‘What are we willing to do?’: Gee connects the Belltown shootings to a deeper problem rooted in poverty
Sep 9, 2026, 6:32 AM
Three separate shootings in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood over Labor Day weekend left three people dead, including a 17-year-old, and four others wounded. No arrests have been made. Mayor Katie Wilson said she will unveil a comprehensive gun violence strategy next week.
Gee Scott, co-host on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio, was in Chicago visiting family when the news broke — and at the same time was dealing with a personal tragedy. A cousin, he said, killed his fiancée in front of their children and then killed himself.
“When I got this news, it just bothered me,” Gee said. “And it bothered me, let me be transparent with you guys, it’s because at the same time back home in Chicago, I had a cousin who did a very awful thing.”
Shaken by both events, Gee said he got in his car Sunday and drove alone through the South Side, where he grew up. What he saw changed the direction of the conversation.
“When you guys come to Chicago, most people, you’re going to go downtown. You’re going to go where the tourists are,” Gee said. “The Riverwalk, The Bean, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, all of the things that show up. But then you go to the South Side, where I’m from, and you see things, and it’s totally different. I’m driving down 79th near Cottage Grove, and you’re seeing the check-cashing places on every corner. You are seeing the real poverty that is happening.”
“How do we still see this much poverty in America knowing that America is filled with money?” Gee added. “If we one day want to really address crime, then we must do something better than attack poverty.”
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Gee said he called a cousin while driving and began venting about what he was seeing. The cousin pushed back, saying people in poverty need to work harder and stop looking for the easy way out.
Gee said the response stunned him because of his cousin’s own record.
“I said, ‘How many times have you been arrested?’ He said, ‘Like 14, 15 times,'” Gee said. “In this business, you say somebody’s been arrested 14, 15 times, oh, you need to be thrown in jail for life, because you’re just a chronic offender. So I asked a simple question: If you had the financial means, how many times would you have not been arrested?”
The cousin’s answer, Gee said, was most of them. No insurance, driving on a suspended license, warrants tied to unpaid child support. No drugs, no theft, no violent crimes.
“If you can sit here and tell me that finances would have helped you out, why can you not see and understand how finances would help someone else out?” Gee said.
Fill-in host Angela Poe Russell said it hit close to home for her, too.
“One of my relatives who ended up in jail, the thing that got him in jail was not paying the fee to get off probation,” Angela said. “Had he paid that fee, there wouldn’t have been a problem. It goes back to the money conversation.”
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Producer draws a line between poverty and the Belltown shootings
Producer Andrew Lanier said the connection between poverty and violence is not that poverty causes someone to shoot, but that it strips away reasons not to.
“If I was age 18, living in poverty, my parents didn’t care a hoot about me, I had no future, no opportunities, I grew up in a community with violence, I’m going to own a gun,” Andrew said. “And if somebody makes me mad, I don’t have anything holding me back.”
Gee said he keeps hearing proposals for more officers and new strategies, but none of it prevents what happened in Belltown.
“What are we as a society willing to do to really drive down crime?” Gee said. “I don’t think comprehensive gun violence strategies and more police officers, those things don’t prevent three separate shootings that left three people dead.”
He pointed to what he called a double standard in how America treats financial hardship. Banks were bailed out after the 2008 recession. Farmers receive federal subsidies. But student loan relief, he said, is treated as unacceptable.
“Banks get bailed out, farmers get help, but the folks that have student loan debt, that’s the no-no,” Gee said. “If you do believe that way, you keep asking the same question: why? Poverty does not justify crime. Let me say that again. Poverty does not justify crime. But I don’t see the concentration on trying to limit and prevent poverty.”
Watch the full discussion in the video above.
Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.
