Months later, police prove that downtown Seattle is dangerous
Apr 27, 2015, 1:31 PM | Updated: Apr 28, 2015, 7:12 am
(AP file photo)
Taken from Monday’s edition of the Dori Monson Show.
I talked at Christmastime about how it’s not safe in downtown Seattle, and you may recall I had these newspaper columnists who were taking shots at me. I said, if given a choice between taking your family to downtown Seattle at Christmas vs. a place like Bell Square, you’d be insane to go to downtown Seattle because it’s not safe.
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Seattle Police have announced that they’re back in business and they’re going to start cracking down on the exact area that I was talking about. The area I had seen with my own two eyes — the Pike-Pine corridor, between the Pike Place Market and Macy’s — has become an open drug bazaar in downtown Seattle.
I know the people who like to defend the local government took issue with me saying that, but we spoke the truth and now the Seattle Police Department is admitting it.
“During the past year, the Seattle Police responded to the 1500 block of Pine Street approximately 1,700 times, almost three times that of surrounding blocks,” Seattle Chief of Police Kathleen O’Toole said. “Since my appointment last summer, I’ve heard daily from people living and working in the neighborhood down there about their concerns about drug dealing and crime.”
The city announced police made 95 arrests on one night last week in its effort to crack down on crime.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s top public-safety adviser blamed the state of downtown crime on the King County Prosecutor’s Office, saying that “heroin, crack, and meth possession has largely been legalized in the city over the past several years as the county prosecutor significantly raised the bar to prosecuting drug possession,” according to The Seattle Times.
“I’m always flattered when someone ascribes to me the power to control the downtown drug market, but we’ve never been out of business,” responded King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. “We continue to file the drug cases that come to us. If they don’t come to us, we can’t file them. We filed 1,800 drug cases last year.
“The one difference, I would say, is we’re in the post drug war era and we try to do things that allow us to distinguish between the people who are severely addicted to drugs and those who are just down there to prey on the addicts. We have more treatment oriented programs. We have drug court. We have the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program. For those who are just down there to make a buck, they’re going to face felonies, they’re going to face prison.”
The reason I feel strongly about this is there are some cities in which I feel incredibly safe. New York City, I feel incredibly safe — everywhere I go in New York City. I think New York feels a lot safer than downtown Seattle these days.
Taken from Monday’s edition of the Dori Monson Show.
-MyNorthwest staff