Seattle Crime Reports : Seattle Crime Blog : Seattle, Washington

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Not a crime in the traditional sense, but still downright criminal:

Beginning in January, shoppers must pay 20 cents for each plastic or paper bag they use at grocery, drug and convenience stores in Seattle.

The Seattle City Council this afternoon also passed a ban on foam containers at food-service businesses that also will take effect in January.

The stupidity of people in this supposedly educated city continues to amaze me: so afraid that they'll miss the trendy "going green" bandwagon, local busybodies are willing to put aside all common sense and dictate the shopping habits of those in their community, justifying it with claims that such meddling is acceptable because it's the "right thing to do." The idea that protecting the environment starts and ends with you has been twisted by these individuals: rather than the reasonable approach ("OK, our household will just stop using plastic bags") they're taking an unreasonable one ("We don't like plastic bags in the grocery stores, so we want to make sure anyone who uses them has to pay the price") and have somehow convinced the Seattle City Council to agree with them.

Well, the City Council, and its president Richard Conlin in particular, should be ashamed of the decision they made today. The only solace a reasonable man can take is knowing how foolish these folks will look when it's three years from now and the "positive impacts" of the tax that so many people are counting on will have proven to be nonexistent.

By the way: there's plenty more research into the ill effects of such a policy at the Northwest Economic Policy Seminar's site Seattle Bag Tax.org, which features information put together by a nonpartisan group of individuals who don't have an agenda beyond offering up the facts and examining the potential outcomes a bag tax could have on our city. The treehuggers rallying behind the tax should take some time to look over the site and see what impacts similar approaches have had in the rest of the world. But of course, I wouldn't expect them to. After all, what good are facts - and there are plenty of them here - when they prove your flimsy argument faulty?

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While I may not necessarily agree with the Seattle Crime Blogger's take on legalizing prostitution, we are in agreement that the SPD's insistent focus on staking out Rick's Cabaret is beyond ridiculous.

This 2006 article from the P-I details one of the biggest raids ever conducted in Seattle, when three paddy wagons (does anybody still use that term anymore?) showed up to arrest 14 dancers at the Lake City club. Three paddy wagons? For years, police have claimed that they don't have the resources to effectively clean up the city's many open-air drug markets, but they seem to be willing to do whatever it takes to stop lonely old men from getting some extra love in a poorly lit back room.

Outside of that, many have forgotten what happened after the infamous "Strippergate" story started to develop. A 2007 report, also from the P-I, details some of the bizarre reports filed by undercover officers involved in the sting:

"One Seattle cop reported that he grabbed an exotic dancer's breasts several times as she gyrated in his lap."

Why that officer did this, and why he would ever write this in his own report, remain an unexplained mystery.

Another cop details having spent $100 on consecutive lap dances with the hopes that the stripper would eventually offer sex for money. Don't get me started on the entrapment problems here...but $100? Something tells me that wasn't the only time such a situation arose.

One detective reported that he had purchased 300 lap dances while working undercover.  With a dance running $20 to $40, we're talking $6,000 to $12,000 of taxpayer money being spent to bust a dancer for a misdemeanor crime.

According to the P-I, I'm not alone in my assessment:

[Some defense attorneys and legal experts] question the department's priorities: why undercover cops need to be so aggressive in cases that rarely rise above a misdemeanor, and that are frequently dismissed as the result of a court diversion program.

And after all the money, time, and resources spent, we end with a grand conclusion of Frank Colacurcio Jr, whose father has long been linked to local corruption, agreeing to pay $10,000 in fines and spend a year on probation.  All said, the city came out with a $55,000 settlement.  I'm guessing more than that was spent on the "investigation."

Greg Nickels and members of the City Council have these types of cases a priority, because a headline including the phrase "Strippergate" is sure to illicit more attention than almost anything else.  But listen to the radio sometime: Rick's is still advertising, and guessing by the packed parking lots I see when i drive home every day, business is doing just fine.

We don't have to make prostitution legal. Just stop wasting the taxpayer money and the Seattle Police Department's resources on silly cases that aren't helping to stop serious crime.

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Seattle city council member Richard McIver will avoid standing trial on charges he beat his wife last October, according to a blurb on the Times' website:

King County prosecutors have dropped domestic violence charges against Seattle City Councilman Richard McIver. Details to come.

Just a coincidence this comes the same day a judge rules that 911 evidence in the case is inadmissible in court? Doubtful.