Ten people were put into jail, mostly on outstanding felony warrants for offenses that included rape, domestic violence and assault, Diaz said. Two of the 10 were jailed on new offenses, including possession of drugs with intent to deliver and possession of a stolen firearm, the chief said. Police “might not have come into contact” with the suspects if not for the new drug law, he said.
So… 8 out of 10 of the people arrested were not arrested for drug charges, but for existing felony warrants. If they were only contacted because of the new law, shouldn’t there have been clear evidence that they were also using or possessing illegal drugs? Or are they just admitting that they openly accosted everyone in the area regardless of reasonable suspicion?
Hours after Seattle’s new law against public drug use and drug possession took effect Friday, police officers swept through two neighborhoods and made about two dozen arrests, police Chief Adrian Diaz said.
Police handed out flyers Friday morning in an effort to educate people about the controversial new law, then returned Friday afternoon to enforce the gross misdemeanor offenses, Diaz said in a news conference at the Seattle Police Department headquarters.
The operations targeted the vicinity of 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street in the Chinatown International District’s Little Saigon neighborhood and Third Avenue and Pine Street in downtown. Both areas have seen prominent public drug use for years.
Ten people were put into jail, mostly on outstanding felony warrants for offenses that included rape, domestic violence and assault, Diaz said. Two of the 10 were jailed on new offenses, including possession of drugs with intent to deliver and possession of a stolen firearm, the chief said. Police “might not have come into contact” with the suspects if not for the new drug law, he said.
An additional 15 people who were arrested were almost immediately referred to case workers, and 13 accepted those referrals, Diaz said. Some people were released directly from an SPD precinct, without going to jail, he said.
Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess later described the arrest and referral numbers that Diaz shared as preliminary and subject to change.
New law is essentially they can now charge possession or public use as a misdemeanor instead of a felony and are targeting people using in public.
I’m no fan of the war on drugs but I will reserve judgment on this for a later time to see how this goes. Leaning towards not having a problem with it.
Strange headline. This is a justice department and foreign relations problem that really doesn’t rise to the level of a president problem.
A telling few lines:
Insider: I’m not sure Biden is personally hellbent on revenge. If Biden were to do what you wanted, he’d get hell from a large group of people who he has to work with every day.
Shipton: I’m convinced that the constituency that is against his prosecution is much larger.
There seems to be a concerted effort to try and smear liberals/democrats here lately. Attention grabbing headline that not untrue, just purposefully distorting the reality by conveniently leaving out important information.
There was a post yesterday that has since disappeared titled “California governor Newsom vetoes bill that would have set a $35 cap for insulin”, which conveniently left out that it was a copay cap, not a real cap making it a worthless token gesture.
There seems to be a concerted effort to try and smear liberals/democrats here lately. Attention grabbing headline that not untrue, just purposefully distorting the reality by conveniently leaving out important information.
You are right. The article leaves out important information, e.g., the fact that a wide range of politicians around the globe (more than 60 from Australia alone) and from a wide range of the political spectrum demand Assange’s release, let alone journalists and human rights groups.
Unfortunately, there are many communities here on Lemny with that approach - if they disagree, it must be a smear campaign. A friend of mine recently called that the ‘Trumpean I-am-right-and-everyone-else-is-wrong-approach’. I said it’s maybe a glimpse of the culture of debate we can expect from the future.
Target has one of the most comprehensive shoplifter detection systems in place. It rivals law enforcement in its ability to track thieves across all their stores.
I don’t believe the claim of shrink being the issue. There’s virtually no way it’s the root cause.
Walgreens tried to do the same thing (close stores and blame shrinkage) and even walked it back later (and that's not even pointing out they had an SEC filing a couple years before where they planned on closing 200 stores).
So the article went into Shrinkage but it didn’t go into the shrinkage data for the stores in question (probably doesn’t exist publicly) nor did it go into any other information on the shops relative sizing or anything else even though it mentioned they were likely smaller than the ones that didn’t close… What an annoying article it’s almost as bad as believing the original target statement at face value.
