Social change: Money talks

Re: “As legal claims over protests and police pile up, Seattle faces liability risks” [Sept. 8, Northwest]:

As usual, money doesn’t talk, it swears. And what it is saying right now, through the city’s insurance providers, is that brutal, out-of-control police, and the city policies that enable them, are too expensive. The Times describes Seattle’s liability risks, which result from unjustifiable police attacks on anti-racism protesters and bystanders. Further liabilities are the result of citizen response to these attacks in the form of property damage, justifiable or not. Unmentioned in the article (except as a slogan on a picket sign) is liability for police murders of Black citizens.

Social change sometimes happens when the cost of the status quo becomes too expensive. It’s time for Mayor Jenny Durkan to stop obstructing deep police reform and to work cooperatively with the City Council. If she can’t see her way to doing it on the grounds of justice, perhaps the price tag on things as they are will get her moving.

Roger Lippman, Seattle