There is in progress in Seattle an effort to recall Progressive-Democratic Mayor Jenny “Summer of Love” Durkan. Durkan objects. A State trial court has said, over Durkan’s objection, that the recall effort can proceed, so Durkan has taken the matter to the State’s Supreme Court.
Remarkably, neither Petitioners nor the trial court identified the particular “policies and safety measures” Mayor Durkan had a duty to implement, but failed to enact.
Here are a couple that were evident to the trial court, are evident to the recall petitioner defendants, and are blindingly obvious to the Seattle residents.
Instead of ordering the city’s police to retreat and abjectly surrender their precinct headquarters and surrounding blocks to a rabble, she could have—should have—reinforced those police with more police, including State police (or at least asked for them; Governor Jay Inslee’s (D) support for police also is an open question) and not surrendered.
When it became obvious that the occupying rabble had no legitimate objective—they engaged in enthusiastic vandalizing, looting, extortion of uninformed visitors, rape, murder—she could have sent in the police to retake the area much sooner instead of wasting weeks, businesses’ lives, people’s lives pleading negotiating with the rabble.
Instead, she declared a Summer of Love while pretending to deal with the…situation.
The residents of Seattle, citizens of Washington and of the United States that they are, deserved, and deserve, better.