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COLUMNIST
Shawn Vestal shawnv@spokesman.com (509) 459-5431Shawn Vestal joined The Spokesman-Review in 1999. He currently is a columnist for the City Desk.
Most Recent Stories
April 21, 2021, 5 a.m.
The single most important thing to know about the proposal to slash community voices and reformers from the Spokane Regional Law and Justice Council may be this: The prosecutor, sheriff and police chief all support it.
April 18, 2021, 5 a.m.
A normal girl. That’s what Danna wanted to be, the people who knew her say. But that was not what she was.
March 28, 2021, 5:30 a.m.
There are a lot of dramatic numbers involved in Spokane’s “sizzling hot” housing market.
March 26, 2021, 5 a.m.
Step back in time to September 2016, when Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson first proposed legislation that would ban the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
March 23, 2021, 2:30 p.m.
When David May, the interim president of Eastern Washington University, put out a powerful statement last week condemning racist graffiti at the apartment of an African American student, he also unequivocally denounced the Atlanta shooting as a racist act and placed it in the context of a surge in outspoken racism nationwide.
March 21, 2021, 5 a.m.
Talk about cancel culture.
March 21, 2021, 5 a.m.
When a neo-Nazi spray-painted Spokane’s Temple Beth Shalom with swastikas and other hateful graffiti, he said he was trying to recruit more people to his cause.
March 19, 2021, 5 a.m.
One obituary is a portrait of a life. Several obituaries, taken together, form a portrait of a community.
March 17, 2021, 4 a.m.
It was a beautiful sunny day – one of many in our recent windfall of beautiful sunny days – and we were walking through Riverfront Park.
March 14, 2021, 5 a.m.
In the latest report evaluating racial disparities in stops, arrests and uses of force by the Spokane Police Department, the authors note that officers are much more likely to search the cars of Black and Native American drivers than other motorists.
March 13, 2021, 5 a.m.
You might not have heard much about it, but there was a very important protest on the steps of the Idaho Capitol in Boise last week.
March 10, 2021, 5 a.m.
Mayor Nadine Woodward, along with 20 other Eastern Washington mayors, is asking Gov. Jay Inslee to take their suggestions for reopening businesses.
March 7, 2021, 5 a.m.
Joseph Duncan may not receive the death penalty after all, but not because he’s won an appeal.
March 3, 2021, 5 a.m.
It was not even 8:30 in the morning and the kid was already wearing clothing, for heaven’s sake.
Feb. 25, 2021, 2:54 p.m.
What does it mean to “strike” a document from the public record? To “remove all remnants” of it?
Feb. 25, 2021, 1:22 p.m.
The faculty at Washington State University is trying to conduct a very modest, very gentle intervention with the school’s drunk uncle – asking the administration not to expand its subsidy to the deficit-spending athletics department by another few million dollars per year.
Feb. 23, 2021, 4:39 p.m.
“The police ombudsman and any employee of the OPO must, at all times, be totally independent. Any findings, recommendations, reports, and requests made by the OPO must reflect the independent views of the OPO.”
Feb. 21, 2021, 4 a.m.
Julian Francis Abele among the first Black architects in America, whose portfolio includes the Philadelphia Museum of Art and he famous chapel at Duke University. But his earliest design was for a house for his sister, in West Central.
Feb. 20, 2021, 5 a.m.
The word “patriot” has fallen into egregious misuse lately.
Feb. 19, 2021, 5 a.m.
The leader of a neo-Nazi terrorist group who bought 30 mountainous acres of land outside Republic in 2018 once worked for the federal agency dedicated to… fighting terrorism.
Feb. 14, 2021, 5 a.m.
Redfish Lake is one of the most beautiful places in the Rockies – a classic mountain lake, icy and deep blue, surrounded by the lush green slopes and distant rocky peaks of Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness.
Feb. 11, 2021, 3:08 p.m.
If you’re hoping to see shackles placed on the ability of police unions to hamper officer misconduct investigations, then I suggest you get to grips with an excellent slice of legislation: Section 3 of Senate Bill 5134.
Feb. 10, 2021, 5 a.m.
People say it was shocking that a racist vandal spray-painted swastikas and defaced the Holocaust memorial at Temple Beth Shalom this week.
Feb. 7, 2021, 5 a.m.
There is, as Dr. Francisco Velázquez likes to say, light at the end of the tunnel.
Feb. 5, 2021, 3:30 a.m.
Less than a month after the fatal Capitol takeover by self-described patriots battling supposed tyranny, Matt Shea stood before an adoring crowd in North Idaho and told them to prepare for “total war.”