CRIME AND (LACK OF) PUNISHMENT

I read the news today oh boy, and it's not good for folks who live here in Seattle. I've lived nearby, on the east side of Lake Washington, for over three decades and I've watched as the crime rates--especially violent crimes--has steadily risen during that time. I fail to get exited when crime statistics are massaged to show how well Washington is improving "overall". Sorry, I'll save my crock for baked beans.

The population has grown tremendously here, and mathematically-speaking, the ratio of criminals was bound to grow right along with the rest of the law-abiding citizens. Moreover, as much as it was cheered in certain circles, the defund the police initiative has ultimately backfired miserably and crime has risen accordingly (Duh!). At one point, Seattle police, in their frustration, bailed out of the department in droves. The city is still trying to recover, and they've even resorted to pop-up adds on several apps I've noticed to recruit and fill the ranks. Still, you can have 20,000 cops on the street, but the catch-and-release program seemingly favored by the courts just perpetuates the circle jerk.

And just who are the victims here? It seems to be the current belief that violent criminals, many of them homeless, deserve to be treated as equally as the rest of the public who is stuck with footing the bill for this nonsense with "public safety taxes". While city officials raise their hands in surrender to the startling statistics right in front of their faces (see below), there seems to be no effective solution forthcoming.

The proliferation in recent years (especially since COVID, it appears) of mentally unstable individuals, whether as a result of physiology, drug and alcohol addiction or all three is quite alarming and it has become increasingly critical to provide programs where they can get off the street, recover and make something better of their lives. But the city council and the current justice system just can't--or won't--provide the means to make the transition in any significant way. In the meantime, the entire matter remains an open wound and will do nothing but fester as all untreated injuries do.

Police are failing to solve most violent crimes in WA

Over 49,000 incidents remain unsolved since 2022, including murders, rapes and robberies.

By Jake Goldstein | December 5, 2025 | Washingtonstatestandard.com

More than half of violent crimes in Washington state are going unsolved. 

That sobering data point, shared with state lawmakers Thursday, comes as violent crime has dropped but remains far ahead of pre-pandemic figures. 

Police in Washington solved just 44% of reported violent crimes last year, said Marshall Clement, director of the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center. That amounts to solving 62% of homicides, 51% of aggravated assaults, 31% of robberies and just 25% of rapes.

“How low can this rate go before the entire criminal justice system is rendered useless?” Clement told a state House panel. “Nothing else in our criminal justice can even happen, rehabilitation, deterrence, incapacitation, unless we have a system that actually solves the majority of violent crime.”

Before the pandemic, Washington slightly outpaced the national average in its clearance rate for reported violent crime. Like the rest of the country, the percentage of cases Washington authorities were solving dropped during the pandemic, and has gradually rebounded since. 

Still, since 2022, over 49,000 violent crimes remain unsolved in Washington, including more than 400 homicides, nearly 29,000 aggravated assaults, almost 7,000 rapes and over 13,000 robberies, said Clement, citing FBI data.

Police departments in Seattle, Tacoma, Kent and Auburn are among those with particularly low clearance rates, defined as the percentage of crimes for which an arrest has been made, not necessarily a criminal conviction.

Washington isn’t alone. Half of states have slipped in their clearance rates since 2019. Nationwide, solve rates have been dropping consistently for over half a century.

After years of rising crime since the pandemic, Washington saw some declines last year. Murders statewide dropped nearly 19% from 2023, with a total of 312 people killed, but that figure is still more than 50% higher than 2019, according to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

Robberies were down 16%, creeping closer to 2019 levels. Meanwhile, a yearslong rise in assaults since the pandemic slowed but didn’t abate.

And preliminary figures show those drops continuing in 2025. 

Routinely not solving violent crimes creates a cycle of distrust in law enforcement that causes people to no longer cooperate with police, thus exacerbating the issue, Clement said. And people who commit crimes may feel emboldened to do more if they think they can get away with it. 

It’s up to the state to step in and help solve the problem, Clement said.

“This is not something local law enforcement can do alone,” he told the House Community Safety Committee. “It’s not something that state police can do or prosecutors can do alone. This is going to require leadership from you all to really make this a priority and to focus resources on improving these outcomes.”

