Civility, and order, comes first from self-responsibility. Mark Sidran would call that anarchism.

As Mr. Sidran once noted in this same context, ignoring the small things leads to big problems.

Witness. for example. the standard legal practice of treating those who call for fiscal responsibility in both the public and private sphere, sexual predators.

The sad fact is that the legal profession, appearances aside, is completely corrupt. Mr. Burgess may well marginally improve these appearances, but until he starts arguing for fiscal responsibility of the City, as in the Viaduct legislation - and calling for the justice of those who have abused it the only thing to talk about with this individual is what we do if the legal profession of the **state** can't put the Seattle pervert's penis in its proper place.

Panhandlers? Seriously, that's Tim's priority for public safety in Seattle? Panhandlers?

Look, I agree that homeless people usually aren't pretty to look at, but whatever Tim is cooking up to address this (new personal grooming laws?) is a waste of time and money considering the uptick of serious crimes in our city, namely home burglaries, shootings, and assaults.

Tim - do you have any plans to address real crime? Or are you just sticking with the easy targets?

Have things changed? I don't think so!

Remember when uptown merchants had street people in "their" neighborhood. They just called the police who then picked them up and dropped them off in Pioneer Square.

And, since downtown is "everyone's neighborhood, social services, missions and corrections facilities have been concentrated in and around Pioneer Square for over 50 years, mainly because no other neighborhoods wanted to shoulder parts of the burden of dealing with our underclass population.

Oh, and remember when drunkness in public became a victimless crime,and the police lost authority to assist these poor folks by dropping them off at social services or taking them to the drunk tank to dry out? They were needy citizens who were not criminals but addicts, mentally ill victims of agressive street folks?

Oh, and remember when President Reagan de-institutionalized the mentaly ill, and dumped them on our srtreets with no help or housing for them?

And, any oldtimers remember the Flop house fire in downtown that killed 16 low income residents of a building that did not meet code requirements, and the city ordered all similarsingle room occupancy hotels closed without any regard for providing replacement housing and services fore the thousands of victims of this massive upheval in available,affordable housing?

And, remember when the downtown free bus services started in the 70's, the indigent population benefitted as well, much to the shagrin of the uptown business community, who also did not want to deal with this difficult social problem and wished it would just go away?

I could go on, but you get my drift. IT'S TIME TO STOP RUNNING AWAY FROM OURSELVES ANS START SOLVING THIS PROBLEM.

Yes, pick up the criminals who break the law and who victimize these poor people. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If there has been a change in Seattle, it is that we have stopped using the word and acting on our COMPASSION.

Art

Panhandling is one thing — property crime is another. What's our latest ranking on the car-theft tables? Someone stole one wheel off my wife's car the other day, and tried to steal another before they apparently got bored and left the job half-done. We called in a police report, they took down our information, and nothing will get done. A few years ago, someone smashed out my driver's-side window, rifled through my glovebox, left blood all over the place — and again, all we get is a report taken, no evidence gathered, no one ever held responsible. This is all in the Roosevelt neighborhood, a few blocks south of Whole Foods.

Stopping this is far more important to me than cracking down on panhandling in Pioneer Square and Belltown.

This guy was a hack before he was elected, and now he's a hack-and-a-half. Anyone call that improvement?

Art -- I do remember everything but the flophouse fire (when was that?). I certainly recall Reagan's wholesale dumping of the mentally ill. His first budget cut Social Services by $50 billion, but increased military spending by $60 billion. That's how he "balanced" the budget, and ran up a bigger deficit than all previous presidents combined. (Doncha just hate those Big Government spendthrifts? You know...like George Bush II?)

The term "homeless" was virtually never heard prior to Reagan forcing people to live in their cars. It's astonishing how the remnants and stragglers of his pathetic regime still lionize the Great Prevaricator.