Unless Target decides to share more data, the article correctly points out that the publicly available crime data goes against their claims. It also points out that shrinkage reporting from Target and other retailers also doesn’t support the narrative that shoplifting is a bigger problem than ever. It’s apparently an excuse for retailers underperforming for other reasons (that might be less tolerable to shareholders or less spectacular to “news” consumers). I don’t understand what you don’t like about the article.
The narrative that is being sold is that there’s mass theft of items, you know the videos of people trying to roll with like a shopping cart full of shit. While that shit no doubt does happen, it’s just not a daily thing across the country and there’s no question that it’s hardly as if these corps can’t eat that cost easily.
Convince people there’s total lawlessness, scare them into voting for ‘tough on crime’ legislators that are bought and paid for, use the illusion of mass anarchy and free for all shoplifting to gut low performing stores and not have the bad press of all those layoffs, rinse, repeat.
The only good thing about target is you’re paying more money for a worse selection but you don’t have to look at the people that typically shop at Walmart. That’s it.
I mean I literally mentioned that in my comment? It’s not necessarily about the shrinkage but it’s about where the shrinkage is located that could be a problem since we don’t have that data as it’s not published you cannot make that statement that it hasn’t impacted them and the lack of adequate comparison of size of the locations to other locations in the area doesn’t really make sense.
The Seattle Times noted that the stores that are closing “are relatively new, opening in 2019 as part of a push by Target to shore up its bottom line by opening smaller, more profitable stores in urban areas.”
They don’t tell you how much smaller they are relatively so you can’t get an estimate of how much more the thefts would impact them even though they tell you as such. E.g. they say the Northgate store has 172 thefts reported but how much bigger was it? If it’s 2 times bigger then it’s about the same amount of thefts as University Districts (87 thefts) and what not?
As well as the fact that they don’t give you an estimation of the profit margins of the actual stores (This means that an average of $1.57 in inventory was lost for every $100 in sales) but how much does this 1.57 effect the profit margins of the store? (Net profit margin being 3% so a shop having doubled theft in shrinkage compared with profit would halve the stores profit 3 times or more would likely make the store unprofitable).
Target is the one making the claims and closing the stores. And they have the data. It’s on the them to explain the discrepancy. I don’t think the differences in the sizes of the stores potentially offers an explanation. It seems more indicative of a flawed business plan, that they’re having trouble making smaller stores work even in lower crime areas.
As for shrinkage, it hasn’t doubled, at least not recently. I think the article references an increase of 9% or $0.13 over the past few years. If they were getting $3.00 profit of every $100.00 in sales and that increase in shrinkage was not made up for at all, it would mean that Target would have only missed 0.39¢ of profit, or 0.13%. Besides, shrinkage isn’t just outright shoplifting as the article explains. It also includes employees helping themselves, which they might be more likely to do the more their employer takes advantage of them. In other words, some of that shrinkage might actually be made up for by increased productivity. The employees are just giving themselves little unauthorized bonuses when they can.
The shrinkage can be higher or lower depending on store and location one can have like 0.10c of shrinkage and another $3.00 it’s not a constant that was the point of my statement and the shrinkage measurement being used is the aggregate shrinkage across all businesses not even just target itself.
I would agree that was the case however they don’t appear to have actually asked Target for further clarification given that they didn’t say they got no response which would have placed the ball firmly in Targets court. However they have decided to only make the statement based on the facts of the matter which they currently have readily available to them and not try and attain other relevant facts to this case.
Almost half of your list is things dems try to address but get blocked because they don’t have a senate supermajority. Dems are bad enough with the truth, you don’t need to lie about them
Yeah I agree, Some of those points also have some more nuance. I think we can all be against endless war but recognize what is happening in Ukraine as something else. It depends on if you think it is ok for the USA to use geopolitics of Russia’s blunders in Ukraine as a way to wage a modern day cold war against an old foe. I think most in the West would prefer Ukraine to be free and independent, rather than Russia win.
Alliance? Please. They’ve been creating this crisis with their actions/inaction and now it’s the homeless peoples’ faults? Where are they gonna f*ckin go??
It is why the belief that we can vote meaningful change to our system is so naive and dangerous. Before our politicians are anything, they are members of the upper class. Their one true goal will always be keeping those beneath them in their place.
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