Dori: With crime upsurge and transit mania, light rail violence no wonder
Sep 16, 2019, 2:59 PM | Updated: 5:01 pm
The Husky Stadium light rail station at UW. On Sept. 14, a man who had been stabbed exited a train here. (File photo)
(File photo)
Over the weekend, we had two acts of violence at light rail stations and on trains. There was a triple shooting at the Westlake light rail station downtown Friday evening. Then on Saturday, another man was stabbed aboard a northbound train just before it arrived at Husky Stadium.
None of this is surprising. We talked about this just last week. When you have this perfect storm of drug vagrants, gang members, and people who are desperate on the street, combined with public transportation, this sort of thing is bound to happen.
In San Francisco, for example, BART ridership is down because homeless people ride the train all day long, and even use the train seats as toilets.
We simply are one of the most crime-riddled areas in the nation, and the statistics support that. With one being the safest, and 50 being the worst, our state is number 36 in the country for crime in general.
Only 14 states are worse. For property crime, we are number 46 out of 50. Why do property crimes occur? It’s because people who are heroin addictions have a $40,000-a-year habit. They have to steal a lot more than $40,000 worth of stuff to feed that habit, since they get dimes on the dollar for whatever they try to resell.
Meanwhile, politicians are doing the best they can to force us to take public transportation. They take away car lanes, they take away parking, they put streets on “road diets” to gridlock the region.
They do as much as possible for them to make mobility impossible for you. If they can force you onto mass transit, they will. They despise the lives of people like you, who are busy with kids. They despise the fact that you can’t take an hour-and-a-half to get home on buses and light rail when you could take the same trip in 30 or 40 minutes by car.
Dori: Renton bus station shootout why I don’t take public transit
So when you have a city that is as crime-riddled as we are, when you pack people together, and when you then you force them all to take public transit, it’s no wonder these violent events occur. These conflicts between gang members and drug vagrants mix with people just trying to get home from work via the train.
Seattle Police Sergeant Sean Whitcomb told The Seattle Times that this kind of violence would not happen on the train again. Really? I’m sure a lot of people thought that after the shooting Friday night.
Then the very next day, there was a stabbing on the light rail. How can you say it will not happen again? I don’t know who is giving the Seattle Police Department the orders to say that this is a safe city, but it’s a mirage.
The sad reality is, it’s gotten really dangerous out there. It’s impossible not to be dangerous when you have a city and a region that is so filled with drugs. Drugs bring crime. Crime brings violence.
And by the way, in its stories about the shooting and stabbing, The Seattle Times did not allow comments because the topic was “particularly sensitive.” Are they afraid people will insult gang members? Are they under orders from the city and county to not make downtown look so bad? Are they worried about offending Sound Transit?
But if you remember the three stories the Times did on King’s Schools last week, which garnered hundreds of toxic and downright hateful comments against Christians, those comments were left open. Somebody getting shot or stabbed on a Sound Transit train is sensitive, but three days of viciously ripping a Christian school, Christian individuals, and Christianity itself is fine.
Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
