Seattle Crime Reports : Seattle Crime Blog : Seattle, Washington

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The Stranger's Josh Feit, who has been covering the political goings-on down in Olympia for SLOG, posted a brief update that caught our collective eye this morning.

It's in reference to HB 2713, described on the Legislature's official website as a bill aimed at "providing for broader collection of biological samples for the DNA identification of convicted sex offenders and other persons."

One can't help but raise their eyebrows at the final three words conveniently tucked into the end of that statement: "and other persons." In fact, upon further inspection, it turns out that the majority of the misdemeanors covered by HB 2713 aren't sex crimes at all.

According to Feit's post - which appears to have lifted the text directly from the bill itself - they include anyone convicted of the following:

• Animal cruelty in the second degree;
  
• Assault in the fourth degree;
  
• Custodial sexual misconduct in the second degree;
  
• Failure to register;
  
• Indecent exposure;
  
• Patronizing a prostitute;
  
• Permitting commercial sexual abuse of a minor;
  
• Permitting prostitution;
  
• Prostitution;
  
• Sexual misconduct with a minor in the second degree;
  
• Unlawful harboring of a minor;
  
• and Violation of certain protection orders.

We at Seattle Crime Blog are generally opposed to the idea of the government storing DNA samples of anyone in the criminal justice system. But we'll concede that the DNA of certain sex offenders - serial rapists, for example - should be on file somewhere so that if those likely to re-offend actually do, it will be easier to track them.

Problem is, of the 12 crimes covered by the bill, only two of them - "custodial sexual misconduct in the second degree" and "sexual misconduct with a minor in the second degree" - could make a legitimate case for DNA collection. But animal cruelty? Fourth degree assault? Violation of protection orders?

And what about "permitting prostitution"? Just what does that mean, and why does it warrant a DNA sample? As SLOG commenter Levislade notes:

Permitting prostitution? Isn't anyone who drives down Aurora without calling the police guilty of that?

Levislade is making a joke, of course...but it does raise some interesting questions as to why seemingly non-violent criminal acts require submission of DNA.

As Feit notes, this is all part of the Democrats' attempt to "look/get tough on crime." Apparently that means taking a page out of the Republican handbook: avoid the challenges associated with confronting serious crimes head-on, so that we can all pat ourselves on the backs for "getting tough" on the petty ones.

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We saw a huge upswing in traffic last week, after Amanda Knox's parents were featured on 20/20 defending their daughter. Remember Amanda? The UW student caught up in an Italian murder case, who we wrote about ad nauseum after the case broke last November? Well she's still in jail, but the press - both local and national - seems to be expressing a new-found interest in the case as of late.

Yet instead of focusing on Knox as a suspect, they're painting her as a victim. In the 20/20 interview, her mother complained that "jail's not easy," as if forgetting why her daughter is there in the first place; meanwhile, Knox's sister says the suspect "cares about everyone else before herself." We're sure Patrick Lumumba would agree.

Of course, as the Honest Blogger notes (rather obscenely), this outpouring of support from family and friends is not surprising:

Her parents may be firmly behind her, but in truth who's parents would turn round and say, "Yeah I think she did it - I've always thought my daughter could be a murdering little bitch." - GET FUCKING REAL.

It would never happen, nor should it...families have an obligation to defend their own, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find parents anywhere who love their child and would be willing to admit their faults, even if there was a mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise.

Now other voices, those not bound by family ties, are coming out and painting a different picture. This week's edition of The Stranger has got an in-depth piece on the case: Charles Mudede, author of philosophical musings that have drawn the ire of cranky SLOG commenters but whose "Police Beat" column is the best thing in the weekly paper, traveled to Perugia to write about the case from a first-hand perspective. The most revealing quotes in his piece come not from Perugia, but the World Cup cafe in Seattle's U-District, where Knox used to work.

During a visit there before his departure to Italy, Mudede ran into "Matthew," an old college buddy who currently works at the World Cup. This man's testimonial contradicted the picture-perfect image that Knox's family and friends have been relaying so far:

"You know," Matthew said, leaning toward me, "a lot of people are saying she is a sweet girl and they can't believe she could have done such a thing. But, to be honest, I'm not surprised she is a suspect. Really. The first time I met her, when I got the job here, she asked me if I was Jewish. I told her I was. She then screamed: 'My people killed your people,' and began laughing hysterically. I didn't know what to say. She just kept laughing about her Germans killing my Jews. After that, I did not like her. She really freaked me out."

Charming. You're right, Mom and Dad...she sounds like a lovely girl.

