens if the suspect runs into traffic, and is killed? With drug-related criminal issues still unresolved, an officer would need to be an experienced trial lawyer to get every one of these questions right all the time. 720 hours of academy time and 24-hour annual follow-ups will not provide a blueprint for every situation. Right now, when society sends an officer into danger, the officer is expected to act in good faith in applying their judgement and their training to the most confusing situations. If the state feels our officers don’t have enough training to cover all situations, the state should improve the training– not look for ways to financial harm the officers’ families after damage is done. And if anyone feels the officers are acting in bad faith, the officers can already be sued.
In any large workforce there will statistically be a few employees that do bad things, and they need to be dealt with. Police departments are no exception. Officers can currently be reprimanded and demoted for lesser transgressions, and criminally charged for serious offences. Officers can already be sued today under RCW 9-46.212 when they act in bad faith or gross negligence. If the State wants to now sue someone for inadequately training police officers, they should start by suing themselves until they learn to take responsibility for their own work.
Cities do have responsibility to give at least 24 hours per year continuing training to officers, set a safe culture, and provide supervision. Renton far exceeds these expectations with our own dedicated training center employing techniques and culture taught by the WSCJTC as a guide, and enrolling promoted officers in continuing WSCJTC training at their academy campus. Cities also have an overall responsibility to remedy financial damages to other parties that their actions have caused, whether by the police, parks, transportation, or any city department. In Renton our insurance fund typically covers damages caused by police work without requiring a lawsuit from a resident to make it happen. I always advocated for a timely financial remedy and sincere apology to any parties inadvertently harmed by any of our departments.
A state patrol officer observed a driver speeding at 111 miles per hour. He tried to stop the reckless driver, but the driver sped off and the 2021 non-pursuit law prevented the trooper from chasing and stopping him. An hour later the same driver was going the wrong way on I-82 and crashed into another car, killing a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl in that car and sending three others with serious injuries to Seattle area hospitals. Police preliminarily believe alcohol or drugs contributed to the deadly accident.
In this sequence of events the driver was in an identifiable car, presumably with a license plate, and the State Patrol was able to put the timeline together enough to realize the same car and driver were at both encounters. If it was dark, or the vehicle had no plates, or different agencies were involved, it’s likely that authorities may not have made the connection between the speeding driver and the fatal accident an hour later.
Washington’s highway fatality rate suggests we’re experiencing events similar to this at a statewide rate of about one or two per week since the non-pursuit law went into effect, contributing to our 21 percent increase in highway fatalities. Troopers and local police agencies have lost their ability to get the worst reckless drivers off our roads before they kill someone. Obviously lowering the Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) from 0.08 to 0.05 will have no impact on events like these unless police get back their authority to chase and detain reckless drivers.
State legislators who claim to be saving lives by the 2021 non-pursuit law are negligently contributing to these deadly accidents. The current death toll is in the hundreds.
Local builders have tried to keep pace with market demand for rentals. Cosmos Development’s 2nd and Main project offers large units and nice amenities in the heart of Renton’s downtown.
In a previous blog entry I shared that the King County Homelessness Authority has put forward a $25 Billion five-year plan to create temporary housing to reduce homelessness. I mentioned that our own Renton Housing Authority has been a very efficient government housing provider, and I promised to revisit this topic of homelessness with additional practical ideas in the future. This is my first follow up on this topic, covering what private providers can do.
The debate about solving homelessness often deteriorates into over-simplified disagreements, like “is homelessness a housing problem, or a drug problem?” I promise not to take such a simplistic approach. The issue is much more complicated than that.
As a disclosure, my wife and I have owned rental homes in our area for over 30 years, and we have taken pride in providing affordable, fair, desirable housing for families and individuals in our community.
Step 1: Maximize the capability of the private housing market by working with landlords and builders
Our region’s private housing market plays the most essential role of all in preventing homelessness, by successfully housing 90%-95% of all of our region’s residents while generating significant tax revenue. About 61% of these residents live in homes which their family owns, and the other 39 percent are in homes or apartments they are renting under a private lease with the owner. It’s in all of our benefit to keep this market thriving, as this private market drives new home construction with typically no subsidies from taxpayers. This new construction helps reduce housing shortages.
