‘Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot’: Former council president analyzes Seattle’s biggest issues

During an interview with former Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson, KIRO Host John Curley ran several “speed round” questions covering highly debated topics in Seattle.

KIRO host John Curley opened the rapid-fire questions with a question about where Nelson believes Seattle’s homeless will be in the next year, given a 9% increase in the latest headcount compared to the last.

“It will continue to go up unless we start doing something different. My mantra is funding recovery-based services, getting people into rehab. You will always have this cycle, and it will grow,” Nelson said. “If we don’t do something different, just putting them into permanent supportive housing, where people warehouse and overdose, is not the right answer. I do agree with the mayor on more shelters. I’m going to be optimistic. Hopefully, it’s going to go down, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it stays up unless we change what we’re doing.

Curley brought up the rampant crime on Aurora Avenue, where shootings and prostitution have plagued the area daily. Curley asked if that problem would ever be solved and when things could take a turn for the better.

“They’ll get worse unless people enforce the already existing laws that the council put in place,” Nelson said. “Here’s the thing: the people who are against it, City Attorney Evans, and I guess the mayor, they say, ‘Oh, well, it didn’t work before. It was a totally different program.’ We know that it was starting to work under Anne Davison. We also have to turn on the cameras and expand them on Aurora. These are common-sense steps we have to take. Again, let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot. Let’s take a position toward progress.”

Nelson also weighs in on the Seattle Police Department’s staffing recovery

While the Seattle Police Department (SPD) has been working through a “staffing crisis” since 2019, the department recently celebrated a major milestone by hiring its 150th officer in 2025, surpassing the combined totals of 2024 and 2023.

Curley asked if the department would continue to build on this momentum and recruit more officers.

“Yes, they will, because this whole, ‘Oh, we can’t afford new recruits because et cetera, et cetera,’ that is dead wrong,” Nelson said. “We’re nowhere near the goal of enough officers to do the beat controls they have to do, and to get the detectives back up to the other offices detecting and investigating.”

Curley noted that City Attorney Erika Evans has some “problems” actually enforcing certain laws, but spoke to the lack of enforcement on people doing drugs in public. He asked Nelson if she thinks Seattle will ever get to the point where people who are doing drugs in public will be arrested.

“It depends on public pressure. It should have happened four years ago,” Nelson said. “We should have just hit it hard four years ago with a change of command with Bruce Harrell, Ann Davison, and me, but you know, we have to. We can never. We can’t go backward. We always have to push forward.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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