OPINION: Bye Chief Boe

This Opinion is shared with permission of The Burien Voice on Facebook. Originally posted on August 14, 2024.

[NOTE FROM EDITOR: Letters to the Editor and Editorials do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Burien-News or Daniel Media.  If you wish to submit a story, photo, article or letter, please contact us.  We look forward to hearing from you.]

Bye Boe.

Chief Ted Boe is a good man, but he's not the RIGHT man to be police chief in Burien right now. No one is the right person for THAT job, actually. Because it's an impossible job.

The Burien police chief serves two masters. He serves his immediate boss, the King County Sheriff (who is an appointee of Executive Dow Constantine), but he also serves the Burien City Manager and City Council, who are looking out for Burien's interests. When those two masters are in agreement, as they used to be, everything goes well for Burien's police chief. But when those two masters are at loggerheads, as they are now over Burien's anti-vagrancy ordinance, then the chief's job becomes untenable. And that's what happened to Chief Boe, so he skedaddled for a simpler, better top cop job in Des Moines.

It didn't help that Executive Constantine and his homeless activist friends set Burien up for failure by creating all kinds of inducements for vagrants to come to Burien and live on the streets. That was always part of Dow's plan: he wants to make Burien a major new center for the Homeless Industrial Complex, and to do that, he needs to show that Burien has a lot of homeless people, and he doesn't care if he has to import a bunch of them from somewhere else.

Even if Chief Boe had the authority to hustle all these newcomers out of town, it wouldn't have been a pleasant task and would have taken up a lot of his department's resources. Thus, he might have ended up leaving anyway... in frustration.

I think Chief Boe did the right thing for himself. Yes, he could have fallen on his sword and defied Mr. Constantine, but where would he be now if he'd done that? He'd likely be out of a job with no prospects for the future, because who wants to hire a cop who won't follow orders?

So what's next for Burien? The city could just leave the chief's position vacant for the duration and save some money towards hiring an independent police chief and crew. The County might squawk about that, but why should the city be paying for a chief who's not allowed to enforce its laws?

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‍Additional Comment by Glenn Wallace (8/15/24):

No, it is far worse than what you have written.

A few progressives on the King County Council, in discussing the proposed Charter Amendments 5 & 6 which has enabled Dow and the council to appoint a sheriff and also adjust the duties of the sheriff (and essentially overrule contract cities) said, IN A PUBLIC MEETING ON VIDEO, that these amendments would enable them to "spread their values" to contract cities.

The only likely outcome is cities breaking away from using the county police services under contract, possibly banding together to build a regional police services organization. A great disservice to the people of both Burien and the rest of King County.

There's more - it could fill a book.

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