Free Advice: not an April Fool

NOT an April Fool Item.

The RantWoman department of free and unsolicited advice is overflowing. Here are the most concise and presentable and urgent offerings about a couple police moments RantWoman's info streams have intersected with in the last few months.

Last night RantWoman and another friend were visiting a third friend in Columbia City. RantWoman went to use the restroom. While using the restroom, RantWoman heard what lots of other people seem to have heard: gun shots. Specifically multiple bursts with multiple shots / burst, clearly to the N and maybe slightly E of RantWoman’s location. RantWoman has seen Twitter. Via Twitter,

RantWoman has seen a police blotter item asking people with information to call the Seattle PDs non-emergency number. The blotter item implies that RantWoman was about a block south of the location others report. That matches with about the distance RantWoman would guess the noises were from her.

RantWoman has no idea whether these two pieces of information, her location when she heard the shots and the multiple bursts issue are redundant, with equivalent info already supplied by other people, but RantWoman did call the non-emergency number. RantWoman sat through a bunch of outgoing message directing RantWoman to the police department website. Then RantWoman finally got instructions to press a button to get in queue for a call taker. RantWoman at after a couple cycles of the please stay on the line voice, RantWoman lost patience.

Here are RantWoman’s suggestions:

--If there is a request for info in the blotter, include a case number and a path to offer info online, preferably a link to a form specific for the info request. That would save RantWoman having to listen to a bunch of irrelevant info in the non-emergency number outgoing message.

--If anyone needs more info than RantWoman has supplied, leave a comment and RantWoman will follow up but probably not publish the comment.

--From an item awhile ago where language access was highly topical: don't wait two days to have a pathway for people to offer input or ask questions in the most topical language. In the case RantWoman has in mind, there might have been more than one topical language, but RantWoman assumes that investigators will know quickly if this concern applies.
RantWoman also thanks the friend who drove her home for following RantWoman's directions about the most sensible driving route because that also bypassed the actual events that showed up in RantWoman's info streams.