My apartment overlooks I-5. About a half hour ago, I saw about 20 squad cars rushing down I-5 South, sirens blaring. Seattle Times is reporting that an officer was shot shortly after 10 pm between 29th & Yesler Way, and that his condition is unknown.

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

43 replies on “Something Big Happened: Shots and Sirens at 29th and Yesler”

  9. “Seattlecrime.com is reporting police were on alert as a man who was let out of jail earlier tonight had made threats against officers.”

    I can already tell that as details emerge on the suspect, I will grow increasingly frustrated with the way our judicial system works.

    My thoughts and prayers go out to the officer’s family and friends.

  10. Terrible event. Tough situation. It makes me appreciate the risks that the officers take.

    @9 – I guarantee you that China’s justice would not have allowed something like this. How would you like their justice system instead of ours?

  11. …and five hours later still no update. Stay strong Stranger, you last bastion of journalism.

    Oh haaaay the Times has an update…

  13. @ 11, the Seattle Times piece hardly looks any different now than it did 6 hours ago. Are you going to get on their case too?

  14. Golly, Grant Brissey, you sure failed to uphold that agreement you clearly made to provide up-to-the-minute, accurate details of the story as it unfolds. I mean, don’t you realize that having an apartment that overlooks I-5 and seeing police drive by obligates you to spoon-feed exciting headlines to eager readers? Get with the program, guy, c’mon.

  16. I work in the Central District, and while most of the talk about it being such a bad neighborhood is just hype, I must say that the area that is southeast of Yesler and MLK is bad news. It’s one of the few places in Seattle where I have ever felt unsafe on the job.

    My condolences to the family of the slain officer.

  17. “I must say that the area that is southeast of Yesler and MLK is bad news”

    Well, that’s because it’s the LEAST gentrified part of the CD. Give it another decade and the whole area might be fit for human habitation.

  19. @11 & 14 – Give The Stranger a break. We turned our clocks back last night, and they had an extra hour of drinking to do.They were in no condition to be doing their jobs!

  20. It’s now 8:40 and still no update….

    I won’t regurgitate what has already been posted 3 hours prior.. but it is 3+ hours later…

    This could be one of the most interesting stories of the year, and you still don’t have anything of substance…

    ummmmm

    nevermind.

  21. 20 squad cars sounds about right. A normal citizen is shot, and you might get a handful of cops milling around. But shoot a cop and the entire force shows up, a suspect is in custody, and s/he’ll get convicted and handed the strongest possible sentence. Law & Order, American style.

  23. I feel sorry for all the internet users who only have access to the Slog for news. Whoever is controlling your internet filter should open it up so that you can go to other websites for information.

    There’s a dandy website run by something called The Seattle Times, that’s all about news in Seattle! (although it doesn’t have much to say about this, either) and I’ve heard tell that all of the TV stations have websites as well.

    The best coverage I’ve seen is over at centraldistrictnews.com. You won’t believe this, but it’s all about news that happens in the Central District!

  24. this is so sad, what the CD needs is more late night basketball, more after school arts programs, more programs. Come one Seattle, open you wallets!

    Maybe we need a special levy, we can call it the “Thugs to Angels” levy.

  25. “centraldistrictnews.com”

    Yes, thank god for concerned white liberals with web access, how else would we know what a sh*tty hood they moved into.

  27. Now, Billy Boy, don’t be testy. Everyone – even many of its residents – like to harp on how “dangerous” the CD is, but compared to equivalent neighborhoods in some of the rust belt cities I’ve lived in, it’s practically Wedgwood.

  28. “like to harp on how “dangerous” the CD is, but compared to equivalent neighborhoods in some of the rust belt cities I’ve lived in, it’s practically Wedgwood.”

    I agree, any hood that has cops gunned down in the streets on a busy halloween evening, must be splendid. Maybe the reason it’s not Detroit has to do with Seattle’s special demographics that make it very different from St Louis, Cincinatti etc.? Just a thought.

    Anyhow, the more guilty white liberals who move to the CD to experience ‘diversity’, the better it will become. Eventually, it may even be Wedgewood.

  29. ” But shoot a cop and the entire force shows up, a suspect is in custody”

    Well, maybe society, in some crazy way, thinks the lives of cops are more valuable than some POS gang banger who gets gunned down?

    Call me crazy, but I agree.

  31. @10: Clever suggestion! I mean, ’cause finding a healthier alternative to the way we currently do things sounds so much more boring.

  32. i’m sorry, but…

    some thugs pull up RIGHT NEXT to a pair of officers an OPEN FIRE?! FIND THEM. PUNISH TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

    if they’re involved in a gang, FIND THE GANG MEMBERS AND DO THE SAME. Seattle has let itself get overrun with this SCUM. it’s not too late to stop it. time to take out the trash. neighborhood watches should be MANDATORY for ALL NEIGHBORHOODS. TAKE BACK THIS CITY. let these wastes of carbon find out first hand that the people of Seattle are not going to take it anymore.

    my heart goes out to this officer’s family. honor him by ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING to solve the PROBLEM that CAUSED HIS UNFAIR DEATH. enough with all the pseudo-witty banter about race and class and stuff…there’s a problem in this city that can be solved if the people just come together. this can be stopped.

