Hollingsworth talks with attendees at a public safety forum session earlier this month (Image: CM Hollingsworth)
With reporting by Hannah Saunders
Seattle Police swarmed the busy area between Pratt Park and Dr. Blanche Lavizzo Park in the Central District after reports that a teen opened fire in the middle of a street fight late Tuesday afternoon.
Police said they found shell casings scattered in the street in the just before 5 PM incident and made one arrest. At least one other teen fled police on foot, according to East Precinct radio updates. Somehow, nobody was hit in the melee.
The sight of a teenager opening fire as a group brawled around her near a sunny Seattle park on a Tuesday afternoon was the latest in a burst of gun violence in the city that has sparked concern for parents at nearby Garfield HIgh School and inspired a swirl of community public safety meetings and an increased police presence in nearby neighborhoods.
Tuesday night, Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth held her fourth and final in a series of public safety meetings around District 3 with a session at Capitol HIll’s Seattle Central College where the ongoing shootings dominated the discussion.
It has been a challenging introduction to City Hall for the first-term councilmember who shaped much of her campaign around a pledge to be responsive to concerns about public safety and increased spending on police while also building social and community programs to address the root causes of inequity and addiction that fuel crime in Seattle.
The community meetings are a test of that platform. One community asked Tuesday night why there is so much gun violence occurring in D3.
Hollingsworth said the focus should be on the city and region as a whole and blamed social media for creating a sense that D3’s violence stands alone.
“If you live in South Seattle, you are 30% of the gun violence—that’s 12% of the population right now,” Hollingsworth said. “We have a social media problem.”
The stats back Hollingsworth up, to a point. Gun violence has soared in King County since the pandemic. There were 1,701 “shots fired” incidents across King County reported in 2023 — including 107 homicides.
But Hollingsworth is also facing immediate worries about a series of shootings that have played out in only a matter of days around 23rd Ave including last Wednesday’s afternoon’s shootout between two vehicles that sent a 17-year-old Garfield student caught in the crossfire to the hospital with a serious injury to her leg and left bullet holes and shattered glass amid crowds of students leaving campus for the day, and that night’s deadly shooting a few blocks away that left 41-year-old Eboni Walker dead on the sidewalk at 23rd and Main.
One parent at Tuesday night’s meeting said their child is traumatized from the nearby shootings and feels confident that PTSD is rampant among youth. He wants to see police patrols out in front of Garfield High daily, and since SPD is short staffed, he suggested that park or transit police step in.
In attempting to try to calm fears, it is easy for officials to downplay the situation. But when it comes to gun violence, the city is up against issues beyond its borders. DeVitta Briscoe, the city’s gun violence prevention liaison, who has been supporting Mayor Bruce Harrell on partnering with the county’s Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention told Tuesday’s audience that perpetrators sometimes live in southern King County and come to Seattle.
“This approach will help us to not have any barriers because of geography and who we can serve,” Briscoe said. “A regional approach is something very, very huge for the work we’re doing.”
Briscoe said resources from the Seattle Community Safety Initiative are available for critical incidents and have been active at nearby Washington Middle School and Garfield High School, among others.
“Number one, there are hybrid gangs. There’s not the normal, traditional street gangs anymore. They are just young kids that are forming cliques and then they merge,” Briscoe said. “Some of it is a gang problem, some of it is just a robbery gone bad.”
Hollingsworth’s series of meetings mirror another effort at City Hall where the mayor launched a series of public safety forums Thursday night as concern around the shootings also started that nearly two-hour conversation.
A recurring theme for parents and community members attending Hollingsworth’s meetings has been calls for an immediate increase in police and security around Garfield and Washington.
Victoria Beach, now the Central District’s public safety liaison for SPD, said more police and private security from the district are in place and already helping in the area.
Beach also touted SPD training initiatives like the Before the Badge Program which requires recruits to undergo social and community training prior to joining the academy.
“I wish people could really see what goes on in there,” Beach said. “If somebody told me the things we do, I wouldn’t believe it—it’s incredible.”
