What if? Road Flaggers helping direct traffic at big events?

 RantWoman tends to ingest a healthy dose of KUOW news along with her morning porridge.

At the moment, RantWoman is assembling the following mean to look up further comments.

RantWoman remembers awhile ago when it came to public attention that some Seattle Police officers were earning really a lot of money working off-duty for public events. RantWoman has not paid attention to whether rules for off-duty work have changed. RantWoman is also not sure whether say directing traffic for major concerts falls within regular policework or could be counted as off-duty.

RantWoman has, though, taken note of two recent concerts, Taylor Swift and Beyonce. 

RantWoman has noticed vigorous campaigns encouraging people to travel to events on transit. Judging by passenger loads on routes RantWoman travelled during recent weekends, the announcements seem to be working.

What is not working:

The weekend Taylor Swift performed, Seattle police reportedly suffered a minor epidemic of "blue flu" with as many as 1/3 of assigned officers not showing up for assigned duties. This staffing shortage was linked to a serious problem on Broadway with street racing.

Beyonce's recent Thursday night performance was also the night an elderly man took a sledgehammer to windows and property at the Wing Luke museum, heartbreaking vandalism for a museum that so clearly articulates truth about Seattle history RantWoman knew nothing about before visiting. People calling 911 were told to take pictures and call the insurance company in the morning because there were no officers available to take a report. 

RantWoman tends to agree that the person from Wing Luke interviewed on Soundside who said that if that kind of vandalism had happened at some other major cultural locations, the police might be likely to make it a higher priority to show up even if their presence has symbolic significance.

Here's where RantWoman's mind wandered to what-ifs based partly on interagency cooperation during WTO and partly on her long ago experience working concerts and other events as a civilian with a company uniform alongside uniformed officers working off-duty.

If there are not enough Seattle PD officers to staff big events, can off-duty work be offered to officers from other jurisdictions?

AND RantWoman does not remember what happened to  proposed legislation allowing people like certified road flaggers to do activities sometimes done by police. To RantWoman, managing traffic at major events would be prime opportunities to use such flaggers in partnership with police officers. This would both save money and ease the problems due to police understaffing.

Word!