Placating Protesters Led to Assault on 72 Year Old Olympian
Common Sense Policing
Part 3 of a 3 part series on crime in the street community
A 72 year-old German immigrant was assaulted by a member of the street community in Olympia, Washington on November 13, 2019. He was thrown to the ground and beaten unconscious. He also sustained two black eyes, a broken nose, and a severe concussion. As repugnant as the details of the assault are, an even more frustrating and outrageous aspect is how preventable the attack was.
If you haven’t read about the assault, click here for the original story:
Over 2 years ago, I met with the Olympia Police Department for a discussion about rampant homeless encampments in the Olympia area. I was the victim of a theft near the Olympia Auto Mall, and evidence pointed to it being someone squatting nearby. Some of the items had a GPS tracker in them and they kept moving and showing up in the encampments along Percival Creek, leading into downtown Olympia. It was amazing to me that our law enforcement community was allowing encampments to thrive, given that they had developed a reputation for crime and victimization that was straight out of Lord of the Flies.
I asked an administrator at the Olympia Police Department why they didn’t ever patrol these off-grid encampments and why they were letting them flourish and grow, given such criminal enterprises as prostitution, theft, and drug dealing were taking place there. I was given an explanation about not wanting to further marginalize the community’s most vulnerable and disenfranchised, and not wanting to activate the protest community. That excuse was unacceptable to me, though I did not envy their thankless position. A month later, Daniel Kudro was executed over drug money in the same spot: https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article182677826.html
I ended up working with an adjacent police department and some of my things were found in a camp in the possession a heroin addict with open felony warrants. There were also dozens (yes, DOZENS) of purses, gym bags, briefcases, and laptop bags strewn all over their camp, clearly stolen. I never got my possessions back, but I learned a lot about the criminal side of encampments that I had not seen before, despite having been the homeless outreach caseworker for Thurston/Mason county for 5 years. Since that time, I have repeatedly called for police to patrol encampments, ideally with embedded social workers to help break the paralysis and explosion in the treatment-resistant voluntarily homeless community. At two recent meetings, the Olympia City Council has claimed , “We’re kind of already doing that.” This is completely untrue.
So, back to Udo. There is a good chance his assault would have been prevented if we did any patrolling of encampments, identifying of trespassers, and if we utilized police teamed with embedded social workers. This has been done in Snohomish County in Washington, with promising results.
Udo’s attacker was an unregistered sex offender from Oregon. He was illegally “camping” nearby, and trespassing. If we had a community policy to patrol encampments, then a simple ID check for trespassing could have had Udo’s attacker taken into custody for failing to register as a sex offender. Such checks on squatters trespassing on public or private land are totally legal, constitutional, reasonable, legitimate, not prevented by any court decision, and are being done in other cities in Washington.
Even if by some fluke the police did not catch the attacker’s sex offender status when checking ID for trespassing, it is very likely the simple act of patrolling encampments would lead to criminals and unregistered sex offenders avoiding our community for fear of being caught. Either way, Udo’s assault likely never would have happened. Who would you blame for this feckless inaction? The “system”? I hold specific individuals responsible, who are opposing common sense policing, outreach, and enforcement that many people in our community are calling for.
Please let your city council, police, sheriff, and county commissioners know that you think it is time for a change.
Part 1: 72 Year-Old Olympian Assaulted https://medium.com/@Info_14568/72-year-old-olympian-assaulted-89628ab80473?source=friends_link&sk=c886f5e6d780b604741f5a721d7a3229
Part 2: Assault, Murder, and the Death of Caring
https://medium.com/@Info_14568/assault-murder-and-death-of-caring-df2699227fb9?source=friends_link&sk=5a43c810ad8e736365468e8017f9f4b7
