All Quiet on the Western Front

It’s been quiet this week, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. Either SPD officers are making a conscious effort to avoid misconduct during resumed contract negotiations between the city and the police guild, or they’re just getting better at covering it up since Seattle’s citizen review board is being overhauled to be more police-friendly by the guild-friendly councilmember Tim Burgess.

Otherwise, as mentioned, contract negotiations between the city and police guild are still ongoing after talks had broken down for a while over the guild’s refusal to accept all 29 recommended accountability recommendations made by the mayor’s accountability review panel and the city revealed they were willing to dole out up to 33% raises in exchange for the reforms.

Also, negotiations between King County and the US Department of Justice are ongoing over whether the county will comply and stop the deadly constitutional rights violations that are ongoing in their jail. Meanwhile, the conditions in their animal shelters gets more press than the conditions in their jail.

On a personal front… the doctors at the University of Washington Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Clinic have been really going above and beyond trying to figure out how to get me into speech therapy and vocational rehabilitation without insurance. They’ve been great, but it is still difficult to accept when they tell me that I may have to consider a different career because of my injuries.

I really was very good at what I did, my intelligence was everything to me and my career let me have a creative outlet for it… and to have so much of that taken away from me without the people responsible for it apologizing or accepting responsibility is something that I have a hard time dealing with. Of course, having the police and their friends harass me on top of having to deal with the permanent harm they helped cause doesn't help much. So that might be why I’ve been writing less lately as well, and if so, I apologize for that.

Until next time, stay safe out there.