SEATTLE—Seattle police and crime victims say they’re being left behind as Mayor Katie Wilson focuses on clashes with ICE while repeat offenders continue to drive crime across the city.
“I think the center focus on that right now is ICE,” Officer Kent Loux, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“It is the immigration,” Loux said. “It’s this federal feud that the mayor’s office is having with the federal government. That is the confusion. I think if she wants to have her feud, have it. Leave SPOG out of it. We do not need to be a part of it, we have been apolitical on all these demonstrations. We clearly can demonstrate that. We are not worried about taking a side. We’re not wanting to take a side, but putting us in this crossfire physically or potentially politically just isn’t fair to SPOG members.”
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Shortly after taking office on Jan. 1, Wilson announced on Jan. 29 a policy requiring the Seattle Police Department to “investigate, verify, and document any reports of immigration enforcement activity.”
The announcement stated that “if dispatched to a location where apparent immigration enforcement activity is underway, officers will document the activity with in-car and body-worn video, validate the status of apparent federal law enforcement agents through official identification, and secure scenes of potentially unlawful acts to gather evidence for transmittal to prosecutors.”
Loux told Fox News Digital that while Seattle law enforcement officers do not investigate immigration status and that “it is of no importance to us,” Wilson’s stance is “confusing.”
“The current city’s policy on us investigating ICE is very confusing for officers,” Loux said. “What does investigating mean? What does identifying mean? This is a disastrous policy that is potentially putting officers and federal law enforcement officers pitting against one another. Not just maybe a physical crossfire situation, but also a political crossfire situation.”
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According to Loux, the city’s law enforcement officers are already struggling in a less-than-ideal environment.
“The members of the Seattle Police Department are trying their best,” Loux said, “They’re out there working, they’re making arrests every day. They are doing the work. Understand, please understand, that the criminal justice system is much larger than just the police officers. We are hitting obstacles with King County Medical Jail declines. We’re hitting obstacles with prosecution, with judges releasing people.”
“We are spinning our wheels, and it really is trying on us,” Loux added. “Please understand we are hundreds of officers short. And we have people working extra shifts all the time to just get to minimums. So we are working, delays are sometimes significant. We’re trying to improve that as best we can, but people are — we are stretched thin.”
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Melanie Roberts is the granddaughter of Ruth Dalton, an 80-year-old professional dog walker who was murdered in a carjacking on Aug. 20, 2024, by Jahmed Haynes, a repeat convicted felon who had served time in prison for vehicular homicide, robbery, and assault. Roberts told Fox News Digital that she is frustrated by the current approach to crime.
“It’s time to stop taking such a soft stand on crime,” Roberts said. “It’s time to protect the citizens who follow the law and quit trying to mold the criminals into better citizens to be reintegrated. It’s time to protect the citizens that are already following your rules and your laws. I want a harder stance on crime, I want more discipline. I want more consequence. And then maybe people will learn their lesson and maybe people will stop committing the crimes that are putting us all at risk.”
According to a FBI crime report for 2024, released in August, Seattle was ranked fourth-worst out of the 30 largest American cities for total crime.
According to the report, Seattle’s total crime rate per 100,000 residents was 5,782.7, and its total crime numbers were 172.9% higher than the national average.
Roberts said her grandmother had pulled over to the side of the road in the residential neighborhood in Madison Park to send daily Bible devotionals to her friends and family when Haynes tried to steal her car, causing Dalton to fall out before he ran over her.
Dalton’s dog was stabbed to death and thrown in a garbage can.
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Haynes did not trigger the state’s three-strike law despite eight felony convictions, KIRO 7 reported. Roberts said her grandmother’s murder was a “failure of the system.”
“He had been out of jail for, I want to say, seven years at the time that he killed my grandmother,” Roberts said. “By his own admission, he was not on the straight and narrow for those seven years. He had committed other crimes but had not been caught. So frustrating to think that if the system would have been a little better, if a deal hadn’t been cut in 2003, he would have been caught on any other charges [and] maybe my grandmother would still be alive. I feel it’s a failure of the system.”
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Michael Held, chief of staff for the Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office, gave Fox News Digital an account of Haynes’ case.
“In November of 2004, [Haynes] was committed to Western State Hospital for a competency evaluation; an assessment of his mental state at the time of the offense; and evaluation of his dangerousness to others/likelihood of committing further criminal acts,” Held said, in part. “During the evaluation process, defense counsel reported to Haynes’ assigned forensic psychiatrist that he had never been able to give her a coherent account of the instant offense and that he typically does not speak. Haynes was found not competent to stand trial. The court entered an order staying proceedings and committing Haynes to Western State for further evaluation competency restoration. To that end, the and the court entered an order for the involuntary administration of medication. Eventually, Mr. Haynes’ competency was restored, and thereafter counsel for the State and the defense negotiated a plea to three nonstrike offenses with an agreed exceptional sentence of 180 months.”
The prosecutor said mental competency in severe cases can be unstable, potentially delaying or preventing a trial altogether. Held noted that proving the weapon met the legal standard of a deadly weapon was uncertain, so prosecutors focused on securing a guaranteed outcome that would keep Haynes in custody for a significant period. Under the plea deal, Haynes agreed to plead guilty to two counts of custodial assault and one count of attempted first-degree escape, and to serve the maximum sentences consecutively, totaling 15 years in prison.
