SEATTLE — A new public safety program was introduced today during Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan's State of the City address. It comes in the wake of last month's mass shooting Downtown.
Durkan had many accomplishments to highlight during her third State of the City speech. She mentioned new protections for domestic workers, expanding subsidized child care, and more students getting free college tuition. But after a deadly mass shooting last month, the mayor's remarks on public safety were the most anticipated.
“Increased public safety means more police officers, changing our gun laws, and a criminal justice system that deals better with repeat offenders. We cannot have community gathering places become places where people fear gunfire,” she said.
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But Durkan also said the solution goes beyond punishment,. “We need more economic opportunity for youth, more intervention and diversion programs, and more behavioral health treatment," she said.”
The mayor introduced a program to help communities heal from the trauma while police focus on the investigation.
“This new program will dispatch trained, trusted community members to respond immediately after a shooting, to hospitals, to neighborhoods, or hot spots. Their goals will be to calm tensions, support families and survivors, and stop these situations from escalating into retaliation or further acts of violence.”
As KIRO-7's Linzi Sheldon reported Monday, the enhanced police presence downtown includes detectives who are working patrol. We asked Police Chief Carmen Best about that today.
“They're not abdicating their responsibilities or their duties to augment patrol resources. They're spending a couple of hours a day in uniform downtown because we're all in this together," she said. "It's very important that we keep that downtown core as safe as possible."
The mayor's new Community Response program is an idea that comes from Atlanta and Philadelphia. The Human Services Department and Seattle Police will pay a nonprofit group up to $400,000 to do the work.
They’ll start putting the team together next month.
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