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.”

41 replies on “People Are Getting Robbed Like Mad Downtown”

  1. Is there a device that can detect large bundles of cash in someone’s pocket? Or is it common for people to walk around downtown with hundreds (or thousands) of dollars in their wallets and purses?

  3. Without some measure of self-defense, maybe don’t carry anything on you that you’re not prepared to lose. (And stay out of the hellhole of Belltown.)

  9. Yeah unless I have a good reason to do otherwise I usually take a hundred bucks out of the ATM at a time and restock when I’ve used that up. Cash is nice when you don’t want to fuck with a card buying one or two drinks in a crowded bar or ordering delivery, but thats about it.

    And carrying 3 grand in a wallet just seems silly. Thats 30 bills minimum which is going to be quite the bulge, but I guess when your shoving matches in there too you probably don’t care about such things.

  10. @1:

    It’s possible the perps are casing banks & ATM machines, waiting for someone to make a sizable withdrawal, then following them to a convenient location to mug them.

    I’m not paranoid, but this is one good reason why I rarely walk around with more than about $40 in my wallet these days.

  11. Watch out at the library, too, unfortunately. A friend of mine got cased while working on his laptop at the library, and then robbed of his backpack (containing the laptop, other tech stuff) in Pioneer Square. He recognized the thief from the library and went back to talk to security (since surely the guy was on camera) but they didn’t seem that interested.

  12. Odds are, a guy carrying around $3000 cash in his wallet (can you even fit that many bills in a wallet?) is up to no good himself. He’s either a liar or a drug dealer (or both). The latter would mark you as an easy target to other thugs.

  13. Based on the neighborhood and the amount of cash, the real question is are the victims drug dealers being jacked for their cash after making a sale, or drug buyers being jacked for their cash before making a purchase?

  14. I think that these victims were cased as well. It’s a wolfpack of robbers. All are on the lookout and when one spots a potential victim, all converge and wait for the right moment.

    Everyone had better start forming convoys to protect themselves. Who wants to be the escort frigates/destroyers?

  16. No one carries that kind of cash on them. Also your description is lacking. Black males, white males, hispanic males, or a mix. Which is it?

  18. Scary, I live on 6th and Virgina and work at 3rd and Wall and I walk to and from work on these streets every day. There are no shortage of sketchy looking people. I try not to profile based on clothes, etc, but it’s hard…. and I don’t look at the sketchy folk in the eye because they always try to start a conversation that ends in “can you give me money?” I’ve thought about packing mace or a knife, but that is a recipe for a headache at best. If I get surrounded, I’m going to punch to clear space and run like hell….

  19. Belltown is too dangerous.

    So is the rest of Downtown.

    To be safe, stay in the good neighborhoods like Fremont, Ballard, West Seattle, or Capitol Hill.

  20. One way you can tell that a city doesn’t have a serious crime problem is that every individual crime gets reported in the news.

    I know that if I had to cart around $3,000 anywhere, not just downtown, I’d spring for a cab at the very least. Carrying large amounts of cash on the bus is just weird.

  21. I agree with the drugs and casing scenario. I am downtown late at night probably twice a week (as it is the major transit hub and close to home)and never see anything like this. These people were targeted and probably because they made it apparent that they had money. Just use common sense and chances are you will be fine.

  26. My go-to site for crime in Belltown is still the interactive map. http://spotcrime.com/wa/seattle From this map it would appear that there was only one other robbery in Belltown since Jan. 1. Four robberies in 2.5 months is not exactly people ‘getting robbed like mad,’ but the week of 2/26 was sure as hell a shitty week to be in Belltown with a wad of cash. Way to over-sensationalize! Again! Aren’t you guys supposed to be the ‘alternative’ newspaper?? This ‘stay in your homes’ shit sounds just like the PI to me. Are you going to advise me to buy a gun now??

  30. There’s been a plethora of armed robberies in Ballard, of all places, recently, too. The robbers are young men, about 20, white, and armed, obviously. See myballard.com for more information.

  32. Obviously we need to bankrupt the City by building a Tunnel we don’t need that avoids this area and borrow the money from future generations so that they are forced to set up militias to keep Downtown safe.

    Right?

    @Geni yeah, it’s surprising – I thought that went out long ago.

  34. Look out Seattle! A group of … men!… who are going to attack you at any moment! Good thing we warned you to be on the look out for a… group of men. Wearing black. Maybe.

    Once again SPD and The Stranger supply a thoroughly useless description of a group of criminals and hype a set of minor crimes the result of which will certainly amp-up community fear with no productive outcome.

    Why? What is the fucking point of this as “News.”

  36. Good thing the worthless police are never on the case. Plenty of robberies in the Udistrict too – never see any cops doing anything but trying to bust up house parties.

  38. well, @34, i wouldn’t exactly call them minor crimes … robbed at knifepoint in one incident and smacked in the face with an unknown object in another. and surrounded by a group, rather than one-on-one.

    may not be useful information in terms if identifying them, but useful as a reminder to keep your head up and your eyes open, and don’t go flashing your money around.

    having said that though, i agree that these were likely not completely random.

  40. Just a nit pick, in a story involving getting held up at knife point… nothing is a “fatal mistake” that doesn’t involve dude getting stabbed. Just saying. Serious mistake, ok. Beat down inducing mistake, even more apt. But fatal? eh.

  41. @36 the new budget has the number of UWPD patrols on frat row reduced to zero, actually.

    State budget cuts so we can give more tax exemptions to businesses that don’t create any actual jobs, for the most part.

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