  35. “Foxes watching the hen house…..”

    in an attempt to be witty you leap-frogged what a neighborhood watch is/does to go ahead and make yourself sound untrusting and paranoid. good job. if what you said is what a neighborhood watch is, why would anyone suggest it? way to miss the point.

  36. @32, the point is that if every gun-related murder got this response, there’d be less of them. Maybe the “POS” who shot the cop shot another “POS” a few weeks ago, and wasn’t caught because that earlier victim wasn’t as “valuable”? The moment shootings become commonplace enough that there’s a disproportionate response to black vs. white, regular citizen vs. cop, that = trouble.

    There’s also a not-so-veiled racist element to arguments like yours, but let’s not feed the trolls by asking the slain officer’s skin color…

  37. @29 SeattleCrime.com is a sham website.

    Jonah insists on carrying on his tradition of not giving full accurate descriptions of violent suspects related to age, race, appearance. If you go back and look at his past articles you can see an obvious intentional omission of such information.

    Until such time as he stops this behavior, his site will be marginalized by his shoddy journalism.

    Seriously Jonah grow the fuck up.

    And @30…. @31’s response is spot on… you should consider his point.

    And finally… @39 I’d hate to start a not-so-veiled racist element to any thread, especially this one. We don’t know the race of the attacker either do we yet?

    Any guesses though?

    Or shall we not feed the troll’s that would rather ask the race of the officer vs the race of the scum asshole who assassinated a police officer?

  38. @ 40, ever the middle of the road moderate. Why, all of middle america feels as you do, right? Wait, “right” is the operative word here…

    Nice way you accuse Jonah (who works for another blog now, in case you didn’t know – why don’t you address him there?) of something that’s a pretty standard practice among the media. (WorldNetDaily doesn’t count when I say “media” BTW.)

  39. @26: The point is a Slogger saw something big going on, posted to that effect, then rolled over and went to sleep. Couldn’t be bothered to check it out.

    So when we hear Slog writers pissing on other media outlets it’s hard to take them seriously.

  40. @39 — “the point is that if every gun-related murder got this response”

    Do you have any idea how many gun-related murders there are in the Seattle area a year? Do you have any idea how many of them were never solved?

    I’m guessing you have no idea of either statistic. If you knew either statistic, you would understand how silly your statements sound.

    I am proud of the Seattle Police Department and the fine work they do. I’ve lived in cities with unprofessional police departments. Whenever I hear of people complaining about how unprofessional SPD is, I imagine those people have never lived under real rogue police departments.

    AND I would fully support a decision to drop every other murder case SPD is investigating until they solve this case. We should not ask our officers to risk their lives without allowing them to take every reasonable step to protect their lives.

  41. @13, 14, 26 etc….

    If it was big enough for a blog entry titled “Crime: Something Big Happened” maybe someone should follow it up. There’s a huge gap in the city’s news coverage after the PI went down and instead of making any attempt to fill it the Stranger is turning into Statler and Waldorf.

  43. @19/20:
    Yeah, those rich mansions around/east of 30th and Jackson sure are sssssccccarrryy.
    zillow much? The house that’s literally for sale a block south of Yesler/MLK? $1.2M.
    ahem. *headshake *

    Yes, the homicide rate is high in that beat, but greenlake, fremont, sandpoint and northgate EACH had only one less homicide in 08 than yesler/MLK area. The Ave (north of 45th), belltown, yesler terrace, the waterfront etc etc have much more total violent crime.

    @27 yeah, Basketball and Thugs. Good one. Don’t forget bongo drum classes and rapper mentorships in your stereotyping… yo. (Perhaps the kids growing up on Cap hill can get drama/musicals and costuming-for-ballet? The kids in Ballard can get boatmaking & fishgutting programs? *eyeroll* ). file under: Brains are like umbrellas.

    @31: while I might occasionally side with the ‘it’s too bad the CD is losing its character and culture’ argument, and I certainly bemoan the fact that hardly anyone remembers Jackson Street’s significant contributions to jazz, some might be interested to know that some of those so called whites/ invading liberals are grandchildren of the WWI and WWII white/multiracial folks, not to mention the japanese-americans, the italians, and the jews who also lived there a couple generations back. CD’s history didn’t start with the BlackPanthers: LangstonHughes PAC was originally the oldest synagogue in WA state, for those that forget. ‘Chickens coming home to roost’, indeed. Were it not for internment, the neighborhood might still be full of Japanese or even Italian culture.

    @35: wow, how embarrassed are you? turns out it wasn’t a gang, it was a 41 yo grad student. hmm. ‘Mandatory’ neighborhood watches are called ‘Police Departments’, btw.

    @40: when you put as much importance on eye and hair color as you do skin color, then I’ll be happy to twist Jonah’s (or the Seattle Times, et al) arm on your behalf. In the meantime, your veiled bigotry…, isn’t.
    @41: I guess it turns out Reality(Bounced?)Check was ‘half right’ in his fears – but standard practice or not, I still maintain ‘race’, such as it’s trumped up to be -in a nation such as ours – is as imaginary a concept as StarTrek.

    @44: “turning into…”?? Oh, Andy… You must be new here…

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