The Morning News: Hundreds Rally for Charleena Lyles, Ossoff Loses, Durkan and McGinn Top Mayoral Poll

A memorial outside the apartment building where police killed Charleena Lyles Sunday.

A memorial outside the apartment building where police killed Charleena Lyles Sunday. Ana Sofia Knauf

Calling for Justice for Charleena Lyles: Hundreds of people gathered for a rally outside the housing complex where 30-year-old Lyles lived and was killed by police Sunday. Lyles called to report a burglary and two officers responded. The encounter began calmly and then escalated quickly. A transcript of audio from the scene released by Seattle Police includes one officer saying “tase her” and the other responding “I don’t have a Taser.” To Lyles’ family, her death was murder. “If you have time to have that conversation, you are not in imminent danger,” the family’s attorney, James Bible, said. “You had time to do better than you did.” At last night’s rally, they remembered her and called for justice, sometimes between sobs. Below is full video from the rally and start of the march. More here.

Seattle Police Department Names Officers Who Shot Lyles: Steven McNew, hired in 2008, and Jason Anderson, hired in 2015. Crosscut’s David Kroman reports that McNew had 40 hours of crisis intervention training and once received a commendation for “response to an incident involving a person armed with a knife threatening suicide.”

King County Is Leaving Money on the Table for Crisis Intervention Training: This story will make you furious. King County residents have, since 2005, been paying a sales tax to help fund crisis intervention training for officers throuhgout King County, but that money is not being spent, Crosscut reports. The $150,000 to $250,000 per year in unspent money over the last six years could have training 60 to 120 additional officers. Why? Crosscut: “Reasons for why the money isn’t being spent depends on who you ask: there’s a bottleneck at the academy; not enough departments have expressed interest in taking the classes; calculating schedules can be difficult.”

“Charleena Lyles Needed Health Care. Instead, She Was Killed.” That’s the headline on this New York Times opinion piece by Center for Policing Equity president Phillip Atiba Goff and Center for Policing Equity senior academic writer Kim Shayo Buchanan. “The United States has seen a stunning decline in resources devoted to public mental health—during the same time the nation adopted mass incarceration,” the authors write. And the consequences of that have not hit everyone equally. “African-American people are at least as likely as white people to experience mental health distress but are half as likely to receive mental health treatment,” they write.

Could Washington Finally Change Its Restrictive Laws on Prosecuting Cops? Maybe, reports the Seattle Times‘ Joe O’Sullivan from the state legislature. Advocates are expected to soon introduce a new initiative taking aim at language that makes it nearly impossible to prosecute cops who kill people in this state. And that possibility of an initiative is “putting pressure on some of the law-enforcement groups to reconsider,” Democratic State Senator David Frockt told the Times.

Not hot enough.

Not hot enough. Joe Raedle/getty

Ossoff Lost: In last night’s special election, Democrat Jon Ossoff lost his race for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District to Republican Karen Handel. The race attracted national attention as a bellwether for Democrats in the wake of Trump and the result was not good. Handel won by more than four percentage points.

So Did Archie Parnell: Parnell was the Democrat running in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District. He lost to Republican Ralph Norman in yesterday’s special election.

In Local Politics, Will It Be Durkan and McGinn? Christ. Mike McGinn and Jenny Durkan are frontrunners in a new KING 5/KUOW poll about the mayor’s race, with McGinn at 19 percent and Durkan at 14 percent. In third: Nikkita Oliver with 9 percent. The poll also found 38 percent of people remain undecided. When asked about incumbent Mayor Ed Murray, the poll found that 51 percent of people believe he should not have run and if he were on the ballot, just 33 percent would have voted for him. When asked about the issues facing the city, nearly 90 percent said homelessness was a major problem. When asked about safe consumption sites for people who use drugs, 56 percent said they believe that would “do more good than harm.” Worth noting: The poll surveyed 900 people, 800 of them registered voters. There are 461,523 people registered to vote in Seattle.

Travis Kalanick Is Out: The Uber CEO has politely bowed out of the complete disaster that his company has become, apparently because of pressure from shareholders. “Mr. Kalanick’s exit came under pressure after hours of drama involving Uber’s investors, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, who asked to remain anonymous because the details are confidential,” reported the New York Times. “Earlier on Tuesday, five of Uber’s major investors demanded that the chief executive resign immediately. The investors included one of Uber’s biggest shareholders, the venture capital firm Benchmark, which has one of its partners, Bill Gurley, on Uber’s board. The investors made their demand for Mr. Kalanick to step down in a letter delivered to the chief executive while he was in Chicago, said the people with knowledge of the situation.” Uber has for months been plagued with scandals about sexual harassment at the company, a controversy it couldn’t seem to make go away by allowing riders to tip.

Mayor Ed Murray Will Introduce “Fair Chance Housing” Legislation: Housing advocates have long called for the city to pass laws restricting landlords’ ability to use someone’s criminal record as a reason to not rent to them. Murray is likely to introduce legislation doing just that. Murray, Council Member Lisa Herbold, and others are scheduled to hold a press conference unveiling a “fair chance housing proposal” today at 1:45 p.m.

Be Careful on Mount Pilchuck, People: In the last two weeks, search and rescue teams have rescued five people there, KING 5 reports.

SHOCKING: The Stuff Fast Food Franchises Told Us About the Minimum Wage Was Wrong. A new study from economists at the University of California, Berkeley found that increasing the minimum wage in Seattle has not killed jobs.

A Heat Wave Is Coming: It’s going to be in the mid-90s this weekend.

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