Weekly Update: 11/28/2021

Happy Hanukkah!

There’s never a piccie of a dreidel or a menorah when you need one. 🙂

Public Service Announcements

This Week

Monday: Highline Superintendent Search. (ERAC, Burien) Come join me to comment on what you want to see in the next Executive of our school system!

Thursday: 3PM Municipal Facilities Meeting. No agenda yet. Supposedly a review of the Capital Improvement Projects and Marine Redevelopment?

Thursday: 4PM Public Safety Committee Meeting (cancelled) I only mention this because this was supposed to be the penalty of Councilmember Martinelli’s censure. Boy we really laid on some punishment there.

Update: Due to the recent events on Pac Highway, the meeting is back on. The Agenda will consist of a discussion with Chief Of Police Ken Thomas. I would urge people to sign up to attend via Zoom.

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda as always the Agenda has directions on how to make public comment or attend via Zoom.)

Of note… we will be approving renewal of two consulting contracts:

1. Our State lobbyist. His accomplishments include helping us locate developers for the Marina. He has also been attending our StART meetings and the 2nd Airport Siting Committee as an observer. $6,000/mo.
2. Our Marina consultant on ferries. He also happens to be our Citizen Representative to the StART–even though he resides in Normandy Park. Mr. Philips is also the publisher of our City Currents Newsletter. $3,000/mo.
   We will be approving our Parks/Rec/Senior Services Master Plan. The resolution cites the great public engagement. However there has been no discussion of the actual proposal (which you can read here: https://jcharrisfordesmoines.com/…/Des-Moines-PRSS… ) because the Council (and public) received the plan -after- the last meeting with the consultant team. So… again… we have no opportunity to talk to the consultants in an informed manner.

Do you see a pattern here?

1. Have meeting with experts, but with no data.
2. Deliver data -after- meeting.
3. Vote on final thing at next meeting, but with no experts on hand.

Apparently, the Mayor will be making a statement re. the Human Services Advisory Committee. But there are no materials and no explanation of what that might entail. November is -usually- when the HSAC presents to the City Council and this is a sore spot for me because this is literally the -only- time during the year the Council gets to hear from the HSAC. In all other Cities, the HSAC reports to Council at least quarterly in some regard. The membership of the group is not even on the City web site.

We will also be approving our Legislative Agenda, which has only one item on it concerning aviation: support for Rep. Orwall’s Indoor Air Quality proviso (which actually includes the outdoor sampling which I hope to get made into an annual process.)

Last Week

Tuesday: Meeting with Arshia Nilchan, political director for Rep. Adam Smith. No, I’m still independent. But all the candidates for City Council this cycle were running as Democats and at least a few asked for his endorsement, so I wanted to give him some feedback on the process.

Thursday: I only want to point out that this was the single most viewed post I did on Facebook for 2021.

I made a reference in there about Hogan’s Heroes–and was taken to task by an incoming colleague that it was not about Nazis. Uh oh. 😀 I guess my point was how much the world has changed. I mean, looking back from where we’re at a society now, it just seems odd to me that there was ever a popular ‘comedy’ show with… you know… swastikas?

Public Safety…

Residents are understandably freaked out about the recent spate of incidents along Pacific Highway and Kent Des Moines Road.

I’m going to  gas on a bit here about our police department in general and that spot in particular because we’ve been down this road before (no pun intended) and I’d prefer that we handle things a bit differently this time in order to hopefully prevent a next time–if you take my meaning. But first, the obligatory show of concern:

The Des Moines Police Department will effectively address the current spate of problems. They are really good at acute interventions like this. And your City Council will provide them with all the necessary resources to effectively handle that acute need.

The tricky part is that Pac Highway and Kent Des Moines Road are mostly in the City of Kent. So there will be some partnering, which I am also quite sure will be effective. But… it’s about to get ‘complicated’.

It’s a numbers game

I often get asked, “How many police officers do we have?” The subtext is usually we don’t have enough police officers. But the total number is a bit misleading.

Currently, we have 4+1 officers per shift: four Patrol and one Sergeant. And with that configuration officers are able to respond to calls for service. Keep that phrase in mind. Calls for service. That is the model. They respond to calls. Despite the nomenclature they generally do not ‘patrol’ in defined ‘sectors’. So if I were being wonkier than usual I would rename the position ‘Responder’. Because, again, officers respond when a call comes in–often in teams of two cars.

Big picture history

Backing up a bit, like most cities,  we have always spent about 50% of our general fund budget on public safety. That amount is regardless of the number of officers. The rule of thumb is to spend as much as we can without really hurting other services (roads, kids, parks, seniors, etc.) Fifty percent.

