1. Maurice Clemmons, a suspect in yesterday’s ambush/murder of four Lakewood police officers, is on the run and may be in the U.W. neighborhood, according to the Seattle Times.
The Leschi neighborhood where Clemmons may have been hiding last night is in lockdown.
Seattlecrime.com reporter Jonah Spangenthal-Lee had the scoop last night that a SWAT team had surrounded a Leschi trailer home where Clemmons reportedly fled after the Lakewood shooting.
Jonah continues to monitor the story.
Nine years ago, Mike Huckabee, then the governor of Arkansas—where Clemmons was in prison for five felonies—granted Clemmons clemency.
Huckabee has released a statement through his Political Action Committee, Huck PAC: Life.Liberty. And the Pursuit of Happiness:
The senseless and savage execution of police officers in Washington State has saddened the nation, and early reports indicate that a person of interest is a repeat offender who once lived in Arkansas and was wanted on outstanding warrants here and in Washington State. The murder of any individual is a profound tragedy, but the murder of a police officer is the worst of all murders in that it is an assault on every citizen and the laws we live within.
Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State. He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence from 1990, this commutation made him parole eligible and he was then paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time. He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term, but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him. It appears that he has continued to have a string of criminal and psychotic behavior but was not kept incarcerated by either state. This is a horrible and tragic event and if found and convicted the offender should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Our thoughts and prayers are and should be with the families of those honorable, brave, and heroic police officers.
2. The L.A. Times published a beautifully written story (with insights and snapshots of Seattle that you rarely find in our own press) about the plight of Eliott Bay Books yesterday.
Here’s the lead:
Amid the blues bars and rescue missions of Pioneer Square, Seattle’s storied intersection of sports and booze, art and vagrancy, the Elliott Bay Book Co. has stood as a symbol of comfortable, old-world erudition.
For years, it has been one of the West’s few destination bookstores, a place tourists and locals alike visit for the sake of spending a couple of hours getting lost in its 140,000-some neatly stacked titles. When the last actual book downloads onto Kindle (at Amazon.com on the other side of town), Elliott Bay, one feels sure, will still be selling its musty, hard-bound predecessors, perused with a tangy cup of espresso in the basement cafe.
So it is with no small degree of anguish that Seattle has reacted to the news that Elliott Bay is facing the likely choice of either moving across town or closing altogether when its lease is up Jan. 31.
In some ways it is the familiar story of an independent bookstore getting hammered by book chains, online retailers and big-store discounters. But there are peculiar Seattle wrinkles.
The city’s two downtown sports stadiums are bringing crowds of often-tipsy revelers through Pioneer Square, scaring the tourists and competing with locals for the ever-dwindling supply of parking.
3. Mayor-elect Mike McGinn is scheduled to kick off his triptych of town halls tonight. McGinn says he wants to hear the biggest concerns from all over the city before he’s sworn in. Tonight’s meeting is up North at the Northgate Community Center, on 5th Ave NE and NE 105th. 7pm.
On Tuesday, McGinn will be at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center in the Central District, and on Wednesday he’ll be at Rainier Beach High School in South Seattle.
Today’s Morning Fizz brought to you by the Low-Income Housing Alliance:
