crime

“I’ve seen both pills and powder coming through,” Dennis Folk tells me. Folk is sounding the alarm that fentanyl is increasingly making its way into the King County jail and inmates are overdosing at a staggering rate. He is the president of the King County Corrections Guild, representing men and women who are trying to stop the flow of this lethal drug into the facility. “It was heroine years ago, now it’s fentanyl,” he tells me. Seattle Fire and medics respond to each overdose and administer Narcan. KYI Radio’s Ari Hoffman and I have been looking into this concerning trend. We’ve been told that there have been at least eight fentanyl overdoses in the jail since the end of May. Read More ›

Breaking I’ve obtained the horrific shooting video showing Korean American woman Eina Kwon being gunned down in her white Tesla in downtown #Seattle last week. Kwon was 32 weeks pregnant. Authorities say the baby was delivered via emergency surgery but later died at the hospital. Kwon’s husband was also hit by several bullets but is expected to survive. Police say the shooter is 30 year old Cordell Goosby, a convicted felon. He’s charged in Kwon’s murder and remains behind bars. Hundreds March for Eina This tragedy struck a chord with people from all walks of life who are just sick and tired of the crime, open air drug use, and deteriorating public safety conditions in parts of #Seattle Convicted Felon Read More ›

Pastor Brice Sanders and volunteers from Coastline Church Northwest were renovating their new building at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Lenora in Downtown Seattle when they heard six gun shots from just a block away. Sanders tells me they had to scramble for cover, get inside, and lock the doors. According to Police, a shooting happened Tuesday morning on 4th Avenue, a busy part of Belltown near CVS, Cinerama, and Amazon headquarters. Sanders says the shots were fired at a Tesla. “The Tesla had bullet holes in it,” he tells me. The Seattle Police Department confirmed late on Wednesday afternoon that a pregnant woman inside the car and her unborn child died. A male victim in the car is Read More ›

After Senior Fellow Jonathan Choe spoke with Dunn Lumber owner, Mike Dunn, about the impact of theft on his Seattle stores, Mike Dunn joined Fox News to share. Watch the clip on Fox News here. Watch Jonathan Choe’s exclusive coverage here.

Mother’s Day Weekend Madness The warm weather is bringing out even more open air drug use and dealers in downtown #Seattle and the #Chinatown-ID area. I’m seeing clusters of people passed out on the streets as locals remain desensitized and tourists literally just walk past the problem. The black market of stolen goods is hopping. People are jumping on and off the King County Metro (@KingCountyMetro) buses with tons of stolen merchandise. It comes and goes in waves. Without fail, evenings are the worst. Might as well call in the National Guard (@WANationalGuard) for a weekend stint. Can’t hurt right? It’s now been about a month since Mayor Bruce Harrell (@MayorofSeattle) announced his Downtown Activation Plan and signed the Executive Read More ›

Chris Wilson resides in Bellevue’s Robinswood Dog Park. Depending on who you ask, he’s either a well-known homeless man trying to get by, or an unhinged menace plagued by drug addiction and mental illness. Wilson is known for his erratic behavior at the park. “For the most part, I avoid him,” says Katherine McCarter who claims she was assaulted by Wilson last month after petting his dog. McCarter says she “never dreamed that this level of viciousness would come out,” and captured the entire encounter on a body camera. Bellevue Police officers responded to her call, and separated McCarter and Wilson when they arrived. Body cam footage from McCarter shows her telling officers that Wilson was in her face and Read More ›

National Guard Time? This is now the third weekend in a row I’ve been out to the downtown #Seattle core since Mayor Bruce Harrell (@MayorofSeattle) announced his Downtown Activation Plan and signed the Executive Order to address the fentanyl crisis. HOT SPOTS: 3rd Ave & Pike street/ 12th Ave and Jackson St/ 3rd Ave & Cherry St/Westlake Park Easily one of the worst weekends for open air drug use and the thriving black market of stolen goods. There were also more drug overdoses. This is all happening with construction projects in the area. But even that did not keep the addicts and dealers away. We haven’t hit the warm summer months in the city. Imagine how bad it’s going to Read More ›

I left San Francisco just in time — at the end of 2016. Sure, I saw the occasional junkie shooting up in public when I still worked in the city. And yes, I saw men use the sidewalk at the intersection of 5th and Market Streets as a toilet. But I never saw swarms of shoplifters emptying pharmacy shelves. If I needed new shoes, I could pop over to Nordstrom at the Westfield San Francisco Centre at 5th and Market. The number of friends who had stopped going into the city entirely — and switched to shopping in suburban malls — was unsettling, but tourists could help fill the gap. This week, sadly, Nordstrom announced it won’t renew its lease Read More ›

Total Disaster It keeps getting worse on 3rd Ave & Cherry St in downtown #Seattle, just one block from City Hall. More “trap tents” have been set up by the same folks this weekend. Many are DESC (@DESCSeattle) residents who just spill out into the street and hang out, smoking fentanyl and conducting illicit activity. This drug den continues to draw all kinds of bad actors to the area. Even though city sweeps are happening weekly, it just keeps on coming back! On occasion folks like Mac Larkin will accidentally wander on to this notorious intersection. He immediately regretted it. Watch this interview. It pretty much sums up the state of the Emerald City. Once again, some random homie recognized Read More ›

You can see, and smell, the gasoline staining the black top at Wallingford, Seattle’s United States Postal Service (USPS) station. But these aren’t your usual spills. John Pierce is a supervisor at the Wallingford station and says for the past few years, several homeless men have been siphoning gas from his delivery trucks in the parking lot. The men even go underneath the vehicles to cut fuel lines. “Every day’s a challenge,” says Pierce who tells me that the men “collect [gas] with a bucket” and siphon it out of their trucks with hoses. One of the postal service’s most prolific offenders comes by in broad daylight to steal fuel. The man has removed the license plates from his blue Ford Read More ›