[seanmcdirmid]

Yes, the guy was well known to act violently but was mostly harmless until he wasn’t (the police dealt with him many times, but didn’t make an arrest until he killed someone p). This is the same area where that poor girl who worked at Amazon got her head bashed in a coupe of years ago by some crazy guy in supportive housing. The streets aren’t really safe these days, and it isn’t just “fear mongering”.

Sorry, emotions are running pretty high right now. If you made this comment at her vigil, it wouldn’t have ended well I think.

[simoncion]

> If you made this comment at her vigil, it wouldn’t have ended well I think.

We're not at her vigil, nor are we talking specifically about it.

It makes the already-shitty life of the homeless even worse when folks paint them as crazed murderers. It is -in truth- no better than asserting that any other broad group (whether you group based on ethnic, racial, state-of-origin, or any number of other overly-broad categories) are crazed murders.

Every single death is a tragedy. I very sincerely believe that, and will be angry at myself until my dying day that I did nothing to help try to fix death.

However, it does the living no good to dehumanize an entire group by saying "Oh, well they're a member of $BROAD_GROUP, so they're murderers. Better stay away.".

[seanmcdirmid]

Seattle doesn’t have a high murder rate, much of the killing is homeless on homeless, yes, when drugs are involved things get violent. Other people take note, however, when the violence starts affecting other people. Nothing new there.

The sad fact is that this person was already committing crimes, was already considered violent, but our system in place gives them a free pass unless it comes out to homicide. No, don’t dehumanize the homeless, but yes, hold them to the same standards as everyone else. You commit a crime, you get arrested and go to jail; then maybe it doesn’t have to get to murder for the system to take action.