Grace Under Fire

Being chief of police in a city with a council having anti-law-enforcement leanings has never been easy. It has gotten especially tough this year. Seattle Chief Carmen Best has impressed me as one of the few public officials in the two largest Pacific Northwest cities to have a cool head on her shoulders.

Chief Best resigned yesterday following votes by the city council to cut the department budget, including her own salary, and reduce the police force,” Deanna Paul and Dan Frosch report for the WSJ. The council’s actions are supposedly “part of an effort to reform policing,” in a bizarre parody of the word “reform.”

At least the mayor did not join this travesty.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan praised Ms. Best for addressing flare-ups in gun violence, diversifying the department and reducing its use of force. “They targeted Carmen Best,” Ms. Durkan said at the press conference. “It was so mystifying to see the city council plow ahead without listening to her pleas.”

And what do the council members have to say for themselves?

City Council President M. Lorena González said in a statement Monday that the budget changes were a response to calls for racial justice and investments in minority communities. Along with the police cuts, the city council agreed to invest $17 million in community-led safety efforts.

Ms. González needs some education on the hierarchy of needs, as described long ago by Abraham Maslow. A city that wants to invest in a community has to provide safety from crime first. Until it does, little else matters. The kinds of investment that make for a thriving community are not going to come if people have to constantly worry about being robbed, burglarized, or murdered, no matter what else you offer.