Shorter Mudede: Mayor Harrell’s sweeps have dramatically reduced crime, but admitting this here could actually be the thing that finally gets me canned, so I’ll obscure it behind an unreadable text-wall, obtuse even by my standards.

Hey. Before the usual dipshits liter the stranger with their piles of Grudge Scat, maybe read the article first? Just a suggestion.

Let me distilled it down for the Trolls and let them bare their teeth and screech at it for the rest of the week.

Workers are retuning to office buildings because the pandemic has settled and WFH policies are ending. So downtown actually has people again. People are the deterrent to your OMG TERROR OF CRIME.
The same thing is beginning to happen in a good share of every major city.

Or maybe Bruce Harrell is a magic Batman that is "sweeping" half the cites in the US.

HE IS THE KNIGHT!

@3: Portland just passed a "use our designated campground or be cited" ordinance. There is no haven there.

Any bets on how effective the graffiti sweeps under I-5 are?

I'm guessing, just like the sweeps, it's pretty much a waste of time.

If you want us to go Downtown, make it fun to be there. You know, like all the businesses in the neighborhoods do.

@2 -- Exactly. Seattle developed retail problems that nothing to do with policing. It had everything to do with the pandemic. The pandemic is now waning. People are traveling again. Workers are slowly going back to the office. Much of the crime that has existed downtown since at least the 1960s is still there, it has just moved a few blocks over. Brendan Kiley wrote an excellent article about that here: https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/crime-and-community-define-one-of-downtown-seattles-most-complex-areas/. If you don't have a subscription, allow me to copy a couple tidbits:

The particulars have changed, as has its center of gravity: First Avenue to Second to Third. Its name also shifts, depending on who’s talking about which decade. Old-timers recalling the 1960s say “Skid Row.” Needle-exchange workers from the ’80s talk about “Penney’s Corner” (after a nearby JCPenney). To Deputy Seattle City Attorney Scott Lindsay, it’s “3P” (for Third and Pike/Pine). In 1990, an article about crack cocaine by Seattle Weekly writer Eric Scigliano reported that dealers were calling it “The Blade.” That name stuck.
...
What’s also been consistent: the cycle of civic hand-wringing. “Since Seattle’s inception as a frontier town, you’ve had this culture of accepting vice and narcotics activity with a wink and a nod,” says Tom Umporowicz, a retired detective-sergeant with the Seattle Police Department (SPD). ... The mayor barks at the police chief, who barks down the chain of command, and the cavalry rides in, often arresting sex workers and subsistence-level user-dealers.

“We’d show off our arrests, all the dope and guns we’d recovered,” Umporowicz says. “We’d all high-five; the media would get the story; people would say, ‘Good job!’ But it’s performative, not substantive. We’re not dialing in: ‘Where is this coming from? What’s the solution?’ ” Most voters and elected officials, he thinks, lack the political will and attention span to find and fund long-term answers.

@1

Well said.

Yes the NIMBY latte drinkers will be happy. It feels great to punch down and lock up the downtrodden again! Thanks mayor Scrooge!

Downtown's fortunes often depend on forces outside the city. Macy's is out not because people didn't want to shop, and not because of Amazon, but because Macy's 1) didn't want to compete, and 2) They saw the value in the property, took the money, and ran.

Back in the 90's, that demise of the retail core had to do with the hostile takeover of Marshall Fields, which caused that company to set Frederick & Nelson adrift with much of their debt. David Sabey tried to save it, but it was pretty much insurmountable. A last minute deal to save it was torpedoed by Our Good Friend Kemper Freeman who didn't want a Lamont's at Bellevue Square. I Magnin went out because of Macy's decision of close that brand, and the loss of F&N and I. Magnin killed Klopenstein's and a host of other local businesses. But then Nordstrom moved into F&N, Old Navy went into I. Magnin, and Klopensteins was demolished for Pacific Place, which did the trick for twenty years.

Downtown will always have an appeal, because of its location and it's scenery. I'll be interested to see what its new chapter will look like.