Councilmember Hollingsworth also pointed to longer-term efforts at reducing the rates of gun violence.
“Investments in food security lowers gun violence by 30%, so I know Washington Middle School lost their food pantry, so that’s one big thing we’re going to be addressing,” Hollingsworth said. “Hunger really puts you in a different mindset and place. That’s one thing I’ll be looking at.”
Hollingsworth also said a school resource guide for the district is under development and that using social media in positive ways has to be a part of that conversation.
More powerful responses may be necessary. Harrell used his forum last week, in part, to call for changes in Washington law, calling on the state to pursue a ballot initiative to allow mayors to regulate gun ownership, restrictions that are currently limited by Olympia.
UPDATE: Garfield parents held a small protest outside the school Wednesday afternoon calling for more police and security.
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““Investments in food security lowers gun violence by 30%, so I know Washington Middle School lost their food pantry, so that’s one big thing we’re going to be addressing,” Hollingsworth said. “Hunger really puts you in a different mindset and place. That’s one thing I’ll be looking at.”
I seriously doubt that 30% statistic, and that hunger has anything at all to do with gun violence. This sounds like a misguided effort to claim that violent criminals are just “victims” because society doesn’t provide them with something to eat.
Yeah I wrote a similar comment yesterday and for some reason it wasn’t posted. But this is just ridiculous. It has to do with parenting. It has to do with culture. Constantly blaming poverty and larger society for what is obviously an insular problem is ridiculous. I voted for her in hopes that she would not be like Sawant and other progressives who blame everybody but the perpetrators for their actions. And I’m disappointed in this response.
I’m glad to read someone say – It has to do with parenting. It has to do with culture. Constantly blaming poverty and larger society for what is obviously an insular problem is ridiculous. – It came from a poor background and these problems weren’t rampant like they are today. Just because you are poor doesn’t mean you will be a criminal. I always ask myself, where are the parents in all of this?
Have you ever considered you might be wrong though, and that other people suggesting “larger society” is to blame — i.e. a reference to the mass psychological trauma we’ve inflicted over decades of mass resource extraction from developing or resource starved nations via our colonialist foreign policy initiatives, now being turned inward on the US population, influenced by corporate lobbies and manifesting as creeping fascism — might have a point?
I’m no Hollingsworth fan (yet–I’m open to it), but crime is directly correlated with poverty and we’ve known this for so long–what year are you living in?
The statistic may or may not be right but chronic hunger certainly is an aggravating factor in antisocial activity of all kinds, from mildly irritating to deadly. (Ever hear the term “hangry”?) People say, decide and do things they otherwise probably wouldn’t. I know I have. However, hunger doesn’t by itself make people who commit violence into “victims” and I don’t believe Hollingsworth is making (or would ever make) such a claim. Even Sawant might well call it overly reductive.
Hollingsworth appears to be sincerely trying. I didn’t vote for her but I’ll give her that much. The sad truth is there’s just not much local officials can do about guns. Cities in redder states with even more guns are having a worse time of it than Seattle is right now, and getting less help from their states. Just keep doing something.
Could it be that kids join gangs because social inequality and not wanting to work for crappy wages companies like Hollingsworth’s are trying to dish out?
Jason! Quick suggestion. Please keep your trolling more consistent. You have to do your usual thing of linking Joy with the other currently elected Black politicians as a conservative right-wing cabal. Then you can get more creative with blaming her/them for persistent social and economic inequality, gangs, drugs and so forth. Then you can circle to how Sawant was super responsive to neighborhood concerns, incidents of violence, etc.
I mean yeah Sawant wasn’t showing up with a mobile shotspotter lol, but she was attempting to address the massive wealth inequality prevalent across the city by increasing taxes on big business (and receiving massive pushback). Maybe Jason is just fearful that Hollingsworth’s financial backers from the election might advise against Sawant-style policies, which he clearly feels would benefit those currently involved in crime and likely give them better things to do with their time.