Tonight, Seattle City Council member Bruce Harrell is hosting a public safety meeting in south Seattle to allow residents to voice their fears about the area's spate of gun violence, gang violence, and petty crime to city officials and Seattle Police Department brass.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30 pm at the Southeast Seattle Senior Center (4655 South Holly St) in Rainier Beach. Meanwhile, Harrell has his own ideas on reforming crime in Seattle—and the biggest one involves God.

"The question for me is how can I get faith-based communities involved in our crime problem," Harrell told me during an intimate fireside chat yesterday. Harrell says we need to change the conversation from one that revolves on whites against minorities, or rich against poor, to one that focuses on the roots of neighborhood crime.

"The factor that’s not openly talked about is the spiritual, character decay of the kids out there that are slinging dope and taking lives," he says. "Many of them have no sense of self esteem or self worth. They don't have a support network outside of a gang and that was not Seattle twenty years ago." Harrell says faith-based neighborhoods organizations are ready to tackle that problem but they currently lack the structure and city support to do it (and he admits that figuring out how the city can lend that support will be tricky). Harrell adds, "No one is naïve enough to think that every person can be rehabilitated by a simple interaction. We still have to be tough on crime. And quite frankly, it’s not being done now."

Tonight will be a great opportunity to see Harrell in action as the new chair of the council's public safety and civil rights committee, arguably the second-shittiest job in city government*. He was sworn into the position in January, at a time when gun violence exploded in the city, causing Mayor Mike McGinn to declare a public safety emergency; just as the Department of Justice is gearing up to sue the city for our police department's inappropriate use of force when dealing with suspects; at a time when every one and their goddamn dog is suing everyone else over who can watch SPD's police dash-cam videos.

"The two main public safety concerns I'm hearing in the city are that the streets need to be cleaned up, open air drug markets gone, and the thugs out or rehabilitated," he says. "The other conversation is about police misconduct, racial profiling, and disparate impacts on communities of color. I'm prepared to publicly tackle both those conversations and find some answers." Starting tonight at 5:30 pm.


*Behind being a Seattle Police Department spokesman.