(The Center Square) – The Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee approved an emergency plan Tuesday that will allow closure of residential streets off Aurora Avenue in North Seattle to through traffic after residents had complained for months about increasing crime and gunfire.
The plan is expected to be approved by the full City Council on June 30 and caps several weeks of activity by community residents, who packed City Council meetings and, on their own, closed neighborhood streets in a series of community protests.
The plan allows the police chief to close off streets in Seattle that see gunfire, drug activity prostitution and other crime.
The North Aurora Avenue corridor has been a center of underage prostitution for years, and police and community residents say the prostitution was helping fuel the increasing violence.
“This resolution is meant as a temporary tool when public safety issues arise in concentrated areas, providing the city the ability to act quickly in subduing crime, which allows time to assess long-term needs and implement solutions for these areas,” said Councilwoman Debora Suarez, whose district includes the Aurora Avenue corridor.
Suarez also said that she wanted to make clear that Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson always had the power to close Seattle streets for public safety issues and said it was “unfortunate” that it was not done sooner.
“I am just going to be straightforward about the fact that it had to get to this point to have legislation, to make an emergency, to do what the mayor’s office could have always done,” she said.
Suarez said as gun violence increased in May, residents closed off residential streets by Aurora Avenue between May 24-28 and saw reduced crime, only to see rates go up after the mayor’s office stepped in and removed barricades, replacing them with traffic calming devices.
Mayor Wilson’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
One Aurora Avenue area resident, Jake Wallack, was among more than a dozen residents who appeared before the City Council on May 26 to plead with city officials to do something.
Wallack said he had been complaining to Wilson’s office and city council members for six months to no avail.
“In the past two weeks, my house was hit by gunfire,” he told a City Council Public Safety Committee on May 26. “I have a six-week-old baby, and it [bullet hole] hit two feet above my baby’s window. A week later, my neighbor had a bullet go through their window and into their bedroom.”
Wallack said he had been complaining to Wilson’s office and city council members for six months to no avail. Wilson was not at Tuesday’s city council committee meeting.
But on June 11, she appeared with City Council members at a joint press conference at City Hall supporting the street closures.
“We absolutely need to stop human trafficking, and we also need to take care not to push women further into the margins, create more danger for them, or blame them for causing this problem,” Wilson said at a night press conference in City Hall.
Another Public Safety Committee Member, Ron Saka, applauded the mayor on Tuesday for agreeing to the plan to close the streets off of Aurora Avenue.
Saka also said the mayor had the power to close the streets without City Council approval.
“We’re taking away all excuses,” he said of the council vote closing the streets.