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No Mail For You! (zip code 98118) Seattle

Port & Starboard

DP Veteran
Joined
Jan 13, 2016
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39,972
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Location
Norfolk Virginia area.
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Independent
USPS put delivery on pause due to rising crime. They have resumed delivery by now.

Residents were told to pick up their mail from the local post office and stood in long queues of up to an hour while delivery services were paused for a week

Seattle's crime rate has forced USPS to pause deliveries in zip code

Out-of-control crime in the Democrat-run city of Seattle forced the United States Postal Service (USPS) to pause deliveries to an entire zip code for a week.
www.dailymail.co.uk

Mail deliveries halted in some south Seattle neighborhoods

Residents say USPS didn't notify them of the stoppage. Those who live in zip code 98118 must now pick up their mail at the Columbia Carrier Annex.
www.king5.com


It comes as Seattle continues to experience rampant crime, drug issues and battles huge rates of homelessness.

Seattle's violent crime rate is at a 15-year high, based on its annual crime statistics from 2022, with 5,642 cases reported- including 52 murders, 321 rapes, 1,759 robberies and 3,510 aggravated assaults.

And property crime is the highest it has been since 2008 with 44,408 crimes recorded including 8,678 for burglary and 28,627 for larceny-theft.

This year, there have been 16 murders, 103 rape offences, 429 robberies and 925 aggravated assaults.

While 2,564 cases of burglary and 7,110 larceny-theft cases have been recorded so far in 2023.


The city can't put extra cops in the area to shadow postal workers because 515 cops have quit the force since 2019.............. and they are still 325 officers short.

Seattle used to be such a nice city and I enjoyed pulling loads out there. I would shut the truck down for a couple days to build my hours back up for a run back to the east coast.

What a shame.
 
Yeah, that sucks. Glad I don't live there. One zip code is not the whole city, though. Most cities have crime-ridden areas. I'm sure most of the area is safe.
 
Yay Liberalism!

What do you expect to happen in a city that allows a bunch of ingrates take over a city block for weeks.
 
RetiredUSN said:
USPS put delivery on pause due to rising crime.
Click to expand...
Let's be a bit more specific, shall we? It's because the thieves damaged a bunch of people's mailboxes. This isn't much different than, say, stealing packages off of people's porches -- which happens all over the US. Your post makes it sound like all of Seattle has turned into a war zone.

Let's also note that....
• Crime fell significantly in Seattle after 1986 (which is several years before crime peaked in most of the US)
• The homicide rate in Seattle is about half what it was at its peak in 1986
• The homicide rate in Seattle started rising in **2016**, not 2020 (similar to most of the US)
• The homicide rate in Seattle actually fell in 2021 (odd how no one credited that to police quitting)
• The homicide rate in Seattle is only about 1% above the national average
• Crime rose everywhere in the US during the pandemic -- including rural areas, "Red" states, and cities that didn't have a big BLM presence, etc



Oh, wait. Silly me. This isn't about facts, it's about building a narrative, right...?

The reality is that no one really knows all the reasons why crime rates go up and down, and the reasons vary from one area to the next. Whatever simplistic explanation you've struck upon is at best partial, at worst incorrect.

RetiredUSN said:
Seattle used to be such a nice city and I enjoyed pulling loads out there....
Click to expand...
It still is a "nice city." You're just letting the media push your buttons.
 
Visbek said:
Oh, wait. Silly me. This isn't about facts, it's about building a narrative, right...?
Click to expand...

Seattle can report any numbers they like since nobody has audited them..............right?

Although the FBI began auditing local police departments in 1997 to ensure that crime statistics are accurately reported, the Journal-Sentinel discovered that less than 1% of about 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide that report data to the FBI have been audited in each of the last five years. Only about one-third of police departments in the 30 largest cities in the U.S. have been audited during that same time period, and data from six of those departments – including Seattle and Philadelphia – have never been reviewed since the FBI’s auditing program began.

“[Crime data] is a tool that politicians and police leaders use, yet the system is so incentivized to cast a favorable light and there [are] very little checks and balances to make sure it’s accurate,” stated Eli Silverman, professor emeritus at New York City’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Most people assume the data comes with a certain grain of authenticity because they are FBI statistics. But in reality they are not really FBI stats, but those of the actual police department.”

