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: Injustice in Seattle

King County Executive Ignores Civil Rights Abuses While Arguing For Social Justice

By David Packman

King County Executive Ron Simms has started a so-called crusade to examine issues of social injustices. This would be admirable if this weren't the same Ron Simms who insists that abusing pre-trial detainees and denying them medical care in the King County Jail wasn't a violation of their constitutional rights in response to a Department of Justice investigation that found deadly rights violations at the jail.

What's interesting is that it appears that the jail is continuing to practice the same abuses while Simms pretends to be concerned about issues of injustice and while King County tries to convince the DOJ that those problems no longer occur.

If Simms would have accepted the findings and pledged to make sure they don't happen anymore, and if there weren't new reports of abuses continuing to come from people who had been detained there as recently as this month, then maybe he would be a credible speaker as to the issues of social justice. Instead his track record in this regard only serves to undercut his message and makes it sound like a sick joke in the same vein as if Eliot Spitzer were to take the pulpit and speak out against the injustices of prostitution.

One would think that even he would see the obvious absurdity. Indeed, an editorial in the Seattle Times asks "Sims is doing some agitating, putting this in everyone's face. We won't know whether it will work until the county has to make a hard choice that tests its commitment, and ours."

...Seems that the DOJ investigation already tested that commitment and Simms failed to rise to it... unless, of course, he really does feel that abusing potentially innocent civilians in his jail is socially just.

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on March 17, 2008 (boomark / email).