Amazon will move 1,800 workers from downtown Seattle offices because of rampant crime in woke bastion where City Council has cut police budget by $36million since 2019
Amazon announced Friday that it will relocate office staff in downtown Seattle
The Third Avenue and Pine Street location employs 1,800 people
The city’s violent crime spiked on March 2, when 15-year-old Michael del Bianco was shot and killed at Third Avenue and Pine Street
The intersection is where Amazon’s office building is located
Violent crime has plagued the downtown Seattle area for months
Recent incidents include multiple shootings, assaults and a carjacking
In December, the Seattle City Council approved a 2022 budget that cut police department spending by more than $7 million
Several businesses have also closed citing safety concerns, including, Qumulo, a cloud technology firm, a Russian bakery, and McDonald’s
The city’s violent crime spiked on March 2, when 15-year-old Michael del Bianco was shot and killed at Third Avenue and Pine Street — One person shot constitutes a spike? People are shot down in Motown about every day.
I wouldn’t use Detroit as a role model.
https://news.yahoo.com/amazon-relocates-downtown-seattle-wor…
“The area has been plagued by crime in recent weeks, with at least three shootings, two stabbings and one carjacking occurring near the office since February 21, according to information from the Seattle Police Department…”
From last month: https://kuow.org/stories/seattle-officials-announce-new-meas…
Violent and property crime in Seattle rose in 2021, and local officials are trying to respond…Overall crime in Seattle increased 10% last year compared to 2020. Violent crime in particular rose by 20%, a 14-year high.
Actually, Detroit is not the most violent place in the state. Two small west Michigan lakeshore towns are worse.
This ranking also places, Kalamazoo, a small west Michigan town, in fourth place, just behind Detroit, but looking at the stats, I would place Kalamazoo in fifth, behind Saginaw.
Compare 660 to #4 in Michigan, Kalamazoo at 1,336, or Albion, very small town in central southern Michigan, at 849. At 660 violent crimes/100,000, Seattle doesn’t even make the top 15 list in Michigan.
The city’s violent crime spiked on March 2, when 15-year-old Michael del Bianco was shot and killed at Third Avenue and Pine Street The intersection is where Amazon’s office building is located Violent crime has plagued the downtown Seattle area for months
Meanwhile, for those who consume data:
Homicide rate: 2020: 53. In 2021: 40. down 25%
Violent crime rate: 2018: 5026. In 2019: 4694. In 2020: 4483. In 2021: 5361. So down 3 of 4 years, but a new high in 2021.
Seattle’s violent crime rate is comparable to Atlanta, Boston, and Sacramento.
Of the 20 cities with the most violent crime in the US, Seattle is not on the list. (It’s #21.)
Violent crimes and homicides have increased 15% to 20% during the pandemic. Seattle is not different, but I’m sure such stories help the DailyMail sell papers and fool gullible people.
Seattle is not different, but I’m sure such stories help the DailyMail sell papers and fool gullible people. — Well, it sure fooled Amazon and all the employees who worked downtown.
And this poor gullible bakery owner:
Piroshky Piroshky closing downtown Seattle location over ‘countless safety concerns’ www.king5.com/article/news/crime/seattles-piroshky-piroshky-…
Seattle’s popular Piroshky Piroshky Bakery is closing its Third Avenue location in downtown “until further notice” over “countless safety concerns.”
Seattle business owners, tourists react to latest record crime numbers and hot spots https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-business-owners-tour…
‘Seattle Shirt Company has been broken into seven times in three months. Sneaker City, which closed recently and moved online, was broken into 15 times in two years, according to the owner. The Target on 2nd Ave and Pike St in Downtown Seattle is one of the top locations in the city where officers responded to 911 calls last year “Seattle is a mess right now. It’s a real mess. I’ve lived here for 34 years. I love this town. I hope it’s resilient. But it has never been worse,” said Rick Thompson.’
Well, it sure fooled Amazon and all the employees who worked downtown.
Amazon has 75,000 employees in Seattle. 60,000 of those are office workers, the rest are in warehouses and distribution centers.
So what I’m being told is that Amazon has decided to move 1,800 employees out of Seattle because it’s unsafe, but leaving 58,200 others in those office buildings because, um, they don’t care about them? Oh wait, it’s a small, single location, it’s a temporary move, and the overall crime rate increase is less than the rest of the country?
