Earlier this week I wrote about a new report commissioned by Seattle business leaders which found that 100 homeless people in the city were responsible for more than 3,500 criminal cases. These so-called “prolific offenders” all had drug habits and about a third of them also had mental problems. But because they were homeless and their crimes were usually petty burglaries or theft, they were cycled through the justice system and released back onto the streets time and time again. The problem with that approach was put in stark relief this week by the arrest of Matthew Hooper, a 38-year-old homeless man who police say is responsible for a string of arsons.
Detectives believe the man set five fires at businesses between October 28th and November 28th, including:
An office complex in the 200 block of Etruria Street on October 28th, 2018.
An Elks lodge in the 3000 block of 3rd Avenue NW on November 8th.
A lumber yard in the 300 block of West Ewing Street on November 10th.
A gymnasium in the 1400 block of Northwest 52nd Street on November 19th.
And a restaurant 5400 block of Ballard Avenue Northwest on November 28th.
Back in November, the Seattle Times reported the lumber yard fire was one of the biggest fires in recent Seattle history and did an estimated $4.3 million dollars in damage:
It took only seven minutes from the first alarm for the fire to build to a big conflagration, the largest in the city since 2010, burning two buildings to the ground and damaging three others, Scoggins said. At the height of the firefight, he said, firefighters were pumping 12,000 gallons of water a minute onto the blaze that shot flames 100 feet into the night sky…
He said 142 firefighters joined the operation, with fire crews from Bellevue, Mercer Island, Tukwila and Renton coming to help backfill the city’s fire stations and respond to emergency calls.
“We basically had two-thirds of the city at this fire. That’s significant to note because those 911 calls don’t stop just because you have a large event in one single place,” Scoggins said, thanking the other departments for their support.
Hooper was identified because he left behind the red cap of a bottle of lighter fluid with his DNA on it at one of the fires. But here’s the important point, this string of arsons for which Hooper has now been arrested were not his first interactions with police. In fact, when he was identified through DNA, police didn’t have to look far for him. He was already in jail:
Hooper was located at Whatcom County Jail, where he was in custody facing charges for malicious mischief, burglary and theft, according to the jail log. When interviewed by Seattle police at the jail, he admitted to lighting the fires at the Ballard Smoke House, lumberyard and insurance company office in North Queen Anne, according to police.
KIRO 7 reports that Hooper has been arrested 23 previous times. And yet, somehow he was back on the streets of Seattle setting fire to people’s businesses. Yesterday My Northwest published a piece by Dori Monson stating the obvious:
There is absolutely no way that Matthew Hooper should have been a free man out on the streets. He had six convictions over 13 years — assault, harassment, trespass, property destruction…
We’ve got a bunch of bleeding hearts telling us over and over again that all we need is more tax money. A head tax on Amazon, a property tax increase from you. If you do that, things will be better…
We are fools if we give them another penny. But we are equally great fools if we don’t demand that they take the money we’re already spending — since the majority of people on the streets don’t want services and have chosen a lifestyle on the streets — and force people into rehab or, if they refuse, jail. We have to stop allowing this to just continue.
There are plenty of activists concerned that we don’t “criminalize” the homeless but how about we just criminalize crime? If someone has been arrested 23 times and convicted half a dozen times and is a drug addict who isn’t going to stop, maybe we need to make sure that person is off the street before they do something really terrible. It’s a minor miracle that Hooper didn’t kill anyone. He said he waited until no one was around because the purpose of the fires was to “protect himself.” But as Monson notes, he set a fire in the carport of an apartment building and if firefighters hadn’t arrived so quickly, that fire could have engulfed a building full of sleeping people. Seattle’s homeless, prolific offenders need to be dealt instead of shuffled through the system and quietly ignored.
Here’s a local news report on the lumber yard fire:
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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