Desperate Seattle residents putting up steel flower planters as barriers to block off their streets to quell runaway crime have finally drawn the attention of the city’s socialist mayor.
Mayor Katie Wilson said this week that Seattle is “acting now” on shootings and drug and human trafficking-related crime after being pressed by a local news anchor on why citizens had to take matters into their own hands before City Hall did anything.
The location at issue is the neighborhood hit by reoccurring violence tied to Aurora Avenue on the city’s north side.
Fox 13 co-anchor Hana Kim told the mayor:
We’re hearing from residents saying there are constant shootings there, bullets going through homes, human trafficking is up, prostitution is up. Desperate residents put up steel planters to block some of the crime. They say it was working, but then the city took it away and said that they need to have a permanent solution, so they want to study it. But at what point do you act?
“So we are acting now,” Wilson responded. “A number of members of my team… were up doing a walk with the neighborhood a few days ago, and I totally understand why people put the barriers in the streets.”
Residents along the corridor spent Memorial Day weekend constructing the barriers out of metal planters, concrete blocks, and other items to block streets “after weeks of shootings, high-speed chases, and crime concerns tied to prostitution, trafficking, and alleged turf wars,” Fox News reported.
One resident, Peter Orr, told KTVB 7, “It’s either this, or bullets in my neighbor’s houses.” The Mayor was mocked online for her residents taking such drastic action to ensure their own safety.
Conservative commentator Paul Szypula wrote on X, “When progressive policies result in neighborhoods literally barricading themselves off… that says everything.”
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