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I have avoided commenting on this for some time now, but as more and more folks continue to jump on the anti pit bull bandwagon, I felt that someone needed to stand up against this absurdity.

First, let me preface my comments by saying that I don't own a dog and have no intention of ever doing so; I find domesticated canines to be dirty and overly needy (not to mention completely unnecessary for urban dwellers). Frankly, I much prefer cats.

But despite this position - or perhaps because of it, and the unbiased perspective on dog ownership that it offers - I still find it ridiculous that so many people are speaking out against pit bulls as pets.

It comes as no surprise that the some of the leading anti pit bull advocates in our local community are members of the editorial staff at The Stranger, Seattle's stereotypical "alternative" weekly newspaper. In a December 27 post on pit bulls gone wild that appeared in their SLOG, Dan Savage comments that it's "[t]oo bad we have to wait until a pit bull attacks before we shoot the damn things." Then, in his Morning News post yesterday, Savage describes the dogs as "crazed killing machines."

The debate moved a bit higher on the journalistic ladder this this morning, when Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur made clear where she stands on the debate.

Brodeur's column explores the idea of a citywide ban on pit bull ownership, similar to the one enacted by Enumclaw in 1990, using a pit bull attack sob story to illuminate her obvious point: that these dogs have no place in our society.

From the piece, "What's a dog-loving city to do?"

One look at Colleen Lynn's arm, and I was chilled — then enraged.

She bears six purple marks where a pit bull's teeth sunk in, and a plate beneath her skin to shore up a fractured bone. Six months after Lynn was attacked while running on Beacon Hill, her arm is just 25 percent healed. And that's nothing special.

Between January 2002 and August 2007, the city of Seattle recorded 1,519 dog bites. Pit bulls were responsible for 361 of them — 24 percent.

[...]

Lynn, 38, a freelance Web designer, has been slowly, tentatively researching a citywide ban on pit bulls, or a requirement that the dogs be sterilized. "I have to prepare myself to be massively intimidated," Lynn said Monday. "But we need to recognize the problem. Our community is suffering."

"Our community is suffering?" No. A small segment of our community - 361 of nearly 600,000 Seattle residents - is suffering. Does a problem facing less than 1% of our population warrant an all-out ban on ownership of a dog that, according to Sunday's P.I., makes up more than 1,500 of our city's 48,329 pet dogs?

The problem is that Colleen Lynn is too emotionally entrenched in the issue. Of course she's going to go after pit bulls...one attacked her! I feel her pain. No one deserves to be mauled, and its understandable that in such a situation, a victim will look for someone/something to blame. But Lynn's push for a ban on pit bull ownership is no different than, say, George W. Bush's push to depose Saddam Hussein because he was "the guy who tried to kill my dad." When we let personal experience and the emotion surrounding it consume us, we lose sight of reason. Anyone who can look past Lynn's bias and is willing to weigh the facts will know that the obvious answer to the question posed above is "no."

The idea of restricting what type of dogs we can own is, quite simply, an assault on freedom. And thankfully, I'm not the only sane person in this debate. From Brodeur's column:

Ledy Van Kavage, senior director of legal training and legislation with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said breed bans are ineffective and a waste of money.

"This is America," she said. "You should be able to own whatever breed you want."

You want to end pit bull attacks, Seattle? Provide more stringent safety regulations for their owners. Weigh heavy fines against folks whose pit bulls get loose. Restrict pit bull ownership on individuals with a history of animal abuse or negligence. But blaming the dogs is absurd; as Brodeur and the P.I. point out, only 361 pit bull attacks happened over a five year period - despite the fact that since 2003, Seattle has had a steadily rising population of these dogs.

What it really comes down to is stereotypes: people oppose pit bull ownership because the occasional brutal attack leads fear-mongering newspaper editors to hype up the threat. As is so often the sad case, these reporters at The Stranger and The Seattle Times are looking for solutions without addressing the real problem. When small children are acting like beasts in public, do we look at them with disgust? No; we blame their parents, who as child-rearing adults have a social duty to control their children.

Dog ownership should be no different. Seattle needs to hold people - not their pets - responsible for community safety.

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It seems like everybody in Perugia has something to say about Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

Today, two English newspapers are reporting on an extremely unimportant "development" in the case: that Knox and Sollecito supposedly went shopping for lingerie the day after the murder.

First off...who cares? It has already been reported by one of Kercher's close friends that Knox didn't appear particularly distraught after the killing. Some people would say this is cause for suspicion; others - myself included - don't find her lack of emotion to be particularly worthwhile one way or another.

