Former city council member Tina Podlodowski, who now works for the global marketing firm Porter Novelli, offers a "solution" to the city's police problems in yesterday's Crosscut: Instead of negotiating changes to the Seattle Police Department's police accountability policy with the police union, the city council should stop paying city employees until "we fix this."

Addressing the city council, she writes:

Stop the checks from flowing for everyone (yourselves included) and shut ’er down, guys and gals of the council. Nobody gets paid until speeches, knee jerk reactions, and protests are set aside and we fix this.

Ridiculous? Of course. Unnecessarily punishments? You bet! Necessary to get parties to the table to at least start to make progress? Maybe so. Uh, is anything else working right now? It sure doesn’t look like it. It’s a silly action to awaken folks to just how irresponsible they’ve been to let the situation get to this currently sad state of affairs.

Podlodowski doesn't say exactly what would qualify as "fixing" the department's accountability rules---which certainly should be examined in light of a number of recent questionable use-of-force incidents involving Seattle cops---nor does she explain how, exactly, shutting down the city's payroll system (the city council has to pass the payroll by a roll-call vote every Monday) would produce the morale and stamina needed to reform those rules.

Yeah, yeah, I get it: Podlodowski's making a modest proposal. I've got nothing against that. But a modest proposal on police accountability should target the people who actually make the decisions, not the thousands of city employees who have nothing to do with SPD and actually need that regular paycheck (unlike Podlodowski?) to pay the bills.