Slog PM: Sewage Spill Near Madrona, Olympia Cops Shoot and Kill a Man, Black Hole Sounds Like Bellows from Hell

Olympia cops shoot and kill a man: Cops told KING 5 “the man pulled out a knife and ‘attacked officers'” during an arrest in a Starbucks parking lot, and so they shot him. The police were originally responding to a “disorderly conduct” call. Somehow English cops manage to arrest people who attack officers with knives without killing them. I guess we have no choice but to give the Olympia Police Department more money for training and equipment. 

Speaking of equipment: The Southern Poverty Law Center got ahold of some emails that illuminate the details of a trade between the Omaha Police Department and a gun shop called 88 Tactical, which SPLC flagged in 2017 for hosting an “anti-Muslim” former FBI agent. The police planned to give the gun shop “28 expired ballistic helmets and 28 expired rifle plates–a value of roughly $45,000 if purchased new–in exchange for 120 Coyote AR magazines, 60 Glock 17 magazines and 30 orange Glock magazine base plates, all worth about $3,100.” In one email about the deal, the gun shop founder said, “As always, I appreciate you thinking of us, brother.” The cop replied, “We appreciate everything 88Tactical has done for OPD SWAT.” 

Life comes at you fast: In this morning’s Slog AM, I mentioned that King County planned to begin its inquest into the case of two police officers shooting and killing 33-year-old Robert Lightfeather in 2017. This afternoon, the County delayed the proceeding because one of the cops tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Seattle Times. 

Washington’s first “pediatric” Monkeypox case … is 17 years old, reports KUOW. Read Matt’s work on the virus if you want to learn how best to protect yourself.

Okay, everybody out of the lake: After a sewage spill this morning, King County warns all swimmers to stay out of the water at Howell Park, Madrona Beach, and at all the beaches along Lake Washington in-between those two points, KIRO reports. 

Do not swim or go in the water at Howell Park, Madrona Beach, or the Lake Washington shoreline between them. This includes street-end parks at E. Olive & E. Pine Streets. There was a sewage spill this morning, and the water could make people or pets sick. https://t.co/PunxOq9HAj

— Seattle Parks (@SeattleParks) August 22, 2022

Beta version of MoviePass resurrects on Labor Day: The movie ticket subscription company will allow a limited number of people to pay between $10 and $30 per month for credits to use toward watching films, according to Business Insider. If you don’t remember, the company failed in spectacular fashion starting around 2017, when customers ended up using their passes much more often than anticipated. 

Did they hit 5,033 signatures? Social housing advocates will start refreshing this page at 9 am tomorrow as the King County Elections department begins to sort through its new batch of petition signatures. If KCE tallies up enough names, then the coalition behind I-135 thinks we could see a vote in February. For more background on the effort to lay the groundwork for more social housing, find Hannah’s piece here.

Climate update: Switzerland’s glaciers are looking a little thin: 

A new study has found that Switzerland’s 1,400 glaciers lost half their total volume since the early 1930s. https://t.co/pNpsXcpQDM

— The Seattle Times (@seattletimes) August 22, 2022

Cops and conservatives always blame this country’s very special problem with mass shootings on “mental health” issues rather than on the wide availability of assault weapons. But researchers say mental illness is a bad predictor of these tragedies. A better warning sign: Someone who just experienced a life crisis, “defined as a period when one’s circumstances overwhelm one’s coping mechanisms,” reports The New York Times. 

Two months after the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court overturned Roe, nearly 21 million people can no longer access “all elective abortions in their home states,” according to the Washington Post. That’s about one in three women.

Black hole sounds like distant bellows from hell: In case you were wondering:

The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel. A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound. Here it’s amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole! pic.twitter.com/RobcZs7F9e

— NASA Exoplanets (@NASAExoplanets) August 21, 2022

Today in Trump world: Trump’s lawyers asked the judge to halt the investigation into the 11 boxes of top secret info he stashed in his palace. They want the judge to order an independent attorney to check the boxes and determine if executive privilege covers any of them, the BBC reports. 

And here I thought Democrats “followed the science:” California Governor Gavin Newsom spiked a law that would have authorized cities to build five safe drug consumption sites in San Fransisco, Oakland, and Las Angeles. Politico described the sites as “a divisive and politically risky strategy to address a relentless wave of addiction and overdoses,” but the outlet left off one key descriptor: life-saving. The fact that we don’t have three sites in Seattle right now is a public health tragedy. 

A couple thousand protesters in Haiti’s capital and beyond blocked roads and marched through streets to demand that PM Ariel Henry step down and to call for a better quality of life: “If Ariel doesn’t leave, we’re going to die!”
(📹 by Evens Sanon)https://t.co/LjQaDcj3da pic.twitter.com/nE7BpHNuWn

— Dánica Coto (@danicacoto) August 22, 2022

Thousands take to the streets in Haiti: Protesters erected “burning barricades” in Port-au-Prince this morning in protest over “the growing scarcity of gasoline and diesel” and long-term poverty in general, Al Jazeera reports. The immediate struggles come “due to difficulties in obtaining dollars from the central bank.” 

Let’s close PM with another Mirah song: