Yesterday, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee with the Stranger accused mayoral candidate Mike McGinn of failing to address important public safety issues:
Seattle Police Department statistics for the first seven months of 2009 say violent crimes in Seattle have climbed 22% over the same period last year, while property crimes have risen 5%. Many South Seattle neighborhoods affected by the steep rise in crime voted overwhelmingly for Nickels during the primary. Now, those votes are up for grabs.
Whichever candidate is able to provide real, tangible solutions to neighbors complaints about open drug dealing, late-night gunshots, and brazen daylight burglaries will undoubtedly take those neighborhoods’ votes by a landslide. Unfortunately, McGinn seems less than ready to tackle these problems.
So far this year, police statistics for McGinn’s neighborhood show there have been half-dozen robberies, a dozen assaults, fewer than 80 burglaries, and no murders or rapes. By comparison the South Seattle neighborhood near Rainier Beach High School—which favored Nickels during the election—had more than 35 robberies, nearly 40 assaults, more than 100 burglaries, and two reported rapes. More.
What do you think? Are the candidates addressing the issues that matter most to you? Photo/Matthew Murray
UPDATE: Find Michael McGinn’s public safety platform – released Monday afternoon – here.
Related:
- Sable Interviews Joe Mallahan (9/6/09)
- SE Seattle Candidates Forum Update #7: A Closer Look at Mayoral Candidate’s Views on Youth Violence (7/29/09)
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In my opinion McGinn is scared of the crime issue and Mallahan just doesn’t care. I watched that debate last week and I thought to myself, “Is this all we have for options”.
What also angered me is that we have like candidates and no one really did any campaigning. Barely any signs, press releases, or anything else. This was the most passive election I have ever seen in my life.
McGinn is Nickels on a bike. He does not address crime or public safety on his website. I heard Joe Mallahan at the SE Candiates debate night and he voiced the need to deliver realtime crime data to citizens and increase the gang unit.
McGinn is a dreamer with strong utopian visions. We need a mayor that is a good manager and has a strong grasp on reality. The south end deserves a mayor that will deal with crime head on – the south police precinct is finally in great shape – lets continue the trend and vote for Mallahan. McGinn is a good guy – just not the right guy.
Yesterday McGinn released a 3 paged white paper, detailing his public safety policy. There was significant coverage of it yesterday, including from Jonah.
Yeah, but I’ll bet $1,000 that everyone here who is rooting for Mallahan — most of these same people likely voted for Nickels back in the day. As if they are gifted fortune tellers or something.
The way to know how a candidate will perform on the job is to look at their financial connections. Who financially supported their campaign? This method is the most time-tested way. Relying instead on “confident” opinions is garbage.
Not that I’m for McGinn either. I don’t like either one of them. They are both way too eager to please the upper echelons of society.
Here’s what the Weekly had to say about McGinn’s comprehensive plan for public safety (which is on his web site):
Two direct quotes from Mike McGinn’s public safety plan:
What does it matter? SE Seattle has already fixated itself on Mallahan, he could turn out to be Satan himself, and they’d still vote for him.
Mishmash–just because some of the frequent RVP commenters have fixated on SE doesn’t mean everyone is. My guess is that both have some SE supporters, but that many are still undecided. After all, this was Nickels’ best territory in the primary.
McGinn seems far to fixated on the tunnel for me and seems quite unrealistic in his approach to replacing it (actually he does not want to replace it, just thinks everyone will jump on the bus or ride a bike) which is my problem with everyone that thinks everyone can walk or bike everywhere they have to go. Is there no compassion for the elderly and handicapped? Seems he needs a little separation from the Sierra club.
Sorry Trellis, just how I feel.
Mark B–sorry, got to disagree with you and I’m going to get a little wonky because this is an issue I’ve sent a lot of time reviewing. Hopefully you were just being glib, and don’t actually believe that McGinn thinks everyone will just jump on a bike. He certainly supports people finding alternatives to single occupancy vehicles, but he doesn’t expect that everyone will bus or ride a bike. (on a side note–the disabled and the elderly use the bus system at a much higher rate than average commuters).
The surface-transit option was actually one of the two alternatives favored by diverse group of stakeholders who worked for months and months to review all of the options (the other one was the tunnel). The DOT studies determined that the surface-transit option was equally as good as the tunnel at accomodating mobility (of freight, people, etc). The tunnel is the riskiest option and is most likely to lead to cost overruns. The tunnel will not have any downtown exits.
