A Washington state business owner was told by police that the homeless man who attacked her had a right to do so as he was only defending himself.
Coffee shop owner Jovanna Edge called out the police in Monroe for the response to her complaint about an assault by a homeless man who should have been behind bars due to previous alleged violations of the law.
“They’re using [drugs] on the streets, they’re using in front of businesses… they’re stealing from people, they’re coming into the neighborhoods,” Edge said on the “The Dori Monson Show” on KIRO. “It’s really bad.”
Liberal policies have failed to effectively address the growing homeless problem in nearby Seattle where a large number of police officers have reportedly been leaving the department. In the suburb of Monroe, Edge has been complaining about the increasing problem there with complaints to police about safety as she began to photograph the homeless camps to document.
The recent assault against her occurred as she had stopped to take a photo of a trespassing violation as a new camp had settled in under the awning of a private business. Pulling into the parking lot and rolling down her window to take a photo, Edge was approached by one of the homeless men who threw a “putrid-smelling” red-colored liquid from a bottle at her.
Edge explained that she did not know what the offensive liquid was but that it “went all over the inside of my car, all over myself, all over the outside.”
Though she rolled her window up and attempted to call 911, Edge drove away before she could dial as the man was approaching her again, raising “a grapefruit-sized rock” above his head in what she saw as an attempt to attack her. But when Edge reached the police, she got an unexpected response.
“He told me that the vagrant had the right to defend himself [from my photography],” she said. “And he was defending himself with the rock and with this bottle of liquid.”
Edge argued that the man, in fact, should have already been off the streets because of other crimes he had allegedly just committed.
According to KIRO:
The previous night, the same suspect had allegedly ejaculated into a hot dog at a Monroe 7-11 and had then thrown the hot dog and its contents over a car with a woman and child in it.
On Thursday, he allegedly stole an elderly woman’s purse out of her wheelchair at the Providence Medical Group Monroe Clinic. Police later found the alleged thief and returned the purse to the victim. The video of the theft can be seen on the Monroe Police Department’s Facebook page.
The man was eventually arrested and is in the Snohomish County Jail on theft and drug paraphernalia possession charges.
“The poor old woman would have been spared if they had done something initially,” Edge said.
Monroe Police Chief Jeffrey Jolley was “frustrated” by the incident.
The suspect is “one of that core group of 15 to 20 individuals that we’re dealing with on a repetitive, constant basis,”he told KIRO. “We’re trying to find every mechanism that we possibly can that’s available to law enforcement to deal with this issue.”
Despite a city social worker program which was implemented three years ago and a Homeless Policy Advisory Committee added this year, the city of Monroe is still struggling to deal with the daily reality of the growing homeless population.
“I am frustrated and when I first heard about this particular incident, it kind of shocked me, coming from out of state, to hear that it wasn’t a violation of law for somebody to throw a liquid on somebody’s car,” he said. “And that was very aggravating.”
He recommended to the city prosecutor that the case be charged as malicious mischief and remarked on the quick turnaround in jail time for offenders.
“They seem to be back in our communities almost as quickly as we can take them to jail,” Jolley said, expressing the police department’s frustration.
In fact, the police in Seattle have become so disillusioned with the city and Democrat Mayor Jenny Durkan that they have been exiting the department in large numbers. While Durkan initially denied reports of the “mass exodus,” she soon began a focused recruitment effort.
While Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best claimed 97 officers had been hired in 2019, KTTH reported that the city was actually flubbing the numbers in order to make the department seem larger and stronger than the reality. Out of the 97 hires, 81 did not stay with the Seattle Police Department, leaving a net gain of only 16 officers.
A conference held in Seattle earlier this month to address homelessness featured a transgender stripper.
As the video shows, the programming has nothing to do with helping people on the streets—it’s about affirming a radical ideology that puts identity politics above solving real problems.
— Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) December 15, 2019
It’s not a lack of resources that prevents Seattle from solving homelessness; it’s a lack of leadership. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, King County spends more than $1 billion a year on homelessness programs—but have failed to deliver results for decades.
— Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) December 15, 2019
Kira Zylstra, the director for the agency that coordinates efforts to address homelessness in King County, which includes the city of Seattle, was out on paid leave pending an investigation, The Seattle Times reported.
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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