On the heels of an embarrassing story about a retired Seattle Police lieutenant’s scorching letter of resignation to her police chief, Fox News is reporting another black eye for the Jet City; a national survey showing the city “leads the nation in the percentage of people who feel pressure to leave over crime concerns.”
When Seattle Times writer Gene Balk recently discussed the issue in his “FYI Guy” column, it elicited 159 reader responses. Now the story is making national headlines, and not in a good way.
The story about former Lt. Jessica Taylor’s resignation letter gained national prominence last week. This second punch cannot do anything for a city which sells itself as a progressive metropolis and tourist destination. Liberty Park Press reported her letter here.
But the Fox News report points to last year’s 24 percent spike in homicides last year, and 30 percent hike in auto theft. Liberty Partk Press has been reporting about the rising murder numbers in recent months, focusing on the irony seven years after the city adopted a special gun and ammunition tax to create revenue which would be spent on programs to reduce so-called “gun violence.” Since the tax took effect in 2016, two things have happened which get virtually no attention from local establishment media. First, the tax has never achieved the annual revenue forecast of between $300,000 and $500,000. The most ever collected was in 2020, when the city took in $184,836, according to data provided by the City of Seattle.
Second, homicides have gone up, not down, more than doubling last year (52) from the number of slayings (19) posted in 2016.
Liberty Park Press has been following the trend, along with obtaining monthly reports on active concealed pistol licenses in Washington counties. King County encompasses Seattle and has the highest number of active CPLs of any county in the state, hovering at 110,646 as of Aug. 1, which was down slightly from the 110,738 posted by the state Department of Licensing at the end of June. Roughly 25 percent of King County CPLs are held by females, according to the data.
A check with the Seattle Police Department revealed the city has already logged 44 homicides this year, and with more than four months remaining on the calendar for 2023, the trend is for a number surpassing the 53 posted in 2020.
As far back as August 2020, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has been critical of Seattle’s gun tax and the failure of gun control laws to live up to their predictions.
According to Fox, data pointing to Seattle as the city people feel the need to get out of comes from the Household Pulse Survey by the US Census Bureau.
Balk’s column, which ran earlier this month, elicited some interesting comments among those 159 reader reactions. One in particular was submitted by someone who said they “carry a gun and two printed papers. Castle doctrine and a copy of Washington’s stand your ground law.”
Washington does not actually have a stand your ground law, but there are a couple of court rulings which clearly explain there is “no duty to retreat” in the Evergreen State.
A version of this report also appeared in TheGunMag.com.