Posting any statistics is utter nonsense. People on the street know this.


Seattle violent crime hits 15-year high, and 4 more takeaways from new report

The city's violent crime rate increased to 736 per 100,000 residents in 2022, the highest in years. Gun violence also hit an all-time high in annual stats.
www.seattletimes.com

Seattle business owners left to fend for themselves on crime take matters into their own hands

Seattle business owners who've witnessed break-ins and violence organized their own town hall to address crime issues in the city and demand action from local leaders.
www.foxbusiness.com
 
ROFL! The USPS doesn't even bother to deliver to the vast majority of Alaska. Most places in Alaska don't even have a ZIP Code, while others have to share ZIP Codes with other cities. You could completely abolish the USPS and I doubt many Alaskans would even notice. Poor little critters from Seattle being inconvenienced by having to pick up their own mail, my heart bleeds for them.
 
Not to worry, AG Garland will give them a complete pass. After all, the Biden administration only targets "MAGA Republicans" while allowing leftist filth to commit mass murder with impunity.
 
What do you think the steady pace of “we hate cities” narratives from the right is actually accomplishing?
 
“Leftist Filth”= shots before dawn!
 
Cardinal said:
What do you think the steady pace of “we hate cities” narratives from the right is actually accomplishing?
Click to expand...
Its totally helping the urban population (which is most of the US population) love the GOP.
 
Cardinal said:
What do you think the steady pace of “we hate cities” narratives from the right is actually accomplishing?
Click to expand...
What's worse is that most (if not all) of the complainers hail from cities themselves. The Norfolk/Virginia Beach area has its own crime problems. Not as bad as Seattle, but nothing to brag about. Much worse than Chicago.
 
Cardinal said:
What do you think the steady pace of “we hate cities” narratives from the right is actually accomplishing?
Click to expand...

I had already stated that I loved Seattle and purposely shut down my truck there to build up hours for a run back to the east coast.

Go chase someone else's hubcaps with your BS.
 
sorry but I have NEVER had the post office tell me they won't deliver mail due to crime in the area. That DOES NOT happen all over the US
 
RetiredUSN said:
I had already stated that I loved Seattle and purposely shut down my truck there to build up hours for a run back to the east coast.

Go chase someone else's hubcaps with your BS.
Click to expand...
Yes, the OP sounds sentimental. I get that. But what's the purpose of focusing on the crime rate? Seattle has an extremely high crime rate. It is a shame, but the right has been focusing the narrative on urban crime for years. How is this different from the narrative?

Crime is generally localized in certain areas of a city. The vast majority of Chicago is safe, and Chicago is safer than Virginia Beach/Norfolk.

Crime is an issue. It's always been an issue. Flooding the zone with crime stories from "liberal" cities makes good copy, and riles up the base, but most of us look outside our windows in determining its importance in our lives, not to the TV.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Seattle can report any numbers they like since nobody has audited them..............right?
Click to expand...
The article suggests that Seattle is manipulating the numbers to make the administration look bad. But... aren't those the same numbers that you're citing when you claim that crime is up in Seattle?

I'm all for oversight and greater accuracy in reporting. However, the reality is that homicide numbers in particular are difficult to fake, and no one has actually produced any evidence that Seattle is deliberately fudging the numbers, let alone spent the past several decades doing so.

RetiredUSN said:
Posting any statistics is utter nonsense.
Click to expand...
lol... Hello? Not only did you post a bunch of statistics in your OP, you're linking to articles that cite statistics in an attempt to claim that "statistics are utter nonsense"! I don't think it's possible for you to more blatantly contradict yourself.

RetiredUSN said:
People on the street know this.
Click to expand...
"People on the street" don't know jack. Perceptions of crime are completely disconnected from reality for 60-70% of Americans. That's why crime rates have gone down almost every year since 1990, yet people are convinced that crime has kept going up.

Or perhaps you believe there's a 60+ year long national conspiracy to falsely inflate crime rates between 1960 and 1992 or so; then show falling crime rates (for no discernable reason) until 2015; then report little change in those crime rates until this year?