Now, back in the 2000’s we had a lot more police. So we had not just the responders, but also officers that actually did patrol key areas (what us old people used to call ‘beat cops’.)

For a great variety of reasons, the City was going through terrible budget cuts starting in the late 90’s. We were downsizing, downsizing, downsizing. Thankfully, residents continued to keep the PD funded through a special, small tax levy. That was part of the reason other areas wanted to be annexed into Des Moines. We offered the promise of a higher cop to resident ratio. (That’s a real thing, by the way.)

However, after 9/11 and Tim Eyman’s various initiatives got rolling, DM voters started saying not just ‘no’ but ‘Hell no!’ to any City-sponsored levy. Roads. Police. What-evehhhhr. So, when that tax ended in 2012 we were forced to dump any of that sector-based jazz. And code enforcement? Buh-bye! Drove me bonkers. Truth be told the police were so short staffed at times that they were running 3+1 or even 2+1 in some cases. Fortunately, violent crime had been steadily dropping, reaching historic lows until the pandemic. So we kinda dodged a bullet there. (Sorry… that’s pretty dark humour. Even for me.)

With the economic recovery, our budget started getting better and my predecessors responded admirably by rebuilding the force and re-establishing a dedicated Code Enforcement Officer. So despite the lack of a dedicated ‘police tax’, in 2019, City was able to proudly state that we were once again ‘fully staffed’.

But that is one of those statements governments make that are accurate but not exactly ‘true’. Because all ‘fully staffed’ means is that we’re back to having enough officers to do 4+1. We’re just not short-staffed. Get it? In truth, we’re still nowhere near the staffing levels we enjoyed in that ‘golden age’ pre-2008 recession.

But here’s the thing: Most planners tended to think (or hope) that the lower violent crime rate in the 2010’s was sort of the ‘new normal’. We thought it would persist. In fact, at our last Budget Retreat, a lot of the discussion centered around how the entire concept of policing and court were changing throughout Washington. We’re now moving towards using mental health professionals instead of guns and badges. Our courts are using any number of interventions instead of putting people in jail. These are huge policy changes that took years to develop.

And at the same time it has gotten more and more difficult to recruit new officers. I know my colleagues get a bit annoyed at my hypothetical questions, but at that same meeting, I asked the Chief whether not we even could hire ten more officers (assuming we found a million dollars hiding under some rock.) That simply may not be possible in the near term given the shortage of qualified candidates, intense competition and the long lead times.

But think of it this way: George Floyd was killed less than eighteen months ago. The entire conversation about ‘policing’ has changed (again) in a very short time frame.

And now? If we want to hire police they come at a premium. Seattle is currently offering up to a $25,000 signing bonus. That is the competition.

That darned boundary…

Unfortunately, that whole area of Kent Des Moines Road and Pacific Highway has been problematic for decades. (Again, without a newspaper it’s hard to keep track but for example, there was a high-profile car show murder in the parking lot of the Goodwill in 2011(ish?)

But since most of you are relatively new to the area, when the public thinks of ‘high crime’ they often think of Pacific Ridge–largely because of some high profile incidents between 2013 and 2015. The police did put emphasis there and it helped. But a lot of the long-term improvement was not about guns and badges. It was more about building Waterview Crossing and establishing anti-violence programs like Reach Out Des Moines and citizen activism like clean-ups and then Midway Garden and now the City has stepped up to make significant improvements to the park. Most of that is super-low cost and it really works. But it all takes time.

So for a good while there we kinda took our eye off of of KDM. Which was not a great idea because historically that has often been where a great deal of the ‘action’ has been.

We can get into a long discussion as to why the border between Des Moines and Kent is so verkachte. And we should definitely revisit that. And we can definitely discuss why it’s so hard to successfully police that border. And we can also discuss why that corner has been steadily going down hill for the past twenty years.

OK, back to the big picture…

But the fact remains that policing is reactive. The police respond to calls for service. Their primary business is not crime prevention, just as it is not about addressing homelessness or  people with chronic mental health issues. By the time people call 911 it’s already too late.

Since I have lived here a while I can assure that this spate of incidents will abate almost regardless of what the police do. That is not to minimise our police force. But it did before and it will again.

My real concern is that as soon as it does, the public will once again take their eye off the ball and we won’t address the structural issues that have caused that area to deteriorate–and ‘leak’ from the perimeter into Des Moines. Because it’s that deterioration that inevitably causes the flare ups every few years. And we better get on that before the Light Rail Station opens.