But y'know, Two Gun Ronnie, the Fascist Gun In The West, was all about "law and order." Sidran reframed it locally as "civility" (which it wasn't, and regardless, clearly went out of vogue nationally with the 1994 "Contract on America" Congress). Now, Burgess is taking a whack at it, as "quality of life."

Same old craperoo from the same old tired hacks.

I wish these people would get jobs for which they are eminently qualified -- like picking up dog poop -- instead of inflicting their half-baked BS on the rest of us.

Benjamin --

Sounds like you live just off Cowan Park. No secret that crime has escalated big time in that area. The perps hang out in the park.

I live more towards U-Village, and my vehicle was tagged three times last summer by the same F-tards. If I ever catch them I won't be waiting around for SPD.

I also once found a sharp chunk of marble on the seat of my car. The perp obviously had intended to smash my window, but found another way in, instead. I still have the marble. Think I should submit it for DNA or fingerprints?

SPD wouldn't even investigate a case of a friend of mine being stalked by a guy who kept forging my friend's name. We knew the perp's name and where he lived, but the cops refused to act and the City Attorney's office said it was "too overloaded" to take the case. Well, sure! That's what happens when you spend all your time and redsources on panhandlers.

Don't forget the falsified crime statistics used to justify the Parking Garage and Pine Street re-opening.

My favorite incident in those events was Mr. Sidran's drafting of the initiative to re-open Pine Street - where he claimed millions in economic benefit, at no cost - even though the City had already committed to 100 million in questionable funding.

This ain't a small problem, twasn't then and still isn't.

The "broken window theory" of policing seems to work pretty well in other cities, like New York and L.A., that have much bigger crime problems than we do. His idea for improved crime statistics and intelligence is also straight from the William Bratton crimefighting playbook -- it's pretty uncontroversial that it works. If Burgess can do this without the obnoxious hard-edged quality that made people dislike Sidran, it's all good.

Sinbad: Marble? I wonder if that has anything to do with the fountain that used to stand at the entrance to Cowen Park, and which is now, well, see for yourself: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukobe/4338612604/

Cops don't protect "us"; they enforce societal order. From an evidence-based perspective: they arrive after the fact; deterrents are punitive; and the public is suspect. It seems only reasonable that one should think twice before calling the Police for assistance. As for more of them, I find it unlikely. It's more likely we'll see security guards on bikes, packing tazers. Less affluent areas will likely witness home-grown militias.

Mr. Burgess on the other hand is in complete denial. The public school system has been in decline for decades. Enrollment continues to fall; schools are routinely closed. Todays students are increasingly hostages; they have no other option. A third don't graduate. Unemployment is far closer to 20% than 10. It's 50% among young people. Should I mention black men. Here's a quality of life issue: for certain segments of the population, prison is the ONLY opportunity. Think about it in terms of a "third-world" country: Seattle's lack of slums is not due to a shared prosperity, but to a policy of forced migration--tent cities.

@DannyK -
The "broken window theory" of crime has no empirical support and was laid to rest by Steven Leavitt in Freakonomics. Good book - you and Tim should read it.

Hello Sinbad,

The hotel fire was in 1970 and killed 19 residents. The old Hotel had only one means of egress. I'm blanking on the name.

Fire Chief, Gordon Vickery, immediately drafted an ordinance that called for the immediate closure of all other similar hotels/flop houses, single room occupancy buildings if the owners were not willing to bring their properties up to code. Very few agreeed to do it.

Some waited until their building was vacant, then upgrading them for higher rent paying users. Financing was tough due to the redlining of Pioneer Square by the uptown banks. Luckily Seattle Trust S&L; hung in there, thanks to Bill Billargeon.

People used to criticize the redevelopment of Pioneer Square in that it forced out the low income residents. In fact, they were all but gone by 1971 when the city got behind the districts preservation. We created teh Skid Road Community Council as a way to focus and plan for the ever growing low income population that made up the %90 of the street people.
People like Rev. David Bloom, Rick Locke, Al Fox and others created a lobbying force for housing, services and other programs to start turning things around.
I'm afraid to say, there has been minimal momentum since then with little to show for it.

