Zeroing in on where exactly someone was shot last night near here. First cut, NWCN email:

Not Lacey, but you can’t blame them for thinking that.

Getting closer, at at least technically true by mailing address, is KIRO:


And, hitting the nail on the head is the Olympian:

The murder happened just on the edge of urban northern Thurston County, unincorporated, but as KIRO put it, a “crowded neighborhood” with obviously urban issues.


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This area (Thurston County’s Invisible City) is the third largest city behind Olympia and Lacey is is policed by a county sherrif’s department that had admitted it is grossly understaffed.

You could point to the recent flare up between the county sheriff and the county commissioners on staffing and say that the commissioners should have given him more funds, but you’d wrong to look there. I think that battle was more of a symptom that the actual disease.

The real problem is that a county sheriff department is left holding the bag with the job of policing a city that does not exist. This is why we have city governments, because people living in high enough densities need a more intense level of government service, like police.