Roberts said that she is “very frustrated with Washington in general.”
“I feel like they are very pro-criminal and very anti-victim,” Roberts said. “[Haynes] has all of these rights. He has the right to have his attorney. He has a right to refuse medication for mental competency. He has the right for this and that and we, my family, my grandmother, have very little rights. There’s very little that I’ve been able to do besides get in front of a camera and tell her story and tell the truth about what’s happening and the frustrations. The media has been more help to me than the criminal justice system has to this point.”
Matt Humphrey, a Seattle barber who has locations in the Ballard and Roosevelt areas, said he faces break-ins or security incidents at least once a quarter.
He told Fox News Digital that he lost $26,000 in retail in a robbery last year and lost $3,000 replacing a front window, and has hired professional help to protect his employees.
“I hired a friend who’s a former ATF agent to do de-escalation and safety with my team so they know how to deal with it,” Humphrey said. “And I need to hire him again. I need to bring him back in because I have a fresh new group of people working the front end who all need training on this. And I’m providing this training. I’m paying my friend to come in and do this. And I shouldn’t have to deal with the level of frequency that we deal with here, like four times a year is four times too much when it comes to cost.”
“And it comes really to the emotional part,” he continued. “I mean, that’s the hard part. I mean again, when you pour your whole life into something. I mean, I’m 32 years into this business and for the last six years it’s just been miserable, and I don’t want to give up. I don’t want my kids to see me give up. And so rather than be a victim and be afraid to talk about crime, I’m standing up, and I’m talking to you guys because this has to end.”
Meanwhile, State Rep. Shaun Scott of Seattle, a member of the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America since 2017, told Fox News Digital that he thinks law enforcement officers are doing things that are outside of their “expertise.”
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“I think that right now we are asking police and law enforcement to do many things that fall outside of the bounds of, frankly, their expertise or their job training,” Scott said.
“It is part of the reason why alternative 911 response is… an issue that I hear so much about in the state legislature, because people understand that if you’re somebody who’s going through an overdose, if you are somebody that’s going through a mental health episode, if you’re somebody that needs to be connected to services, you don’t really need a gun in a badge response,” he added. “In fact, we have criminalized too many public health issues in our state and our society generally. So I think that the role of alternative 911 response is to fill in the gaps and to really address issues that traditional law enforcement has not historically been equipped to.”
Asked to identify examples of what law enforcement is doing effectively, and where it is falling short, Scott said he “would have to get back to you on that.”
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Compounding the current crisis law enforcement and victims of crime are facing, some Seattle residents see the increase in socialist policies in the state as a great concern.
“The rise of socialism is a concern for me,” Loux, the SPOG president, told Fox News Digital. “I think these socialist policies are a threat to public safety. What we’re seeing is increased mandates, increased corporate taxes, and it seems that it is squeezing businesses and pushing them out of this city.”
One of the best examples of increased taxes is the recently passed “millionaires tax” which Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson signed March 30. It will impose a 9.9% income tax on households earning more than $1 million each year. The tax applies to any money earned after the first $1 million of someone’s annual income.
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“Even on a larger scale, I think out of the state I think it’s very dangerous to public safety as it threatens budgets,” Loux added. “Public safety is about resources, and I need a large tax base, I think we all do. All departments need a tax base to fund training, equipment, patrol operations in high crime areas, high traffic areas. And it’s really putting a strain on things already. And you’re seeing these businesses flee, and that’s really going to distribute the budget.”
Humphrey told Fox News Digital that socialist progressive urban policy is “like a foreign language I don’t understand.”
“I just, as a small business owner in America, none of that makes any sense to me,” Humphrey said. “I just don’t know how you create any incentive for someone to go out and do what I’m doing, it sounds anti-me. Like, to put it all on the line, to create jobs, to create a tax base, to do all this. None of that works in the conversations I hear in New York and when that party starts speaking up. None of it makes sense to me.”
Humphrey said he isn’t sure that Wilson, Seattle’s new mayor, will take much of a different approach than former Democratic Mayor Bruce Harrell in terms of addressing crime.
“I hope this new mayor can flip the script and get something changed, but I don’t see any signs that it’s going to be different,” Humphrey said. “I see more traffic, shutting down more traffic lanes, making it harder to get to my shop in Ballard. I see, again, the musical chairs with homeless encampments three or four blocks away.”
While Humphrey said he has considered running for office, it is not something currently in the cards as he focuses on keeping his business afloat.
“I love this city, and I was so close to running for office myself,” Humphrey said. “But I just, there’s no way. I have a small beauty empire I’m trying to grow, and I can’t do it and clean up their mess. So I need this new mayor to do her job and get us some safety and security and make it a little more friendly on businesses, cut us a break, don’t hit us with all these taxes. I get that you guys want to tax the rich, but we are not rich. Small business owners are not rich, so help us out.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, the Seattle Police Department, Gov. Bob Ferguson, and the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office for comment.
