A while back, vagrants were renamed homeless people. Under a decade ago, everyone in the media got the bulletin to rename illegal aliens, undocumented immigrants. And prostitutes have somewhat more recently been renamed sex workers.

Soon criminals will be renamed justice-involved individuals by the media.

Cat burglars can still be called cat burglars, for now.

Much as with criminals and the homeless, changing names doesn’t change the problem. As Seattle found out.

In a marked departure from the city of Seattle’s approach to dealing with street prostitution the past seven years, Seattle police officers this summer returned to routinely arresting and booking sex workers on Aurora Avenue in North Seattle.

It’s street prostitution, but sex workers. Shouldn’t it be street work?

Despite some criticism, the city has stood by the approach, known as the “Nordic model,” as a progressive alternative to the old way of addressing prostitution. But in the face of a sharp spike in the amount of street-based sex work, service providers exceeding their capacity and intense pressure from North Seattle residents and businesses, the Seattle Police Department began moving away from the Nordic model last July — at least temporarily. 

Service providers exceeding their capacity? I don’t even want to puzzle out that politically correct euphemism.

Officers also have noticed an uptick in people coming from California to work in Seattle, said Edwards, although he was unsure why.

Because Seattle cops stopped arresting prostitutes?

As the amount of sex work has increased, so has community pressure on the department to do something. “It’s coming from citizens, business groups, individual business owners,” said Edwards. “The chief’s office has heard it in community meetings, emails, phone calls — there’s been an awful lot of expression of concern as well as anger because of how visible and high profile it’s been up there.”

So they’re going to pretend to make arrests while really doing nothing.

Most of those arrests are not being charged by the City Attorney’s Office and serve only to temporarily remove the women from the area for several days or weeks. Edwards said it’s either that or do nothing. “We’ll make the arrests; we’ll file the bookings,” said Edwards. “That’s not a solution in and of itself. For us it’s really back to that piece of almost the community caretaking approach — to at least get them out of the environment, albeit for a short period of time.”

Meanwhile, Seattle residents who don’t want hookers outside their house or business will keep voting for the same Democrats who did this. Is there a good P.C. euphemism for idiots?