Ross: Seattle Police are stopping crimes we don’t even know about

Every week we talk with Casey McNerthney, who runs media relations for the King County prosecutor’s office, to find out what happens to criminals once their crime is out of the headlines.

But this week, he had an item about a crime that didn’t make the headlines to begin with because it didn’t happen.

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And it didn’t happen because someone spoke up. In this case, the tip came from a person who knows how terrifying it is when a bad person gets a gun. She was at the Gorge last month when a shooter opened fire at the campground.

And this person had seen a social media post that she found really disturbing.

“It said that the person would dump clips at a nightclub event in Seattle,” McNerthney said.

“Dump clipz,” spelled with a “z.” That’s gun talk for shooting a lot of bullets.

So she did a screen grab and, at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday, called 911.

“Seattle police, King County prosecutors, and Tacoma police acted immediately,” McNerthney said.

The prosecutor’s office helped track down the person who made the threat, police got a search warrant, staked out his residence, and according to Deputy Prosecutor Dan Carew – it’s a good thing they did.

“When a search warrant was done on the suspect’s residence, they did, in fact, recover an assault-style rifle as well as a drum magazine, both of which are capable of holding quite a large number of rounds,” Carew said. “So I think it was certainly a credible threat. And credit goes to Seattle Police Department for acting so quickly and swiftly.”

And credit also goes to the person who called. As bad as the gunfire has been lately, it could be worse.

“These are cases that we’re seeing more and more, and so we’ve really worked hard to work with law enforcement to develop a swift response,” Carew said.

So the police are ready day or night to track down people who have no business bearing arms, but they can’t be everywhere. They need help from social media watchers. They need you to make that call.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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