(The Center Square) – Hundreds of frustrated residents and neighbors marched along North Seattle’s Aurora Avenue for a demonstration last Saturday night.
Organizers called the event “Stop the Traffickers, Stop the Bullets”.
Frustrated by persistent sex trafficking and escalating gun battles, people demanded immediate action from the city to curb the violence and criminal activity, with just one week until the first World Cup match is hosted in Seattle.
Former Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison helped organize the event.
“I had several people reach out to me in a span of just five to seven days asking for help. These are people that don’t know each other, but all live in that North end and near the North Aurora corridor,” said Davison in a Monday interview with The Center Square.
“So, I went out to talk with neighbors to just kind of listen and hear about everything that had been occurring and it just kind of dawned on me, like we should just take the streets back,” she said.
Davison said about 300 people showed up to walk on Aurora in support of pressuring city and state officials to respond to the crime plaguing the area.
“People came out of the businesses that were open. People were coming out to wave at all of us walking in the street,” she said.
“Demanding there be a public safety strategy on a specific topic in a specific area, particularly an area that’s been so overlooked and just been like entrenched and we don’t know what to do,” said Davison.
Public Safety Committee Chair Bob Kettle, who has been critical of Mayor Katie Wilson in recent weeks, as well as Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans, and staff from the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office also attended and walked alongside members of the community.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson did not attend, and her office has not responded to repeated requests for an interview.
As reported by The Center Square, frustrated residents who live along Aurora recently took matters into their own hands by putting up steel planters to block access to residential side roads, which the Seattle Department of Transportation later replaced with staggered concrete barriers to allow emergency vehicles to pass through.
Davison believes a statewide response is needed.
“We need the mayor to call the governor and the National Guard because as we know our city is low on numbers of police officers, and those low numbers that we do have are going to have to be concentrated at the games, as they should for security there,” she said.
“Meanwhile, the underbelly and the increase in traffickers that will be going to the north end of Seattle, that leaves those neighbors and those girls and women, the ones being trafficked, just that much more at risk with no protection,” Davison added.
Davison was referring to the fact major international events like the World Cup attract traffickers looking to exploit large crowds.
The city of Houston, Texas, also hosting World Cup matches, has launched billboards stressing that trafficking is a felony.
A survivor of sex trafficking is featured in the ads and spoke at a recent press conference as reported by ABC 13 in Houston.
“During the 2017 Super Bowl, I was being trafficked at and around NRG Park. I know what it feels like to be hidden in plain sight among thousands of people and yet remain unseen and unheard,” she said.
“I do not stand before you as a victim of that story. I stand before you as proof that overcoming is possible. Healing is possible, and when communities come together, lives can be and are changed.”
Davison said law enforcement assets need to be focused on the high crime and prostitution plagued areas along Aurora even if resources are scarce.
“The increase with the international circuits of traffickers coming in and having turf wars with the residential pimps that are already here, abusing the street corners as it is. We have to put some attention there.”
Davison said people don’t want to talk about sex trafficking and the human toll, but with events like the World Cup it’s unavoidable.
“When there’s large events, there is a circuit and they follow the event in addition to the ones here. There are international ones that follow these large events like this. We need to respond.”