People handle death differently. What some express through tears and visible distress, others internalize and deal with on their own. To try and make a determination of a person's guilt or innocence simply based on their external emotional response to a crime, no matter how heinous the circumstances surrounding it, is absurd.

Working from this perspective, it shouldn't be at all surprising if Knox went shopping for lingerie with her boyfriend so shortly after the incident occurred. For all we know, shopping - or sex - could be their way of handling the newfound stress.

So why am I writing about it? Well, though the news doesn't strike me as being largely important, one article in The Daily Mail features some hilarious quotes from the shop owner who claims he witnessed the suspects' so-called "strange" behavior.

Knox, 20, who calls herself Foxy Knoxy, and doctor's son Sollecito, 23, were overheard by a shopkeeper as they browsed through underwear in a clothes shop selling fashion items.

Carlo Maria Scotto di Rinaldi spoke to police two days after the couple were arrested on November 6, after recognising them on the television news. "They came into the shop and were there for about 20 minutes," he said. "The girl bought a camisole and G-string.

"I heard her as she was choosing the underwear - particularly the G-string - and as they were ready to pay, in front of the till, she whispered, 'Afterwards I'm going to take you home so we can have wild sex together'."

The report at The Times Online, meanwhile, gives a slightly different quote from the shopkeep. This one, equally lame, is attributed to Sollecito.

Mr di Rinaldi said that they stayed for half an hour, and that Ms Knox bought two thongs. He overheard Mr Sollecito say to Ms Knox: “You can put these on at home and we’ll have wild sex.” He said that they spoke in English, “but I know the language and had no difficulty in understanding”.

Let's assume for a minute that these quotes are legit. For someone who attempts - albeit lamely, as The Stranger's Christopher Frizzelle has pointed out - to exhibit creativity in her writing, Amanda Knox sure has no idea how to talk dirty.

"Afterwards I'm going to take you home so we can have wild sex together"?

I've never been good at sex talk myself...but even I could think of something better to say than that.

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I'm not trying to make enemies here, but I've never really liked The Stranger, one of Seattle's two "alternative" weekly papers.

I find that they've got too much style and not enough substance in their print publication, all the while maintaining almost militant political and social viewpoints that can't help but leave politically moderate readers taken aback. (Maybe that's their goal...after all, moderates certainly aren't The Stranger's target audience).

That being said, I do prefer them to our other alternative news source - The Seattle Weekly - if for nothing more than The Stranger's ability to maintain a (for the most part) solid blog, one that is constantly updated on developments in the Puget Sound area.

Why am I mentioning all this?

Well, in this week's issue of the paper, Christopher Frizzelle has a review of Amanda Knox's short story "Baby Brother" (which I mentioned in a post yesterday). In his piece, he sheds a humorous light on the most infamous literature of 2007.

Frizzelle's review confirms what many of us following the case have already been thinking: Ernest Hemingway, Amanda Knox is not. Repetition, one-dimensional characters, ridiculous descriptions...all indicate, as the critic so tactfully points out, that "she wasn't a very good short-story writer."

The story's biggest weakness from a literary standpoint is that none of it is believable. Kyle, the story's rapist, is a cheeseball bad guy who first tells his brother, "A thing you have to know about chicks is that they don't know what they want," and then punches Edgar in the face. Anyone who's ever read a handful of college-level creative-writing assignments knows that date rape is a cliché of the genre, as is someone-punching-someone-else-in-the-face. These are the sorts of conflicts that creative-writing students cook up because they're taught that the first thing they need to do is cook up conflict. [Emphasis once again added by the Seattle Crime Blogger - Ed.]

Interesting take on things. Hats off to Frizzelle.

Meanwhile, a far less impressive piece written by Erica C. Barnett on SLOG chimes in on the absurd debate over whether Knox is attractive.

She writes:

The media salivates over stories where pretty white girls go nuts, ergo the media obsessively describes American girls who go nuts as “attractive,” “pretty,” “sexy,” etc. (See also: Coverage of murdered rich, blonde, white girls vs. coverage of murdered poor, non-blonde, non-white girls.)

I'm not sure what the author is trying to say here. Does Barnett mean that she is surprised by this?

She shouldn't be. Look at it objectively: the reason the media jumps on such stories is because "rich, blonde, white girls" are involved in murder cases - whether they're the victim or the suspect - far less often than "poor, non-blonde, non-white girls." When was the last time a case like the Knox spectacle shook Seattle, or any other major American city for that matter?

And then she has the nerve, a little farther down, to criticize the English press?

Come on. If there was ever a blog post on the Amanda Knox saga that didn't need writing, Ms. Barnett's "insightful" commentary certainly takes the cake.