Recent Stories with tag beating

The Seattle Police Department spent much of last week in the center ring of the media circus surrounding a jaywalking bust gone bad, and I couldn't shake the feeling the brass's eye had wandered off the ball.

As if to underscore that, Belltown saw another weekend shooting (June 6: shooting death of Steven Sok outside Belltown's V-Bar; June 13: the "shots fired" weekend), and one man was beaten unconscious. He'd confronted four men who were making catcalls at his girlfriend.

Belltown has been on a roll this spring: An end-of-May brawl saw 20 to 30 people fighting in the street.

Belltown People compares the post-last-call scene to Clockwork Orange's "ultraviolence":

Nearly every shooting, mugging, bludgeoning, and assault takes place after the neighborhood's clubs herd their drunken patrons onto the street. Neighbors are rightly concerned at the apparent inability of the police department to cope with such a serious onslaught of drunken hooligans....

One day in seventh grade, I was waiting for the #14 bus across from Washington Middle School when three teenage gang members approached this kid in my class. One gang member, who was wearing brass knuckles, suddenly punched the kid in the temple, knocking him cold.

A few teachers came out to check on the kid, who soon came to and staggered down the alley leading to Odessa Brown Childrens' Clinic, vowing revenge. No Metro security guards were there. No hidden cameras caught the scene. And so KING-5 didn't cover it. The Seattle Times was likewise silent.

Which is why you haven't heard about that beating until now, unlike that of a teenage girl in the bus tunnel, which occurred in the presence of Metro security people who did nothing to stop it, and a surveillance camera which caught the whole episode on tape. That sickening beating has sparked a fresh round of city-wide Metro-targeted outrage.

But consider this--if Metro hadn't deployed security to the bus tunnel, would a fight between teenagers even be a story? If Metro didn't have video surveillance, would the TV news be reporting it? The bad publicity Metro's getting stems from the agency's attempt to do the right thing.... (more)