Aurora neighbors marched for peace, called for National Guard to combat shootings

Neighbors won’t let the city forget about gun violence in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood.

On Saturday night, a group of people living in the Greenwood area of North Seattle marched block by block along Aurora Avenue. They want something — anything — done about the human trafficking and repeated violence that explodes once the sun goes down.

These are some of the same neighbors who put up metal planters as barriers to try to block cars from driving down side streets. They had hoped that blocking access would prevent johns and traffickers from accessing residential streets.

The march started at 9 p.m. on N. 102nd St. and Aurora Avenue N., first walking north to N. 109th Street, then south on Aurora to N. 100th St.

Greenwood neighbors organize march for peace after city ignores pleas for help

Peter Orr lives just a few blocks off Aurora. To him, this walk is both about drawing public attention to a major hole in the city’s public safety planning and showing people on those streets that neighbors care.

“It’ll impact you psychologically. It impacts the overall feeling of the neighborhood. Just wanting to trust that your kids can go outside and play safely. But also knowing that, at night, so far it’s just been at night, guns come out,” Orr said.

He said the problem should not be minimized. Orr and his neighbors cited police department numbers showing up to nine shootings a month in the blocks surrounding Aurora Avenue North between 100th and 109th.

“My personal experience with the effects of sex trafficking and gun violence on Aurora would be waking up at night routinely to gunshots. And wondering if my neighbors are alright,” Orr said. “It really develops empathy for other neighbors who are also going through this, also in South Seattle. I know they put up with their unfair share of gunfire. But we know that the gunfire here is predominantly related to the sex trade, so it’s kind of a unique impetus to the violence here.”

Orr and his community group said they’re frustrated after constant emails and phone calls to the city. They said their requests for specific actions, such as stepped-up police patrols and street barriers, have been rebuffed. And when they ask the city for a plan, they get little information.

“It’s constant mailing the city council member and the mayor’s office, but with just stock answers back. We still have not seen the District 5 council person here in person, or the mayor,” Orr said.

The group invited both to Saturday’s event. KIRO Newsradio has reached out to both Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and Seattle City Council Member Debora Juarez to see if they’ll be there. They didn’t respond in time for publication.

The coalition of neighbors has this list of demands for the city:

• A Seattle Police Department (SPD) mobile precinct unit stationed visibly on Aurora Avenue N., to confront the sex-trafficking system driving the gun violence on this corridor.
• Permanent residential street closures at N. 97th, 98th, and 102nd Streets, with additional temporary or permanent closures added based on observed sex-trafficking and shooting activity in the lead-up to and through the FIFA World Cup.
• Immediately enforce existing laws and allocate resources for actual enforcement, expanding SPD’s Vice Unit beyond three citywide officers, and funding additional FTE City/County trafficking prosecutors.
• An immediate formal request from Wilson to Washington Governor Bob Ferguson to call up the Washington National Guard and State Police to assist in protecting this corner of a World Cup host city from sex traffickers and gunfire, especially given the hiring and training bottleneck of SPD officers and the urgency of this crisis.
• A mayor-led, unified city response. Wilson is the only official with the executive authority to bring the City Attorney’s Office, SPD, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, City Council leadership, the Seattle Department of Transportation, Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE), Seattle Human Services Department (HSD), and the Mayor’s Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (MODVSA) into a single Aurora-specific plan with a named accountable point person and a public timeline.
• Dedicated, sustained funding for at least 40 units of low-barrier emergency and transitional housing reserved for women exiting trafficking, with no sobriety, ID, or prosecution-cooperation preconditions. Pair every placement with on-site wraparound services: trauma-informed mental health care, substance use treatment, medical and reproductive health care, and legal advocacy.
• Fully fund a team of at least 8 survivor advocate caseworkers (no more than 15 women each) and 24/7 street outreach staffed by peer advocates with lived experience, physically present on the corridor every night to connect women to housing and exit pathways on the spot. Anti-trafficking enforcement without funded exit infrastructure pushes women into more dangerous hands, not out of the life.

Read more of Jillian Raftery’s stories here.