Well, I guess that’s hard to fit in a headline. Or some people’s brains.
My family is ancestrally from Seattle and Portland. I have 8 cousins and godchildren in Seattle and vicinity. One of them works for Amazon and two of them for other high tech companies located in downtown Seattle. They find the hysteria mostly silly and think that Amazon is using this as an excuse to cover some other agenda.
Downtown Seattle Target barely surviving as shoplifting ravages store https://mynorthwest.com/3322824/rantz-downtown-seattle-targe…
The Target department store in downtown Seattle is being absolutely ravaged by shoplifters, with one staff member telling me theft happens “about every 10 minutes.”
From January:
Chinatown International District businesses worried about crime are moving out of Seattle https://komonews.com/news/local/chinatown-international-dist…
On Friday, many business owners in the C-ID were just getting word about the latest homicide in the area. They say the shootings, the stabbings, the drug use, and also what they see at the corner of 12th Avenue and Jackson in the C-ID have created major headaches and concerns.
Dong Thap Noodles is just across the street from the trouble spot. Owner Nick Bui says his business has been broken into several times. Some of the incidents were caught on camera. Bui told KOMO News last month that because of those repeat break-ins, his insurance coverage wasn’t renewed. Bui has decided to leave Chinatown-International District and move to Southcenter Mall in Tukwila.
dang, I’ve worked in Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, Flint Township, and Saginaw. Was never a victim of any crime. Must be really lucky.
You missed Kalamazoo. The wife of one of the guys who worked in the machine shop at the pump seal company, and also the mother-in-law to one of the company’s salesmen, went downtown Kazoo shopping. When returning to her car in the parking ramp, she was assaulted by two young women and beat within an inch of her life. iirc that was in the 80s some time.
A former coworker at Radio Shack moved on to running a pizza shop near the Whatsamatta U campus in the early 90s. He was leaving after closing up, sometime after midnight, and was assaulted by two men: couple broken ribs, collapsed lung, I forget what else.
Well, it sure fooled Amazon and all the employees who worked downtown.
Don’t believe everything you read in the Daily Mail. Or at least, I don’t think it is good policy.
Short answer: Amazon said that people in that building may temporarily work in other buildings. The number of Amazon employees who work in that building is tiny compared to the number who work in the rest of downtown. And Amazon doesn’t even have a company back to work policy yet.
Long answer: 3rd and Pike has always been sketchy. And with COVID, the downtown emptied out of normal citizens which made room for sketchy folk. And police stopped arresting people for minor crimes because they didn’t want COVID spreading in the jails. Which made things even more sketchy. Open air drug dealing and such.
Lately the cops have been cracking down and cleaned up that corner and a few other bad sections. But there were a couple drug deals gone awry which ended in gunfire. Not good. Hence the reason some employees may not wish to go down there.
dang, I’ve worked in Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, Flint Township, and Saginaw. Was never a victim of any crime. Must be really lucky.
Forgot one:
Early 90s, I was sitting in my apartment watching TV. At 11:00, I wondered what the engine was I had been hearing running for hours, was about. Looked out the window, and saw a flock of floodlights in the parking lot of the elementary school next door.
Found out the next day what had happened. There had been an evening function at the school. During that function, a guy was going around the parking lot, breaking into cars. A guy living in the same building I lived in saw the perp breaking into cars and went over to confront the perp. The perp jammed a screwdriver into the guy’s head, killing him.
And I lived on the extreme south end of Kazoo then, one of the few decent neighborhoods left.
So that is two assaults and a murder, in the space of ten years, that I have a personal connection to.
Actually, that’s two murders. A high school classmate and coworker at the pump seal company was murdered, but that was a “domestic” issue.
but the problem is concentrated right in the area where Amazon has the 1800 workers and the city council reduced police funding another 7% this coming year. What did they expect?
Stores broken into continually. Massive shoplifting in the area. Homeless sleeping on the streets, drug users throwing infected syringles all over, litter, pollution, human waste on the sidewalks. All concentrated downtown.
Move 10-20 blocks away and Seattle is no worse than Atlanta…overall…
Yeah, when folks are murdered 2 doors down from where you work, you might get worried about your commute…or even having a place to eat lunch…since they are fleeing the area.
Target should just shut down their store. It’s probably losing a million a year in theft.