It is extremely unlikely that the council would heed her advice and investigate and punish Sawant, even though few on the council harbor any affection for the boundary-pushing socialist.

As local leaders consider restructuring their police departments in response to citizen concerns, they will need to consider the impact that those restructurings will have on the ability of the departments to respond to the very high levels of property crime in the region. And those leaders may want to step back and ask how Seattle ended up with such high rates of property crime in the first place.

At Seattle City Hall, you could see Mr. Locke seated in a favored seat, usually in the front row of the council chamber, 10 seats from the right side. He habitually signed up to speak at committee meetings. In time, councilmembers could have written his speeches. He would tell us to "stop wasting so dang much money."