{"id":43503,"date":"2019-12-11T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/council-approves-600000-to-increase-security-at-king-county-courthouse\/"},"modified":"2019-12-11T15:04:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T23:04:07","slug":"council-approves-600000-to-increase-security-at-king-county-courthouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/council-approves-600000-to-increase-security-at-king-county-courthouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Council approves $600,000 to increase security at King County Courthouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day after employees at the King County Courthouse provided testimony of harassment, assault and safety concerns surrounding the downtown Seattle location, some $600,000 in additional funding was approved to tackle security.<\/p>\n

The King County Metropolitan Council voted unanimously to approve the funding, which will be split evenly between three different funds. This includes $200,000 for more King County Sheriff’s Office deputies on the county campus, three additional security staff to screen people at the 4th Avenue entrance, and a final portion for a social services worker to conduct outreach outside the courthouse.<\/p>\n

King County Superior Court Judge Jim Rogers closed the 3rd Avenue entrance to the courthouse on Dec. 2 following an assault on a public defender and a bus driver<\/a>. It adds to more than 160 assaults that have taken place around the courthouse between January and September, according to the Seattle Times.<\/p>\n

The closures and assaults were discussed at a Dec. 10 meeting of the Government Accountability and Oversight Committee, which heard testimony from employees who had been assaulted or harassed. A panel of judges and law enforcement representatives also discussed the courthouse’s security issues.<\/p>\n

King County Council members Kathy Lambert and Pete von Reichbauer both said employees had quit over security concerns around the courthouse.<\/p>\n

Along with the unanimous vote to provide emergency funding, several council members expressed a desire to see King County address homelessness in a comprehensive way, not just increasing spot patrols and security around the courthouse.<\/p>\n

“I want to make sure our efforts aren’t narrowly focused on one block of downtown Seattle,” said council member Joe McDermott.<\/p>\n

McDermott, whose district encompasses the portion of Seattle where the courthouse resides, said he supported the funding because it includes $200,000 for increasing social services outreach. Council member Claudia Balducci also voted to approve the measure, but said she wanted to address the underlying causes of homelessness. In a separate ordinance at the Dec. 11 county council meeting, a regional homelessness authority was approved to coordinate emergency response across King County. It will now go before the Seattle City Council at its Dec. 16 meeting.<\/p>\n

Council member Larry Gossett also supported the social services in the package.<\/p>\n

“I constantly think we have to figure out a way of dealing with this problem more comprehensively, and not in an isolated fashion by just having more police and security officers around the building,” he said.<\/p>\n

Council chair Rod Dembowski said Judge Rogers had indicated that the 3rd Avenue entrance, which serves as the main entrance to the courthouse, could be re-opened shortly after the passage of the emergency funding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The funding will be split evenly between increasing deputies, security and social services. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":43504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4,24],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-43503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-news","category-northwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43503"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=43503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}