Aside from anything else, if 4 officers spend 30 minutes (at least) interrogating a 13 year old under the circumstances described, they're not "understaffed" they're "idiots."

Obviously the problem is management of resources, and cops going on wild goose chases instead of things they're supposed to do.

Hiring more cops won't fix that

@3 Well if we knew that a fire department was sending 2X as many people to do things (or doing lots of things firefighters shouldn't be doing at all) we would certainly expect to get more from the current number of firefighters rather than throwing good money after bad

@4 I invite you to explore what's going in schools and report back. If this is the best Ashely can do for the entire year considering all the bs SPD has to deal with on a daily basis TS continued campaign against public safety is really running out of steam.

@5 I don't know about "fires per firefighter" (or maybe per unit or squad) but last year SPD officers handled 48 serious crimes per officer for the year, or about 1 crime per officer per week so I think that's a pretty remote possibility in the case of the police.

@8 You misspelled "Restraining orders and rape investigations and other critical police work has to compete with 4 officers out of service hassling a 13 year old, 3 officers (who waited for a 4th) handling a non-emergency wellness check, and 6 officers dispatched to a non-serious drug overdose to which EMTs were already responding, and 2 coming in person to take an after-the fact theft report." (The latter two previously reported elsewhere and the third posted by a neighbor on NextDoor.)

(And there are many more illustrations of how SPD burns most officer time on things that may correlate with population size, but have little or nothing to do with needing a gun and powers of arrest.)

@10: "Oh what a clever, but meaningless, rebuttal!"

Why do you think it would be meaningless?

@12 You misspelled your lack of a point to belabor.

So let me get this straight the people in the Volvo ran from the cops cause they were "scared". How many times have we seen cases where running turned out wrong. So it makes sense to stop and comply with the officers to find out why they were trying to get you to pull over. I once was walking down the street when a cop car came racing up to me and I was asked to stop. The cop said my description fit that of a robbery suspect so he asked me some questions and ran my name and ID info. I was cooperative and within 5 minutes it was cleared up that I was not the robber they were looking for and I was able to continue on my way. Now if I had just took of running things would have been different so I people need to stop fleeing if they did nothing wrong.

Anyone who says Seattle has enough cops is delusional and obviously has not been a a victim of crime. Groups like Divest SPD live in some alternate reality where property crimes are victimless and shoplifters are just victims of poverty. Rather than the thieves that they are.