Crime and Homelessness Growing in and around Seattle

Crime and homelessness growing in and around Seattle, as the city council refuses to curb public drug use and homeless encampments.

By Eileen Griffin

As crime continues to grow in Seattle, it is now expanding into the once-safe suburbs.

Police in Renton, Washington issued a safety alert in October after five armed carjackings occurred in less than one week, KOMO News reports.

The Renton police told KOMO that the attacks are happening everywhere. Some occur in industrial areas, and some happen in front of the victim’s home. Some include gunshots fired.

Four teenagers were caught after committing armed robberies in Bellevue and Redmond, both upscale suburbs, FOX 13 Seattle reports. While fleeing the scene of one robbery, the criminals drove the wrong way at a high-speed putting the community in serious danger.

Throughout the fall months carjackings have taken place in Seattle, Renton, and Bellevue, KIRO 7 reports. In what appears to be a plan, victims are being rear-ended in parking lots. When the victim gets out of the car to assess the damage, they are held up at gunpoint.

The explosion of crime in Seattle has been reported extensively since it began shortly after the George Floyd riots. Since that time, the soft-on-crime policies pushed by city officials has continued to make criminal behavior acceptable and profitable.

The Seattle city council has voted down any proposal to tighten laws and punish criminals, the New York Post reports. A municipal ordinance proposed in June aimed at restricting drug use and clamping down on homeless encampments. The vote was 5-to-4 against instituting the measure.

Along with crime, homelessness has grown in and around Seattle in recent months. The site of a former Sam’s Club has become a large homeless encampment, KOMO reports. Surrounding business owners are frustrated by the criminal activity related to the homeless encampment as it puts customers in danger.

“It’s a garbage dump, we warn our friends, and family and customers do not come down here after dark, you can’t park anything in our parking lot cause all that attracts crime,” Dutton Clark, owner of Stereo Warehouse told KOMO. “It’s just a big crime zone here.”

Clark says crime is out of control. Drug use is rampant. His store has been broken-into repeatedly. Clark says the criminal activity is all related to the homeless encampment.

“We have people wander into our store, we have people camped on our front steps, the parking lot is a mess continuously,” Clark said.

A homeowner in the area, Matthew, also told the outlet that the homeless encampment has brought crime to the neighborhood.

“They have to do something to clean this up, it’s not just an eyesore it’s a public health issue and it’s attracting crime,” Matthew said.

“It’s all over Washington State,” wrote Eric J on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Inslee (WA Governor) and Ferguson (WA Attorney General) don’t hold criminals accountable. Crime and drugs aren’t high priority for them.”

“Does anyone have any idea of something that might have happened in perhaps early 2020 that kicked off this violence, some shock in the culture that unleashed the violent side?” wrote Jeffrey Tucker, president of the Brownstone Institute, in an opinion for The Epoch Times.

“Memories are fading fast because of a shutdown of information, a lack of responsibility, and the daily persistence of lies,” Tucker wrote. “What happened was the nationwide suspension of the Bill of Rights and the forced isolation and mass disruption of pandemic planning.”

Americans have witnessed the unleashing of the criminal element and yet the response is minimal. Some elected officials have supported and encouraged criminal behavior.

“Violence was valorized by all official sources,” Tucker wrote. “That ethos gets broadcasted out to the public.”

Cities have typically had an element of danger, but suburbs are usually considered a place of safety. If violence and crime become accepted as common, it will expand in places like Bellevue and not stay contained in Seattle.

“It’s a cycle of violence, kicked off by drug addiction, cultural collapse, evil policies, and chaotic times when vast numbers of people have lost hope in the future,” Tucker wrote. “The problems are now extremely deep-rooted, and there’s a maddening lack of honesty about any of it.”

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