This really isn't that difficult. Starting in ***2016*** crime rates have gone up a bit in Seattle, but it is still nowhere near as bad as it was in the late 80s. At the same time, you don't seem to have bothered to ask whether during the past few years crime rates have gone up in rural areas (they have) or so-called "Red" cities, counties and states (they have).

As a result, it sure looks like trying to make as much hay as possible over anything about "crime in librul cities" for your own ideological purposes, even if it means contradicting yourself in the process. Did I miss something...?
 
I'm just gonna leave these here. Seems like crime is soaring in rural US, and guess what? Yep, there's a reporting problem there too. (Note: Some are paywalled)

Murder Rates Soar in Rural America

The extreme violence long associated with cities has reached America’s smallest communities
www.wsj.com

Violent Crime in Rural Areas Rises Above U.S. Average - The Crime Report

Large metropolitan areas are safer than they have been in decades, while some small communities are getting more dangerous. In at least 10 states, most in the Midwest and Northeast, the rate of violence in rural counties has increased over two decades, the Wall Street Journal reports.
thecrimereport.org


Crime is rife on farms, yet reporting remains stubbornly low. Here's how new initiatives are making progress

New research shows that four in five farmers in NSW have been the victim of some type of crime, yet reporting of crimes to police remains stubbornly low.
theconversation.com

New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America

Rising homicide rates don’t tell the whole story. When you dig deeper into data on deaths, you'll find the more urban your surroundings, the less danger you face.
www.bloomberg.com
 
Roadvirus said:
The stories from the NYC subway system says otherwise.
Click to expand...
lol... No, they really don't. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," yes?

NYC's subways are actually pretty safe. As I've pointed out elsewhere recently, in 2022 there were 750 million rides that year, and 7 homicides. (I might be off on that first number -- it may "only" be 200 million, I'll have to double check. Either way, it makes little difference to the rate, feel free to do the math for yourself.)

The chances of a straphanger being a victim of crime in the NYC subways is something like 1 in 600,000.

The subway crime rate was actually lower in 2022 than in 2018 or 2019 by 4%.

These wrong perceptions persist, despite NYPD stepping up enforcement (mostly of innocuous "quality of life" citations) all over the subway system.

Yet again, we see how perceptions of crime has completely detached from reality, mostly thanks to media hype, insane stress from the pandemic, and in some cases a healthy dash of partisanship.
 
Hypothetical said:
sorry but I have NEVER had the post office tell me they won't deliver mail due to crime in the area. That DOES NOT happen all over the US
Click to expand...
If the left released a dozen articles per day about how awful non-cities were, you'd see the problem.

It's like, yeah, we get, you hate cities. Fine. Don't live there.
 
Cardinal said:
If the left released a dozen articles per day about how awful non-cities were, you'd see the problem.

It's like, yeah, we get, you hate cities. Fine. Don't live there.
Click to expand...
I would love to see those articles. I think those are probably crap stats either picking off of per capita in areas where population is low or some other "statistic". lies, damned lies and statistics after all.
 
Hypothetical said:
I would love to see those articles. I think those are probably crap stats either picking off of per capita in areas where population is low or some other "statistic". lies, damned lies and statistics after all.
Click to expand...

Do you know what “per capita” is?
 
Visbek said:
lol... No, they really don't. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," yes?
Click to expand...
Here's an "anecdote" of a woman getting her spine destroyed:

Stranger Breaks Woman's Spine in Subway Shove: Cops

Police are looking for a man who randomly shoved a 35-year-old woman into a train at a Manhattan subway station with no provocation at all, leaving her with severe spinal and other injuries, authorities say. According to the NYPD, the woman was walking on the southbound platform at the Lexington...
www.nbcnewyork.com
 
I used to live in the city when I went to college, but now I won’t go downtown unless I really have to.
 
Moon said:
I used to live in the city when I went to college, but now I won’t go downtown unless I really have to.
Click to expand...

NYC, Seattle, Portland, Billings, Calgary and Winnipeg (in summer) were always my favorite cities on the planet at one time.

Not sure how Winnipeg & Calgary are doing these days but I would shut my truck truck down for at least 2 days when I had a run to those places. Awesome towns. Maybe a Canadian can chime in?

A very close lifelong Navy buddy had enough of NYC lately and sold his house. He's moving down here to Virginia Beach, and the wife and I can't wait for him to get here.
 
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