I have to say I am at an almost complete loss of words after watching this video. I have tried to finish watching this video smultiple times. Each time ended in tears streaming down my face and more feelings thrashing about in my head and heart than I could articulate or than you would care to read.
Let me start by telling you that my husband and I made a conscious choice over 40 years ago to move from Southern California to Seattle to begin to raise our family. We were newly pregnant and thought we had found utopia in Seattle. We had traveled to multiple cities investigating them to see if they would be a place that we felt we could put our heart into being part of. We wanted a place that we could raise our children to be a contributing part of the community, to feel secure, and to feel proud of. Seattle won out. We lived in varying cities surrounding Seattle and at different points in time my husband and I both worked in the downtown section of Seattle. My husband was a policeman there for over 32 years. We were proud to invite our family and friends from around the globe to see the beautiful place that we called “home”. Never, never in my wildest dreams would I have envisioned that Seattle would have become the lawless, filthy, drug infested apocalyptic place that it has become. I am not only heartbroken but angry and frustrated.
Long before this video aired, and long before my husband quit the police department in abject frustration, this problem was percolating on the horizon. It wasn’t really so much a percolation as it was a boil. The problem was escalating and quickly. It was a problem however that no one wanted to look at or address. Now it has been laid bare for the entire world to see.
When I view this video my heart is broken on so many levels. It breaks for a beautiful city that once was. It breaks for the inhabitants of that city. It also breaks for the mentally ill who have become addicts and pawns in the drug community. Make no mistake. Drugs are big business and they are part of the very fiber of our communities no matter what you believe. Drugs, and the problems that they bring, including addiction, are not unique to Seattle. We moved to Phoenix and there is a drug addiction problem here not only amongst adults but among school-age children. One exists in every city and in every country.
As I watch this video on Seattle I am thunderstruck by the, in my estimation, stupidity, arrogance, and bravado, in which the City Council of Seattle has acted. No sane person can look at this video, walk the streets of Seattle, own a business in Seattle, or visit it as a tourist, and not leave shaking their head and wondering if they have entered a real life scene from the movie “Escape from New York”. How long will it be before the following description of the movie becomes the reality for Seattle?
“….50-foot (15 m) containment wall surrounds the island, and routes out of Manhattan have been dismantled or mined, while armed helicopters patrol the rivers, and all prisoners there are sentenced to life, with no means of leaving.”
Stop blaming the police for doing what they have been commissioned to do, which is in essence, stand by and allow abject lawlessness to run the city. There are no laws protecting the citizens against the very destructive elements that the criminals utilize to their every advantage. Unfortunately, the police department for the city of Seattle has been handed, respectfully said , their “ balls”. They stand by, the few who remain, shaking their head at the horror that they see surrounding the citizens of Seattle.
Stop blaming each other for voting decisions. Stop putting politics before logic. Be better than dispute and division. You need each other now in a way that you’ve never ever needed each other before. Build bridges before the criminals burn them all down. Open your mind, extend your hand to others, and find a solution together.
Start uniting by voting out a City Council that should long-ago have been given walking papers. Vote in people who actually have not only the ability, but compassion, intellect and the backbone to care about the city, the mentally ill people, the businesses that need to thrive, and who can help find solutions for the drug infestation and addiction that is running rampant in the city of Seattle. Help elect people who understand how to find solutions to crime and predatory criminals.
Find a way to be part of a much needed solution for this beautiful city. I would hate for it to disappear forever. We still have precious family in the Seattle area. We still have wonderful friends there. My heart will forever be a part of Seattle and it breaks for what is has so unnecessarily become.
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