Business manager says cops didn’t show up to armed robbery, assault

Correction: The Everett Police Department reports this crime did not happen within its jurisdiction. The original story has been updated.

The field manager of a Puget Sound business is puzzled why it took police so long to show up for a violent crime last week.

Dave Igel is the field manager for Morris-Hansen Enterprises Everett, a company that cleans windows up and down the I-5 corridor.

Last Wednesday, Morris-Hansen employees were cleaning windows at a bank in Everett when Igel said they noticed two thieves stealing from their work van. Upon approach by an employee, Igel said one of the thieves drew a gun, stating, “This is my van,” while the other sucker-punched the employee.

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“By then, the other guy had come around the van and drew the gun, and told him to give him his wallet,” Igel described. “And he wouldn’t, so [the thief] struck him a few times with the pistol. He finally gave [the wallet] up.”

The bank reported an armed robbery and assault, but police did not show up, according to Igel. After an hour-and-a-half of waiting, the victims finally went to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office to report the crime.

“The guy told them, ‘These guys are being assaulted by guns in our parking lot,’ and nobody showed up,” Igel said.

Igel cannot understand why Everett police did not at least “check for fingerprints or check for video footage.” (Editor’s note: The crime did not happen in EPD jurisdiction.)

He said that he is a firm supporter of police officers and does not blame individual cops. However, he does blame local leadership for “not letting the police actually do their job” so that cops are “walking around with their hands tied.”

The violent experience was so harrowing for the employee whose wallet was stolen, that in the 10 days since the crime, he quit his job and moved back home to Texas.

“He freaked out because they took his wallet, and he was afraid they were going to come to his house,” Igel said. “He just freaked out and quit, and packed everything, and moved back to Texas.”

For that man, Igel said, the armed theft was the last strike after witnessing crimes all over the Puget Sound while on the job.

“He said he’s just seen enough around here — he said he’s been approached by so many different vagrants on the street … Texas isn’t like this, they don’t have it like this, where you have vagrant people all over the place,” Igel said.

Igel said he has witnessed countless crimes in his travels throughout the region for work, in particular downtown Seattle.

“I love my job, but if everything is going to drive me away from this state, it’s going to be this city [of Seattle],” Igel said. “It’s insane trying to live around here.”

He holds out hope that new leadership will be elected to better handle the region’s drug and property crime crisis — especially when seven Seattle City Council members are on the ballot next year.

“I hope the people that are up for re-election do not get re-elected because something has got to change around here,” he said.

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