SEATTLE — Guns, drugs, and sex trafficking were the main points of discussion at a meeting between city leaders and neighbors along Aurora Avenue Wednesday night.
The meeting followed weeks of turmoil over gun violence that culminated with residents building large planters to block off several streets in an effort to prevent crime near their homes.
One of the big questions at Wednesday’s meeting was whether the roadblocks could become permanent, to which a city representative said it was still being discussed.
Another question posed by concerned neighbors was where the mayor was.
“What I’d like to talk about is a lack of urgency and a lack of leadership,” Jake, who asked that his last name not be published, said. “You showed up and the mayor hasn’t shown up. At all.”
Jake’s comments to a representative from Mayor Kaite Wilson’s office were met with cheers.
“We still haven’t seen any action, and we have only seen an Instagram post from the mayor,” he said. “That’s wildly unacceptable.”
Jake spoke with KIRO 7 after bullets were fired into his home, narrowly missing his baby’s crib. He repeated the story Wednesday to a crowd of concerned neighbors and Wilson’s public safety operations manager, Alison Holcomb, at the North Precinct Advisory Council meeting.
“You all know what the mayor’s schedule looks like, or you can imagine,” holcomb said. “It doesn’t mean she’s not prioritizing this.”
“It does mean that she’s not prioritizing this,” Jake responded.
Neighbors blame the shootings along Aurora on the area’s drug and sex trade. They built homemade roadblocks to keep criminals off residential streets, but the city swapped them out for less obstructive concrete barriers.
If they can’t get their roadblocks, they asked, why doesn’t the city crack down on the sex trade?
“What is happening on Aurora, it’s completely unacceptable and it cannot be tolerated,” Jenna Robert, a prosecutor with the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, said.
Robert told the crowd prosecuting sec trafficking is difficult, and the the bigger priority is getting guns off the street.
The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office also spoke of the difficulties surrounding such cases, but touted more than 400 cases filed along the corridor since 2024, including one against a Bellevue man accused of trafficking a 14-year-old that was filed just this week.
“There really hasn’t been much accountability for sex buyers,” one neighbor said. “It is happening in front of our homes. In front of our children. We come out in the mornings and there are used condoms and disgusting wet wipes all over the place.”
The mayor is scheduled to appear at the North Precinct Advisory Council meeting in September.
After Wednesday’s meeting, KIRO 7 reached out to her office to ask why she did not attend. We will let you know when we hear back.
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