Mike is an intelligent, thoughtful candidate, who really understands the issues facing the city. When I listen to Mallahan respond to questions (and I mean detailed responses–not just the soundbites that you see at some forums), it’s clear that he can’t get beyond his talking points and into the details.
From the Times yesterday
“More people, McGinn says, would take buses, bikes, squeeze onto Interstate 5, use downtown streets — or stay home.”
“At least 50,000 of the 109,000 vehicles now on the viaduct each weekday would have to disappear, government studies say. McGinn agrees, and he’s eager to make that happen.”
So now we need David Copperfield for Deputy Mayor?
“McGinn hasn’t proposed a specific design. He would add bike lanes and shoulders, but generally, no more car lanes.”
Or stay home, great idea for commerce, maybe have a day for shopping based on your last initial like buying gas in the 70′s with odd or even license plates. Plus a lot of people are going back to their cars after the 19th since they will be screwing all the bus routes.
Trellis thanks for sharing information from McGinn himself. Malahan must be afraid to talk too. Where is the article calling him out?
At the 43rd District Democrats meeting on Tuesday, Joe Mallahan attacked the 37th District saying that violent crime only happens there. His solution: add 100 police officers and a full gang unit in South Seattle. A former 37th resident challenged him as showing insensitivity to the parents and youth of the 37th. He said violence in the 37th was due to social injustice and that everyone should care about the youth of the 37th. However, the implication from his initial comments was clear — violence isn’t from your nice kids — it’s from those across the tracks (Montlake Cut).
The SPOG stood when Joe spoke and then escorted Joe out of the room. It was an intimidating display of police power in a political event. Last night Joe Mallahan made it clear that he is, or aspires to be, Seattle’s Dick Nixon.
Erica Barnett had a good response to some of the problems with Lindblom’s article. http://publicola.net/?p=14086. There’s also useful information at http://www.tunnelfacts.com. I’m not one of those people who thinks we can get rid of cars in the immediate future, but I do think that we have a duty to at least try to reduce vehicle miles traveled. And the benefits go beyond environmental–studies repeatedly show that the social and health impacts are important, too. But beyond that altruistic stuff, the tunnel has the potential to be Seattle’s big dig. Nobody has built a deep bore tunnel of this size, and we have NO plans to deal with the cost overruns (other than the legislature’s decision that Seattle will pay cost overruns).
Denise–perhaps Mallahan’s keeping quiet to avoid making mis-statements. Mallahan supports the tunnel, but opposes the Mercer fix. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that the Mercer fix is a crucial part of the tunnel plan.
“PCO 37″ said ” Mallahan aspires to Seattle’s Dick Nixon”. That’s really off the wall ! What does it mean? Who remembers Nixon? I can’t even find a way to process such a remark. You’re just saying the most outrageous thing that comes to mind in order to undermine a qualified candidate. Your comment is not fact-based but personal and petty.
Mallahan ‘gets’ the 37th District better than any mayoral candidate in decades. He’ll be good for us. Mallahan has integrity that Nickels lacked. Mallahan has a strong business background that McGinn lacks. Mallahan has worked with dozens of unions at T-Mobile and he’ll have to work with dozens more unions as Mayor. Mallahan has promised to restore a voice to neighborhoods while McGinn is promising to force more dense housing on us by use of eminent domain, if necessary (read about his support of HB 1490). Mallahan gets the crime problem and he’s won the endorsement of both the police and firefighters —tough to critisize their overwhelming support of Mallahan.
I’m probably going to vote for Mallahan because I’m convinced he’s the best person for the job. I believe he will change southeast Seattle for the better. McGinn has always been a big fan of Greg Nickels and he’ll just give us more of the same; more poverty, more density, no economic development, more crime, more low-income residents, and more top-down style authoritarian leadership. Mallahan has promised to listen to the people, a refreshing change of attitude.
The “Mercer Fix” is a shameless demonstration of political leaders who are pandering to powerful special interests. The goal of fixing the Mercer corridor has always been to reduce traffic congestion and travel time. Instead, the Nickels plan (written by Vulcan) will actually double and almost triple travel time between I-5 and Seattle Center from about 8 minutes to more than 21 mintues. And the cost of the “Mercer Fix” is about 3 to 4 times more expensive than it should be because of all the improvements to Paul Allen’s property. Only SIX property owners will receive hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to improve their private property. Do we really want to spend our scarce tax dollars making Paul Allen’s property more valuable —while slowing travel times in the corridor —opposite of the state goal of the ‘fix’? Joe Mallahan thinks this plan is a bad idea and I agree with Joe.
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