It’s known as the “queen city of the Northwest” and the “emerald city,” but Seattle’s decline into lawlessness and squalor amid a homelessness crisis and the more recent efforts to defund police and soften the punishment for crime is evident even to visitors in the city’s downtown shopping district.
On 3rd Avenue, only three blocks from the Seattle’s iconic Pike Place Market, videos from KOMO News reporter Jonathan Choe reveal the squalid conditions, with homeless people openly using drugs and trash covering the street, Townhall reported, in front of storefronts still covered by plywood some 18 months after the 2020 riots and the takeover of a city neighborhood.
HAPPENING NOW: Just hours after a shooting on 3rd Ave in Downtown Seattle, the insanity has returned. This is the stretch between Pike/Pine St. Open air drug use, sales of all kinds of merch, trash everywhere. How is this allowed?@MayorofSeattle @downtownseattle @SeattlePD pic.twitter.com/UQPmg9krhU
— Jonathan Choe Journalist KOMO News (@choeshow) February 28, 2022
“Hundreds of people” are “just taking over store fronts,” Choe wrote.
“No wonder businesses are leaving.”
ACROSS THE STREET: For those who do not believe the madness of what’s being allowed on 3rd Ave in Downtown Seattle, this is another vantage point. Hundreds of people just taking over store fronts. No wonder businesses are leaving. Cray cray. #ForReal #Woke #TooWoke pic.twitter.com/jSnoFOw9Vk
— Jonathan Choe Journalist KOMO News (@choeshow) February 28, 2022
“You see what they’re doing out here. I don’t need to say what they’re doing out here,” a security guard for a store told Choe, referring to the open drug usage.
STREET INSIGHT: So a lot of this activity on 3rd Ave is happening outside the Century Square office tower, home to corporate biz and storefront shops like Piroshky Piroshky and Chipotle. Listen to what private security guard says about what he sees on the regular. #Seattle pic.twitter.com/7x865oQiFV
— Jonathan Choe Journalist KOMO News (@choeshow) February 28, 2022
Too dangerous for sheriff’s office
In August, as WND reported, the sheriff of King County told employees to work from home because it was too dangerous to come to sheriff’s headquarters in downtown Seattle.
Seattle is known for being at the forefront of the move to defund police as well as for its inability to curb its homelessness problem. The offices are near a homeless camp in City Hall Park, which had been the scene of violent attacks in recent months, including the sexual assault of a court employee by a homeless man in a women’s bathroom.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.
