As Seattle continues to consider the idea of replacing police officers with social workers, we have tragic news. Kristin Benson, a 42-year old social worker in Seattle, has been stabbed to death by a ‘client‘ two days before Thanksgiving.
Related: Seattle Resolution Replaces Police with “trauma-informed, gender-affirming, anti-racist” Groups
The Seattle Times reports that security footage shows the man walk into the building carrying grocery bags and then pull out a large knife. Carrying the weapon, he walked into the office of 42-year-old social worker Kristin Benson.
Benson was stabbed 12 times. A co-worker has identified her attacker as 58-year-old Hans Dewey Van-Belkum.
According to the charging documents, police officers spotted the suspect five hours after the crime. He was still wearing the same blood-stained clothes captured on the surveillance video.
They say Van-Belkum had mental health problems and possibly believed that Benson was involved in a plan to have him evicted from the building where he’d lived for eight years.
The co-worker, who ran into Benson’s office when she heard screaming, had to flee for her life and lock herself in her own office. When Van-Belkum was unable to break in her returned to Benson’s office to stab her a few more times before leaving.
This is truly a sad story and another murder that might have been prevented. If Benson was armed and trained, allowed to be armed and trained, she might have been able to defend herself. Her co-worker could have shot Van-Belkum instead of almost becoming his second victim.
But this is Seattle, and these are social workers. I expect that the right to self-defense is the punchline to a joke around the office watercooler.
Well, maybe not that office. Not anymore.
But will the city reconsider the plan to defund the police? Can they accept that sending social workers out to defuse situations with no hand-to-hand or weapons training might be a death sentence? Will Social Workers rebel at the idea?
If I were them I would, but they’re liberals with no common sense so I think we can guess how this will go. A lot like Obama’s rules of engagement in Afghanistan.
You are an ambassador target. Get used to it.
