Seattle homicides to surpass 3-decade high among nationwide crime spike
Last month, Seattle detectives recorded their 71st homicide of 2023, bringing the liberal city neck and neck with its all-time high in 1994 with a couple of weeks left in the year.
Seattle is on pace to surpass a nearly 30-year homicide record as gun violence plagues the Emerald City.
It reached a total of 71 homicides this year on Nov. 30, tying the city's deadly record set in 1994. The Seattle Police Department said this week that no additional homicides have been recorded since then.
"While violent crimes are down, the amount of fired rounds used to commit a single act of violence is up," Public Affairs Officer Shawn Patrick Weismiller told Fox News Digital. "This has [been] attributed to homicides going up."
In 2022, per the department's end-of-year report, 52 homicides were reported, up from the previous year's 42. There were 53 homicides in 2020, according to the department's reports.
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Per data compiled by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, homicides had been on a steady decline since 1994, reaching an all-time low of 16 in 2016 before beginning to climb.
Weismiller told Fox News Digital that guns have been taken off the street at a record pace. As of last October, 1,260 illegal weapons had been seized. In the entirety of 2022, he said, 1,349 guns were confiscated by officers in the city.
Pre-pandemic, the department investigated just 33 homicides in 2019, per their data.
In October alone, 108 guns were recovered, per FOX 13. It is unknown how many were stolen, but Seattle Assistant Police Chief Tyrone Davis told the outlet it was likely a high percentage.
Victoria Beach, the chairperson of the city's African American Community Advisory Council to the Seattle Police Department, told FOX 13 that gun violence is "out of control."
"These kids, gang members that are doing this, they don't value lives. They don't care who they hit. And they know it's a free-for-all right now," she told the outlet this week.
Sophia Arain, who has lived in the city for 10 years, told KOMO News that there are "a lot of shootings at night" lately: "You hear gunshots. We're pretty used to mut[ing] the TV or whatever we're doing and asking, 'Hey, was that a shot fired?'"
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The office of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell wrote in a statement to Fox News Digital that nearly 79% of homicides are linked to firearms, calling gun violence an epidemic in the city.
"This trend of homicides is extremely concerning and shows there is more work to be done to keep Seattle residents and communities safe, take guns off our streets and hold those who cause harm accountable for their actions," Communications Associate Callie Craighead wrote on Monday.
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The Seattle Times reported that King County Executive Dow Constantine launched the new Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention in October to combat increases in shootings and killings.
The mayor's office also noted the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, which works to intercept individuals considered most likely to perpetrate gun violence – most often young men of color – and link them to education, jobs and services, according to the Seattle Times.
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This year, the city allocated $1.8 million to "pilot a new suite of advanced safety technologies to protect neighborhoods impacted by recurring gun violence" and "collect new evidence to solve crimes."
Much of this funding was allocated from the first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, established in September to distribute billions in federal funding included in gun safety legislation passed by Congress in the wake of last year's school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the Seattle Times reported.