Newly elected Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell has pledged to recruit more cops and enforce the laws on the books in a “back to the basics” strategy to confronting the city’s rising crime rates.
“The truth is the status quo is unacceptable – that is the ONE AREA where we must all agree,” Harrell said during his first State of the City address on Tuesday. “It seems like every day I hear stories of longtime small businesses closing their doors for good or leaving our city; of families forever changed because of senseless tragedy driven by gun violence or overdose; of rising rents and an inability to pay bills or find housing; of climate impacts; of disillusioned youth and residents who don’t feel seen or heard.”
Like many other major metropolitan areas, Seattle experienced a surge in crime in 2021, with violent crime increasing by 20 percent year-over-year, according to the Seattle Police Department’s year-end crime report.
The number of shooting incidents in Seattle reached a ten-year high in 2021, outpacing 2020 by 40 percent.
Harrell said he would combat crime by “making sure we enforce our criminal laws against those who are harming others” and hiring more cops. Hundreds left the department after the riots ravaged the city following the George Floyd’s murder in May 2020.
“Part of that plan requires more officers. The depleted staffing we see today does not allow us to react to emergencies and crime with the response times our residents deserve,” Harrell said. “It does not allow us to staff the specialty teams we need for issues like domestic violence or DUI or financial crimes targeting the elderly. It does not allow us to conduct the thorough investigations we expect to make sustainable change.”
Mimicking the language of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, however, Harrell also pledged to adopt a “holistic approach to public safety” that deemphasizes police presence.
He said his office is working to consider “options to move away from a police-centered approach to public safety and to focus more on harm reduction.”
“We can have safety, and we can have reform,” he emphasized.
“We lead with and acknowledge the fact that African Americans have been subject to 400 hundred years of institutional racism,” he added. “That the exploitation of our indigenous people has been woven into the fabric of this county since its inception; and that in 2022 we have seen anti-Asian hate and antisemitism at alarming levels. Those understandings should be part of our basics as well, and just as important.”
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