Recently, three people were violently mugged in downtown Seattle on one day, which raises the question—is this the crime zeitgeist of our city? Is one group of connected individuals responsible for all three of the attacks? Or has there just been a spike in robberies downtown?

According to police reports, it all began Wednesday, February 23 at 12:04 a.m. when a man waiting for a bus at Second Avenue and Bell Street made the fatal mistake of reaching for matches in his wallet—which also contained $3000 in cash. Five men surrounded the beleaguered man and allegedly demanded his wallet. One man was also allegedly brandishing a knife, according to the police report. When the victim refused to give over the funds, the suspects kicked and punched him to the ground (assumedly sparing him the knife), took his wallet, and fled.

According to another police report, at roughly 2:07 p.m. that day, another man was walking home in the vicinity of Blanchard Street and Third Avenue when a group of people surrounded him. One of them "quickly reached into [the man's] jacket pocket and stole an unknown amount of cash" estimated to be around $400. The thieves were thorough; they then "picked up money off of the ground that had fallen out of [the victim's] pocket during the initial snatch" and ran away, the police report states. A look at the building's CCTV footage corroborated the victim's testimony.

At approximately 10:35 p.m. that same evening, officers responded to a third reported assault at Fourth Avenue and Stewart Street, where a woman stated that she had been attacked by three men, who hit her in the face with an unidentified object and took $140 in cash from her pocket, the reporting officer writes.

Detective Mark Jamieson, a spokesman for the Seattle Police Department, said the department wouldn't be able to say anything definitive about a possible connection until a robbery detective looks further into the cases.

The physical descriptions of the suspects were vague, and differed slightly in each case. In the first and third attacks, the suspects were described as men. The victim in the first incident, who had presumably gotten a good look at the men who took his wallet, provided more detail than the others, stating that the suspects were "wearing black, three with black beanies, " but in the case of the third attack, the victim was knocked to the ground and did not get a good view of her attackers. In the second attack, the victim and witness stated that there were women among the group of suspects. In each incident, the victims were attacked by a group of people numbering between three and five.

Regardless of whether or not the robberies were connected, it's worth noting that they took place on the same day in the same area, which may suggest an increase in robberies downtown. When I asked him about this, Jamieson stated that the department doesn't have any plans to increase their forces in the downtown area in direct response to the robberies, but that, "We’ve increased our presence downtown for a number of things over the past few months."