This is not an easy post for me to write, as I’ve enjoyed a cordial supportive relationship with Senator Bob Hasegawa for many, many years. But I love and care about the City of Renton, and Renton residents have been suffering tremendously recently. Wounds are still fresh on three victims of glass shards from a Sunday gunfire exchange in North Renton, and Monday our police department gave the most sobering report I’ve seen in 30 years on the increase in violent crime and homicides in our city. Armed robberies are up 50% year over year, carjackings are up 70%, and homicides reached an all-time high of 7 in 2022.
Senator Hasegawa (D), who serves the 11th district (Renton, Tukwila, Kent) meanwhile released a letter praising himself for this police pursuit legislation, saying the number of people killed in statewide police chases dropped from 9 to 3 in the last 1.5 years (saving an estimated 4 fleeing suspects and 2 innocent bystanders). As long as he ignores the collateral hundreds killed by reckless driving and hundreds more killed by criminal violence, I guess he can feel good about saving these six.
One of the worst things Senator Hasegawa does in his letter is essentially blame the very police officers he himself has incapacitated for the rise in crime. He even gives them illegal advice. “Police can still give chase during instances of DUI” he writes, neglecting that police need “reasonable suspicion of DUI” to do this, which they can’t get by just watching a driver weave his way down the road. Reasonable suspicion of DUI comes from an interview after police have made a traffic stop for a driving infraction; and police can’t pursue for an infraction. And he tells them they can chase in instances of violent crimes, without telling them their evidence must meet the standard of probable cause, the same standard needed for an arrest (which is usually not available until after questioning and investigation). Fortunately, police officers know better than Senator Hasegawa what they are allowed to do under the law since attorneys have had to be in close contact with officers since this ill-conceived law was first rolled out.
Senator Hasegawa’s 11th district used to be mostly in Seattle, but the district boundaries were moved in 2020 and his district is now Renton, Tukwila and Kent. His 11th district house colleagues, Steve Bergquist (D) and David Hackney (D) are demonstrating an understanding of the needs and desires of the new 11th district constituency, and they are working to restore police pursuits. I’m sure it is harder for them when their senior colleague in the senate sends misleading letters to their constituency. Senator Hasegawa should instead be leading as a mature, steady hand, helping his House colleagues protect their district and the state in this frightening time of rising crime. If he can’t serve that role for the people of his district, he should plan for his retirement.
Three generations of my family love these sci-fi, gaming, and pop-culture events, and we have put together some elaborate cosplay costumes (dressing up as favorite characters in the past. I love how more of these conventions have been held in Renton in recent years. We don’t have to deal with Seattle’s traffic or parking challenges, and out-of-towners can discover Renton’s great hotels and restaurants.
Marcel Bower of Renton City Retro sent me this description of their upcoming May 13-14 event in Renton’s downtown Pavilion event center:
A few weeks ago KIRO TV broke the story that King County is still paying $330,000 per month in taxpayer funds for the former Red Lion Hotel, which now sits empty with numerous broken windows and a fence around it. While it’s widely known that the hotel was being operated as a homeless shelter and caught fire in December 2020, it’s less well known how hard Renton fire officials worked in the months before the fire to get correction of numerous safety violations in the building and warn the leadership of the Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC-the non-profit that was operating the shelter) and King County of the high fire safety risks.
From left, Council members Van and O’Halloran, Mayor Pavone, Council members Perez and Alberson in Olympia Wednesday morning. Council members Prince and McIrvin also participated but aren’t in this photo (they were taking kids to late-start school, due to snow in Renton.)
Every year, Renton Council approves an official list of key Renton priorities for legislators in Olympia. This year’s priorities were approved by the council on a 6-1 vote, and are available here. This week, all six council members who approved the legislative agenda joined Mayor Pavone in Olympia to ask for support face-to-face from state lawmakers.
