God, if He or She exists, is an ironist, and maybe, I fear after 30 years as a reporter, a sometime sadist.
The irony is implicit in our daily lives. How many times have I, in just three years, told a playing partner after a good golf shot how good I'm getting, and then within seconds lost a ball to the train tracks below Interbay's sixth and seventh holes?
It's the same with column writing. Just two weeks after I gave the Seattle Police Department an attaboy for their relative efficiency (compared with the Cincinnati Police Department), all hell breaks loose.
It seems that our chief, Big Gil Kerlikowske, thinks he's running a department in Romania or Russia, one of those places where might (and uniformed authority) makes right.
I won't bore you with a long recap; if you read the dailies, you're up to snuff with the story about the two downtown cops rousting folks and failing to follow proper arrest procedures. You're also probably aware that an internal report from a committee appointed to review the cops' performance chastised Big Gil for whitewashing and even maybe covering up regarding his boys and their improper actions.
Kerlikowske's response was to cry foul and to claim folks who sat behind a desk had no right to criticize his boys and girls. He implied that the folks enforcing the law are above the law.
The chief claimed the internal report critical of his department was a political move, and savaged one of the three authors, Peter S. Holmes, an attorney. I don't know Holmes, but I have met and interviewed Sheley Secrest, another member of the three-person Office of Professional Accountability Review Board. Secrest was briefly president of the Seattle-King County branch of the NAACP, and one of the most refreshing and articulate interviewees I've met in five years back on this scene.
Someone needs to explain to Big Gil that folks who are put in place to oversee are supposed to do just that, not necessarily continue rubber-stamping every bad arrest and rogue cop.
Not surprisingly, our ever-expanding mayor, Greg "The Developers' Boy" Nickels, stood cheek by jowl with Kerlikowske (it's the only way the new Greg can stand with anybody) and supported "his" chief against critics.
Why not? Attacking anyone who doesn't agree with him is Nickels' modus operandi anyway, unless maybe you're a chef.
And now the Police Guild, one of the most Fort Apache-like union shops around, has also defended Big Gil. If you listen closely to the police guild, there hasn't been a bad arrest made on the shores of Elliott Bay since 1852, before there was a Seattle Police Department.
If Anne Frank were hiding in the C.D., the local guild would exonerate whoever arrested her. Maybe even recommend the arresting officers for a medal for ferreting out such a dangerous little girl.
Big Gil and his boys and girls should be feeling slightly chastened and determining to do better, and maybe even root out the few departmental bad apples (I'll say again: most Seattle cops seem to me to do a good job). Instead they're attacking anyone who asks them to be better.
Like little children caught bullying on the playground, their first response is always to whine and point back at their accusers. It is not an encouraging sight.
LIFE MAY NOT be getting better, but it is getting longer.
According to the United Nations, life expectancy nowadays is 65 for males and 70 for females (global average). Hereabouts, men are averaging 77 years, women 81. The Japanese, male and female, are slated to live an average of 83 years, and the Swiss and Icelanders are close behind, averaging 82 years of strife and toil, schnapps and skiing and hot springs dunking.
In 1907 the worldwide average life expectancy was 30 years! And in America it was a mere 47 years young. According to historians, the average person born during the Roman Empire, or in Greece's halcyon city of pre-Jesus Athens, had average life expectancies of 23 years!
It took an entire village dying to breed one Socrates. Kind of funny when you think that today we consider a 17-year-old male a child. Back in the day, 17-year-olds were ruling armies, fathering children (inside wedlock) and preparing to perish soon.
I have no profound conclusions to offer here, but I can't help but think the change in life expectancy is fascinating and puts a lie to the old canard that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
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