Eat your heart out Batman…

Now at our ARPA Stimulus vote on September 16, the Deputy Mayor proposed hiring four ‘new’ officers. I was not thrilled about that because we’re not really adding new people so much as keeping the pipeline going in the face of retirements, sick leave, etc. We ended up voting for two, for a three year period. But, full disclosure: I was vehemently opposed to that as well. Not because I don’t think we need them. We do. But because we voted to use one-time money for salaries–which is exactly the kind of accounting gimmickery that got us into trouble in the 2000’s. If we want more police officers, don’t use money that was meant for something else. Commit. Now. Don’t saddle the 2025 City Council with that choice.

OK, have you looked at a fully equipped police officer lately? Bruce Wayne is jealous of all the stuff they have on their utility belts. Throw in the compensation package and benefits. And then add in the vehicle and all the other accoutrement. When you see a DMPD officer driving by you’re waving at over $200,000 a year. No kidding.

But that’s not even the expensive part. To get to what people really want (that sector-based policing) would require almost doubling our patrol officer staff. I mean like twenty officers. Because remember, during that golden age there were up to as many as four officers patrolling areas of the city. So even if you make them miserable with four twelves that’s at least twenty people. That’s $4,000,000 a year. If you look at our current budget, carving out space for that much money would mean saying, “Good bye parks! Good bye roads! Good by senior services! Been nice knowin’ ya!” That is the price of the golden age model of public safety for Des Moines.

The only way to get to that special place is to do what we used to do: ask you voters to pay for it. And for what it’s worth? I would be absolutely thrilled to pay that kind of tax. Why? It’s targeted. I’d know exactly where it’s going–a purpose I totally approve of. It’s not some blank check that could be re-purposed by those no-account politicians.

Remind me why I voted for you?

When I ran in 2019 I was constantly trying to beat up on my colleagues for talking about how we had a ‘fully staffed’ police force. As I door belled people I’d comment on all the new ‘Ring’ cameras and really expensive CCTV systems. But when I asked voters how they’d feel about instead paying  for police officers? They’d look at me like I was nuts. I had people say, “I was gonna vote for you, but now? No way. You just want to tax me to death.” And I dunno how to respond to that. I get that many of you no longer trust the government to do anything. And I get that we as a City haven’t always done a bang up job of improving that sense of trust. But in this one specific case, I’m gonna ask you to give that a re-think. If not? Enjoy that totally vivid 4K video of some guy removing your catalytic converter at 5AM. I’d rather put that money into a patrol officer.

On the other hand…

The primary job of our police force cannot be crime prevention. At least, not without waaay more very expensive police than we can hope to afford. Police are trained to respond to occasional calls for service. If there is more than occasional crime on your street? Don’t take this the the wrong way, but there is something wrong with your street–and  that requires a different model of intervention. Good neighbourhoods have low crime. Full stop.

So after all that, I gotta say, I am much more inclined to direct City money towards crime prevention than a massive influx of people to respond to more calls for service. Both approaches take years to implement. But prevention costs less and in the end you can’t keep calling the cops. At some point, you gotta improve your neighbourhood.

Safety first…

Forget all that noise. You’re freaked out now. You want relief now. Got it. So again:

The Des Moines Police Department will address the current spate of problems. They are really good at acute interventions like this. And the City Council will provide them with all necessary resources to effectively handle that acute need.

But think about it: if there were a lot of fires in your neighbourhood, your first thought would probably not be “We should definitely hire more firefighters!” Your first thought would likely be, “What’s the deal with all these fires?”

It’s all about you…

The real problem(s) are going to take years and your energy to solve.

• I’ve been grousing about the boundary for years. But you can get the Cities to (finally) engage again.
• And you can get the two Cities to work on economic development.
• And you can get us to commit to crime prevention programs throughout Des Moines . (They work in Pac Ridge. And they’re cheap. So we should expand those programs everywhere.)
• And we know that code enforcement is effective in identifying problem houses before things get out of hand. You can make all that happen where us politicians have previously lacked the will.
• And, yeah, some of it may also require you to step up and pay a few extra bucks a month for new officers.

But specifically: if you live in the area of Kent Des Moines Road and 240th, permanent change will mean be your neighbourhood getting organised as an ongoing project–especially with the advent of Link Light Rail. As residents of Des Moines, you will need to work with the Kent businesses and residents west of Pac Highway to help keep the two Cities focused on your issues. Because all of us, residents and governments have very short attention spans. There is always a new crisis every month.

I want to help you create that organisation in any way I can because I have lived here a while. And it took me a long time to figure out that you are what drives long-lasting positive change at the neighbourhood level.