Seattle Police Board Purges Ranks
Facing claims that some officers were too infirm to arrest even a teenager, the city's police commissioners move to dismiss aging members.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
At a meeting of the police commissioners last evening, a communication was sent in by Chief Jackson, calling attention to a number of appointments of police officers contrary to the rules and regulations of the department as to age and physical qualifications. Chief Jackson followed up the document with the statement that there are men on the force who cannot arrest a 16-year-old boy. The chief was instructed to make out and furnish to each commissioner a list of men who are not competent to remain on the police force. The name of Officer Ben Stretch was brought before the board, with the announcement that he is 53 years of age, the limit of age prescribed by the charter being 50 years. Upon motion of Commissioner Marion, he was dropped from the force by a vote of 3 to 1.
“Chief Jackson followed up the document with the statement that there are men on the force who cannot arrest a 16-year-old boy.”
Concerns over police competency, fitness for duty, and bureaucratic reform have been a constant thread in Seattle's municipal politics for over 130 years. The tension between institutional standards and the aging of the workforce remains a familiar, if modernized, civic debate.
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