17-year old Ballard High School student charged with Greewood murder & robbery

[GatsbyGatz]

I love Seattle for many reasons having moved from Southern California, but the racism is quite obvious. This is true for practically the entire Pacific Northwest. It makes sense; the region is predominantly white. There is low crime. The majority demographic is likely to point fingers and blame whenever a crime occurs. The notion that residents of Seattle are "liberal" and not judgmental I find quite humorous because that liberality is never tested given how white the demographic is. I'm sure your typical Seattle resident would scorn most parts of LA if they were to ever visit. And someone living in the Eastside suburbs, don't even get me started. Having grown up in a melting pot city, I feel like it's almost awkward how Seattlites deal with racial differences; i.e. they don't know how to deal with it.

I've heard from natives that the general consensus is that Seattle is generally low crime for a larger city given its predominantly white demographic. This idea, I feel, feeds into the way the OP framed this thread.

[gy90]

Originally Posted by BellevueNative

OP, is there a reason why you came to this forum to post about this one news story exclusively? As opposed to the Seattle Times, for instance?

There was something about this story that did not sit well with me. I imagine the real story resembles something like the movie Crash. Two individuals from a community who end up meeting on a street in Greenwood and resulting in a seemingly senseless killing.

As this board is often used by people considering moves to Seattle, I felt that they should also be aware of all of the issues that radiate out from this story:

1. Seattle's close-in neighborhoods are not as safe as people think it is.
2. Seattle is not as tolerant as people think it is.

Of course I threw in my rant about parental responsibility because it was the first thing I thought of when I read this story: "WHERE were his parents?"

[mkarch]

Originally Posted by gy90

1. Seattle's close-in neighborhoods are not as safe as people think it is.

I'm not sure you can derive much information about safety based on one murder. There were 0 murders in NW Seattle last year, which makes downtown Bellevue infinitely less safe by comparison though nobody seems to consider it unsafe. Even if you stretch the definition of "northwest Seattle" to everything north of the ship canal and west of I-5, it's still on par with "safe" suburbs. Statistically, you're just as likely to get murdered in North Seattle as you are in Bellevue, and FAR more likely to get murdered in any number of smaller suburban areas that have had at least one murder in the previous year. For example, Woodinville had a murder last year, and the total population is only 12,000. Greenwood on the other hand has a population of 17,000 which makes the murder rate in Woodinville about 40% higher although I have never heard of people warning others that it's unsafe.

[gy90]

Originally Posted by mkarch

I'm not sure you can derive much information about safety based on one murder. There were 0 murders in NW Seattle last year, which makes downtown Bellevue infinitely less safe by comparison though nobody seems to consider it unsafe. Even if you stretch the definition of "northwest Seattle" to everything north of the ship canal and west of I-5, it's still on par with "safe" suburbs. Statistically, you're just as likely to get murdered in North Seattle as you are in Bellevue, and FAR more likely to get murdered in any number of smaller suburban areas that have had at least one murder in the previous year. For example, Woodinville had a murder last year, and the total population is only 12,000. Greenwood on the other hand has a population of 17,000 which makes the murder rate in Woodinville about 40% higher although I have never heard of people warning others that it's unsafe.

Statistics of murders doesn't mean much when a crime hits close to home. It's not just the murder that I'm thinking of, but the rise in petty crimes that disturb me. (Car breakins, burglaries, homeless harassments, etc.) I don't want our city to turn into San Francisco.

[mkarch]

Originally Posted by gy90

Statistics of murders doesn't mean much when a crime hits close to home. It's not just the murder that I'm thinking of, but the rise in petty crimes that disturb me. (Car breakins, burglaries, homeless harassments, etc.) I don't want our city to turn into San Francisco.

Sounds like a bit of a red herring then if you use 1 murder to raise a point about general crime. I agree having this crime happen 2 miles from my house in an area I visit frequently is very unsettling, but that in itself doesn't change the fact that it's still a statistically unlikely event.

Whether it's a symptom of a broader increase in crime or ineffective law enforcement is another issue. I'd agree that the police presence and response times in some of the NW neighborhoods is not great and may have contributed to the belief that the perp could 'get away' with robbing and shooting someone. But on the other hand some evidence indicates that the perp was mentally ill, in which case he might not have been deterred by much anyway.

[Kalex]

Sorry, OP, but we will have to agree to disagree. I have the vast majority of my family and many of my friends' families dependent on the mental health system, and it is an epic mess. If you say it's not, then you read a lot of high-level talk and don't see this system firsthand. You talk about involuntary commitment. Do you know the first thing about it? Do you have any idea how hard it is to do, and what the criteria are? You are carrying on about health insurance. Do you know how many people have none? The vast majority of my friends and family do not. Sure, the ACA is "supposed" to change that. That remains to be seen and is irrelevant in this case. I worked for a huge Fortune 500 for 6 years. Virtually no mental health treatment was covered by their insurance. I know very few people with insurance whose policies pay much of anything, and they can't shoulder the burden on their paychecks. Adequate mental health care requires many visits by different types of practitioners at a huge expense to the patient if the insurance kicks it to deductible, which is common practice.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm even responding, since you just threw top-level blabber at me with zero firsthand knowledge. The public schools are ridiculous. I don't care if they're getting money and spending it poorly, as you say. All I know is what I have seen firsthand. The end-result is the same regardless of whether they get no money or are bad at utilizing it. There's still no nurse or counselor at my kid's school, and one teacher for 28 children, who makes $36K with 14 yrs experience. This is a school routinely awarded and lauded as one of the top magnet schools in the country. Those where I grew up are worse off.

Argue all day long about theoretical why's, but the reality is that the premise of a school being either trained, staffed or equipped to swoop in, without fear of being sued that stops them from doing much of anything, made me burst out laughing. As did the notion that the mental health system would swoop in preemptively, and fix things.

Do you have preschoolers? Toddlers?

[Polymorphist]

I have a friend who's son is schizophrenic. The kid (who's now 19) is huge, well over 6 foot and broad-shouldered. He did fine when he was taking his meds but then he'd stop and go all whonky. He'd beat up his siblings and generally scare the living hell out of everyone in the house from time to time, my buddy called the police a few times and there wasn't much they could do. The mental health "system" wasn't much help. When the kid turned 18 he bought a BB gun at Fred Meyer which looked a lot like a real gun. He put it in his backpack and took it to school that same morning. Security heard him walking around with rattling BB's in his backpack and they checked his bag and found the gun, they called the police and they took him to jail. My buddy refused to bail him out and left him in jail for 30 days. They kept calling him and dropping the bail down lower and lower until they finally just said they'd let him out for nothing. My buddy told them, "at least I know where he is, he's safe, and he's not doing anything to anyone, so keep him in there". While jail isn't really the place for the mentally ill, there aren't a lot of solutions that don't involve a whole mess of red tape. In the end, my buddy couldn't have this giant kid in the house who could become dangerous.