Art

Sinbad, It was the Ozark Hotel.

Art

... which was at Westlake and Lenora.
http://www.historyink.com/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File;_Id=698

It would be refreshing if people were more factual and dispassionate in their postings to this blog. Mr Burgess seems to a reasonable and rational individual attempting to find solutions to our problems. Treat him with some respect and decency ... even if you disagree with him.

THe attacks become so destructive, cynical and tiresome.

Burgess seems to be one of the most reasonable and talented people leading the City these days. Those attributes provoke strong responses from people who don't appreciate them.

I have found Burgess to be about as close as I have found to someone at City Hall who really represents the basic decency I see in most everyone I encounter throughout the City. He just might represent the City's real soul.

I'm glad someone is taking on the real issue of whether my Mom can feel safe on the streets of Seattle. The City must get that right in order to achieve lots of other important things.

The phrase "quality of life" has attracted some derision, but it is important. It is reasonable to expect to be able to walk through downtown or the U-District without being harrassed by panhandlers. I would also submit the question for consideration: what is the economic impact of having aggressive panhandlers operating around downtown businesses?

This is the same Tim Burgess who also supported instituting a 4-foot rule at strip clubs that voters crushed. Yeah, right, real "law and order" Seattle values there.

Panhandlers have a right to ask you for money, and you have a right to say no. Aggressive panhandling is already illegal, and it's cruel and most Un-Seattle to go after people who are simply struggling for survival.

Sidran-lite indeed.

In 6 years living in the U-District, I was never harrassed by panhandlers. Unfortunately, there was a recent case of attackers getting out of their car to beat a homeless man on NE 45th:

http://www.realchangenews.org/index.php/site/archives/1700/
"The three suspects briefly exchanged words, exited the vehicle, and assaulted the victim. Victim stated he was struck in the face several times, but did not recall seeing any weapons. Suspects then got back into their vehicle and exited the scene. Victim had a bloody nose and a laceration over his eye."

Can Burgess protect us from road rage?

mmm, maybe what reagan did by puttng all those people out on the street was in part a liberation (from their hospitalized but more prison-like existences) and some sort of impulse to bring 'us' all back together in order to sort 'ourselves' out in the plain public light of day...in community where we all belong...
and so our real problem problem here is, community
it's time for another look at what community means and what 'healthy community' really looks like and yes time for us to revisit those 'decency' & 'quality of life' words again, i think burgess is giving it a shot, but let's not just leave it up to him, let's find ways to publically discuss and debate this in 'community' so we can hear all the voices, not just burgess'
it's time to end this ongoing demonization and 'imprisonment' of so many marginally dysfunctional people out there, time to bring them back again, give them a decent chance to return to community...and ourselves along with them too...we all need it...

michaeld, reading your wise comment I can't resist plugging my own homemade attempt to stitch the community back together, one marginalized person at a time, through Freestyle Volunteering. Choose one person sharing our public spaces who is socially isolated by homelessness or mental illness (the 2 conditions often coincide) and meet with the person at a cafe' every week for coffee and conversation. Freestyle Volunteer suggestions and stories are at http://freestylevolunteer.wordpress.com/about/ .

As a longtime resident, I find that Seattle panhandlers, on the whole, are relatively benign. Constructive help should be given to the homeless, but they do not seem like much of a threat. I do not think that we need additional laws to deal with them. I am more worried about serious violence, such as the physical attacks that occurred recently on both Summit Avenue, on Madison & 15th Avenue East, as well as 19th and Marion, all during one weekend. This suggests a much more worrisome situation. In many cases, these more violent episodes seem to be the work of teenagers. Deterrents and thoughtful solutions, (not citizens who have gone off the deep end and want to shoot everybody), if possible, should be used to stop this situation. Such physical threats are a serious quality of life issue.