Mayor, Councilman draw criticism for Seattle shooting response
May 31, 2012, 11:41 AM | Updated: Oct 11, 2024, 1:33 pm
Seattle city |
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and city councilman Bruce
Harrell are getting plenty of criticism for their
statements at a press conference in the midst of
Wednesday’s shooting and manhunt that stretched from Cafe
Racer in the city’s Roosevelt neighborhood to West
Seattle.
Standing at a podium in City Hall, McGinn tried to calm
a nervous public and send assurances he would do all to
give police the tools they need to combat gun violence.
But he also reiterated his calls for increased gun
control.
“It’s also going to take a focus on the laws that make
it too easy for people to acquire guns and it’s also going
to take a full partnership with the community to end the
culture of violence where young men believe it’s OK to
attempt to resolve disputes with violence including guns,”
McGinn said.
Harrell, the chairman of the city council’s Public
Safety committee, made an impassioned, emotional speech
about the complexity of the issues surrounding gun
violence prevention, while reporters anxiously waited for
the latest details on the ongoing manhunt from the two
assistant police chiefs standing behind.
“I think it was a little early to give that speech as
much as I agree with the sentiment,” said 97.3 KIRO FM Ross and
Burbank
co-host Luke Burbank.
“But when there’s still somebody on the loose in
Seattle, what you want is your mayor to say, ‘Here’s what
we’re doing to catch this person, here’s what we know at
this point, if you’re in this neighborhood you need to be
on high alert, these are the details.’ It’s not a time to
get into the larger macro kind-of gun control or
cultural implications of this thing,” Burbank said.
Co-host Dave Ross praised the police response to the
entire day, but was equally critical of the city leader’s
performance.
“The only problem I had with the response was that news
conference at City Hall that became a policy speech,” said
Ross.
97.3 KIRO FM’s Don
O’Neill agrees.
“I thought the mayor would step to the microphone and
say, ‘Hey, we got two gunmen that are on the loose –
here’s
what we know right now. We need you to be eyes and ears,
this is how you stay safe, this is how your kids stay
safe.’ They’re acting like this is over,” O’Neill said.
Mayor McGinn defended his handling of the news conference
in an interview on the Ross and Burbank Show.
“As the leader of the city, I’m of course thinking about
what we can do in the future. But I do think you’re
absolutely right; that the focus on the person being on
the
loose, and that was the purpose of the press conference,
was to update folks on what was going on. And I did try to
keep my remarks short and get to that point,” McGinn said.
-Josh Kerns/My Northwest.com
