Hear that whooshing sound? That's former Mayor Jenny Durkan, former Police Chief Carmen Best, and the current Fire Chief Harold Scoggins sighing with relief because prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges against them–and other city executives–for deleting thousands of texts over a ten-month period that includes the 2020 protests. After reviewing thousands of documents, investigators concluded they'd worked off the "reasonable, but mistaken" belief Seattle stored copies of text messages in the cloud. 

Typical Seattle: Three months ago Andrew Lewis took a stand... kinda... when he voted down an ordinance to criminalize drugs, saying we should approach it more thoughtfully. Well, the drug ordinance City Council’s public safety committee approved yesterday is basically the same as the one they voted down in June. Boooooo! Ashley has more here.

Olympia Schools bringing back cops on campus after removing them in 2020: Officials announced the move at a Monday public meeting they called because a BB gun was found at Capitol High’s campus that morning, prompting the second lockdown in the school year's first four days. That does sound like a scary week for families, but data shows that School Resource Officers don't reduce violence in any meaningful way.

Dam bursts kill 5,300 people in Libya: Heavy rains broke two dams near Derna, Libya and destroyed a large part of the North African coastal city, washing entire neighborhoods into the Mediterranean sea. The death toll is expected to rise, as thousands are still missing. The rains displaced at least 20,000 people across the region. The New York Times reports that Libyan authorities had no “serious” plan to monitor the dams or to warn and evacuate residents.

It’s shot time, baby: CDC officials say Americans six months or older should get an updated COVID-19 shot (if that’s not you, and you’re reading this, wow). The fall and winter are peak seasons for respiratory viruses such as COVID-19 and the flu because we spend so much more time inside… breathing each other in. The updated, FDA-approved COVID shot targets the omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 and should be available starting Thursday.

Join the club, y'all: Senate Republicans think Kevin McCarthy is an idiot, too. They’re pretty unhappy with the Speaker’s decision to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. One anonymous Senator called the inquiry a fool's errand because the Democratic-controlled senate would never convict Biden; another pointed out that impeachment is a political loser–no poll has shown impeachment as a priority for GOP primary voters. A third Senator suggested the inquiry is meant to win votes and avoid a government shutdown, saying, “Maybe this is just Kevin giving people their binkie to get through the shutdown.”

Federal Grand Jury indicts five former Memphis police officers for fatal beating of Tyre Nichols: The former officers–Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith–face federal civil rights, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice charges. In January, the officers allegedly punched and kicked the 29-year-old after a traffic stop and a brief foot chase. He died in the hospital three days later. The five officers also face a federal civil rights lawsuit and state charges, to which they’ve pleaded not guilty.

I wonder if this Seattle Police officer will ever be held accountable: 

Health inspectors didn’t detect listeria outbreak during routine inspection: On April 17, a Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department inspector visited the Tacoma Frugals and didn't find listeria because there is no federal or state requirement to swab frozen dessert machines during inspections. The department didn’t connect the outbreak–which killed three people–to contaminated milkshakes until August. Read more about how that happened in the Tacoma News Tribune.

A housing crisis… and we’re getting more Pickleball? The only city parking lot for people living in RVs could become a 20-court pickleball complex instead of housing. Originally, developer Maria Barrientos submitted a city application to build a 300-unit apartment complex on the Interbay site owned by Seattle Storm co-owner Ginny Gilder. The developers agreed to host the RV safe lot and tiny homes on the property before the project broke ground, which is nice. But now the developers apparently want 20 pickleball courts instead of 300 places where people can live, which is not so nice.

The most popular over-the-counter decongestant doesn’t work!! Medicines that contain phenylephrine perform no better than a dummy pill in clinical trials, according to an expert panel of Food and Drug Administration advisors who reviewed the latest research on its effectiveness. Phenylephrine became the key ingredient in over-the-counter decongestants in 2006, after a law passed requiring pharmacies to move products containing the older, effective drug pseudoephedrine behind store counters because it can be processed into meth. Researchers began questioning the effectiveness of phenylephrine just a year later. If the FDA follows the panel’s recommendations, the drug may be taken off store shelves. 

USA Today and The Tennessean are hiring a Taylor Swift reporter, and it's bullshit: I have nothing against Taylor, but publisher Gannett, on the other hand, has made a mess of the local news in this country through cut after cut after cut. Last year, the company laid off six percent of its news division.Â