Peter King’s bad Seattle experience doesn’t surprise Dori

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

Peter King, probably the most respected NFL journalist that there is, as he came out to [his daughter’s] wedding, he stopped in Seattle and went to a Mariners game.

Every week in his Monday Morning Quarterback column, Peter King has a travel note of the week. This week’s note:

I don’t mean to be a baby in this space, which I’ve been before. Nor do I mean to be an alarmist. But my wife and I spent a couple of post-wedding days in one of our favorite cities, Seattle, last week, and went to see the Mariners on Thursday night. After the game, we walked 1.1 miles from Safeco Field to our hotel in the city. Man, that was one scary walk. To say aggressive panhandling in that city is rampant is an understatement—I guess particularly after night baseball games, when there are folks walking back to their hotels in a good area of the city. We gave three times, and after that, we just put our heads down and got back to the hotel.

Craziest thing to me: On a brisk 15- to 18-minute walk from a huge sports facility in a major American city to a hotel in a lovely downtown area, we saw zero police officers.

This just supports what I’ve been saying for so long. Downtown has been taken over by the drug dealers, the drug users, the criminals. They keep pushing out this propaganda in the last couple of weeks especially that they’re just starting to clean up downtown. It’s just that. It’s just a bunch of propaganda.

Related: Dori says he’s finished with downtown Seattle

The part I don’t understand is him giving three times to panhandlers. That makes absolutely no sense to me at all. If you want to help people, you give to a shelter that will provide a meal. You give to these people and you know they’re just going to use it for weed or alcohol or whatever their drug of choice is.

Downtown remains out of control in Seattle.

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.