Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell: Government needs to balance being tough on crime with compassion

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell says it is important to be tough on crime. Appearing on KIRO Newsradio, Harrell said, “I make it clear that we have to be equipped and capable and have the tenacity to go after the bad people, the bad people who are selling drugs to our neighbors, who are committing crimes. We have to be able to do that.”

But, he said there has to be a balance. “We also have to realize that most people were in the third grade or fourth grade at one point in their life, and they had their hands up in class, and they were thinking that they can be better, a better person, if they worked hard and studied hard. And so we have to try to find that level of humanity in everyone but our first and foremost charter responsibility are to protect people, to make sure that they can thrive in a city. And so our policies have to exactly match our philosophy.”

The Mayor told guest hosts Tim Gaydos and Greg Tomlin on “The Jake and Spike Show” that when he speaks to the police department, he wants them to follow what he calls “North Star,” which he said means to make people feel safe in Seattle.

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“I feel confident that’s what our city is doing now, that when we get criticized for moving someone outside of a tent in a park, my position it’s inhumane to let anyone live in the cold or in the rain or in the blistering heat,” Harrell explained. “We have to be smart enough and compassionate enough to house that person.”

He said that the city does not want people on the sidewalks lying down. “We have to get that person up. If they’re sick, we have to get them healed. The challenge we have in politics is that people often want a public safety approach to a health problem. These people using fentanyl, are sick. They are killing themselves, and in our work now with the Health Department, which I remind people, is governed by the county, not to denigrate any of these fine people.”

The Mayor explained that when people are simply arrested, “they spin in and out of jail, and that is not the smart way to go about this.”

Bomb cyclone aftermath

Harrell said after the storms, he didn’t have power for a few days, but that he had friends who use medical devices that weren’t prepared. “We sometimes take power for granted. If you look at our power system through Seattle City Light … we have a great system. Our crews were working around the clock to do the best that they could, and so we continue to try to give updates the best we could. Most people have their power restored now.”

Grappling with a complex budget

The Mayor explained that the city has both a revenue and expenditure problem. “We have inflated our budget up to the north of $8 billion including the utility revenue streams. Everything has to be efficient. We have to build in internal systems. We have to save money. We have to realize where there are redundancies. For example, if we’re looking at three departments that have separate onboarding situations, HR situations and systems, can we merge and so that’s the hard work that we are doing. At the same time, we realized that the cost to live in Seattle, the cost to fill your car up with gas, as an example, to pay your utility bills, that people are really struggling. And in a very wealthy city, as we are, one of the wealthiest cities per capita, that we have a lot of people struggling.”

Thanksgiving message

At the end of the day, Harrell had a Thanksgiving message for KIRO listeners. “We have a lot to be thankful for, and if you could just hear my voice, let’s breathe the air and look at what life and has to offer here in this world. I’m very, very thankful, thankful for my family. And I just hope everyone sort of seizes the moment, live in the ‘here and now’ and and give thanks to everyone around them.”

Bill Kaczaraba is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here. Follow Bill on X, formerly known as Twitter, here and email him here.