It’s not just about throwing money at the problem. While law enforcement expenses statewide have risen, better clearance rates haven’t come. And Washington continues to lag the rest of the country in police staffing. This contributes to longer response times, which leads to lower clearance rates, said Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst.

Asher called for creativity in using police resources to free up time to focus on these unsolved investigations. For example, New Orleans hired a civilian contractor to respond to car crashes that don’t cause injuries, so officers don’t have to.

“This isn’t the 1990s, it’s much harder to hire officers in 2025 than it was 30 years ago,” Asher told the committee. “So we need to think outside the box.”

After much strife, lawmakers this year approved a new $100 million grant program to boost police hiring. But the money can go for more than officers, like peer counselors, behavioral health personnel, crisis intervention training, emergency management planning and community assistance programs, among other spending options.

House Community Safety Committee Chair Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, said he’d like to see more of that money go toward criminal investigations, as opposed to patrol. He thinks that would increase solve rates.

“I’m going to be making noise about that,” he said.

At this stage, it’s unclear if that would mean less state funding for the other spending ideas progressive lawmakers pushed to avoid the money solely going toward hiring more cops. 

“It’s all embryonic in its formulation right now,” Goodman said after the hearing.

To access the grants, cities and counties need to either implement a new 0.1% sales tax for public safety or have already imposed a similar tax. They also need to follow state model policies as well as collect and report use-of-force data. 

None of the $100 million has been spent yet [italics mine].

UPDATE: I wrote this post a while back. Since then, this horrific bit of nastiness was perpetrated by a convicted felon on an innocent, 75 year old woman. The video is sanitized so you don't actually see the impact of the weapon to her head (a piece of wood with a screw protruding from one end). The resulting injury caused the victim to loose her sight in one eye. For as blood-thirsty as the American public is, I'm surprised that the media still insists on censoring these gruesome images from viewers so they can see for themselves just how heinous these types of crimes are.

And just a couple of weeks before that . . .

No end of this madness in sight . . .

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BREAK OUT THE BARF BAGS DEPT.

And finally, if the last article didn't turn your stomach, this one just might depending which side of the fence you're on.

In their seemingly boundless wisdom, and in efforts to remain relevant to their shrinking readership, the staff of the brilliant senior editors of TIME magazine have selected "The Architects of AI" as their 2025 Person of the Year in their less imaginative version of SI's swimsuit issue. At first I thought it was a joke perpetrated by the brilliant senior editors of MAD, but nope, it's for real.

Nothing much fazes me anymore, but I did have to stop for a second and allow my jaw to drop. Maybe TIME could increase that shriveling readership of theirs by giving it up to AI to publish their monthly supply of fish wrap.

I know that AI has some promising benefits for certain applications, but at what cost?

Here's part of the answer from the MIT Technology Review:

Using AI for certain tasks can come with a significant energy price tag. With some powerful AI models, generating an image [that's just one, people] can require as much energy as charging up your phone, as my colleague Melissa Heikkilä explained in a story from December. Create 1,000 images with a model like Stable Diffusion XL, and you’ve produced as much carbon dioxide as driving just over four miles in a gas-powered car, according to the researchers Melissa spoke to. 

Moreover, while EVs are all the rage, we keep being assured that that they are "greener" to operate than gas-powered vehicles. While technologies like fracking get a bad rap from the media, what we're not being told is the inconvenient truth that Mother Earth is similarly being raped of lithium, the element used in the manufacture of batteries to power these same EVs. Gee, I wonder were all the millions of batteries will end up when they lose their charging capacity?

UPDATE: This headline just in from Yahoo! Finance . . .

$1.5 trillion lithium deposit found in U.S. supervolcano crater — site could supply batteries for decades

On a final note: A couple of months ago, the blog you are now reading was invaded for over two weeks with thousands of page views according to my Blogger stats. Now, there's no way in hell there could have been that many people interested in my content. Instead, I'm pretty sure my posts were being scraped by AI. Since Google owns Blogger, it could be they were having their way with the rapacious ChatGPT.

So, those are my rants for this time around. As always, you're welcome to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.