Seattle City Councilwoman Ksahma Sawant demanded that the Seattle Police Department (SPD) investigate an incident involving human feces being dumped in her yard. According to Fox News, the self-identified socialist and strong supporter of the Defund the Police movement is calling on law enforcement to protect her in a personal lawsuit. She claims, in a letter to the SPD obtained by The Seattle Times, that the police are "failing to investigate" the six cases she reported of feces in her yard.
These are reasons that, according to Sawant, justify her having official protection: "I am being told that my case of six threatening incidents involving human excrement doesn’t merit even a serious investigation, let alone protection," Sawant stated in the letter.
Police investigating the case
Last week, the SPD called on the public to help solve the case. They posted photos of the suspect and asked Seattle residents to identify him.
"Friends of the victim were watching the home when the suspect threw a plastic bag, containing several individual bags of suspected human feces, into the yard," reported police, thought they did not identify Sawant as a victim of the indicent. "The friends confronted the suspect and snapped multiple photos as he ran away. Witnesses described the suspect, pictured below, as an Asian man, approximately 5-foot 4-inches tall," the report said.
These actions were not enough Ksahma Sawant, who is threatening to file a lawsuit against the SPD with the Office of Police Accountability. The SPD said in their response that "the department takes incidents involving public officials seriously, and investigators have canvassed for evidence, gathered information from witnesses and reviewed everything collected thus far." They noted, however, that the Seattle councilwoman's case does not qualify as a hate crime: "At this time, the department has not found any evidence this case would meet the city or state standards for hate crime laws." The department, however, will continue to investigate Sawant's case.
Sawant, a strong advocate for defunding the police
Sawant is one of the loudest voices defending the the Defund the Police movement in Seattle. In July 2020, she proposed to cut the Seattle Police Department budget by, "at least 50%," as picked up by KIRO 7. This measure would have cut police funding by approximately $85 million.
Sawant mainly criticized the wealthy who, in her opinion, cause corruption in the systems in place: "If you, Jeff Bezos, want to drive that process forward by lashing out against us in our modest demands, then so be it. Because we are coming for you and your rotten system. We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, bankrupt system of capitalism, this police state. We cannot and will not stop until we overthrow it."
