Comments

1

They were lucky not to have been physically assaulted. If you are from out of town, even locally, it is best to stay away.

2

Silly tourists. Same thing could have happened in Ann Arbor.

3

I commonly see national and international visitors shocked by the sad state of Seattle. In response to the zombie apocolypse they observe on the streets, they always indicate that this level of dysfunction isnā€™t tolerated in their city. As a world traveler, I observe that they are correct. Seattle makes lots of excuses for why we have let it come to this, but the reality is that other countries both rich and poor enforce laws to maintain a basic level of societal function. Seattle in contrast spends hundreds of millions to import the rest of the stateā€™s riff raff and let them destroy our public spaces, green belts and public safety. The problem is a lack of political will from an overly ideological council that ignores facts and reality. Unless we show them the door and elect some people that can effectively govern, we are going to be knee deep in shit, needles, property crime and garbage.

5

"We're from Detroit!"

$20 says they're from Bloomfield Hills.

6

What's dangerous is the City Council: Amazon is claiming they are stopping construction pending the outcome of the Head Tax vote. At lease no jobs will be put into jeopardy. LOL!!!

7

I'm from Detroit, and I can tell you that this sort of thing is quite common here, just not in downtown.
Downtown Detroit has the most police presence of any part of the city, and possibly even the state.

@4 is probably right.
Even people from the outer ring suburbs say they're from Detroit when they travel, because most people don't know where Royal Oak or Birmingham are.

8

Good riddance to bad tourist trash! Leaving stuff in a car in any cityā€”especially if it's visibleā€”is an open invitation to thieves. And right, Detroit is safer ...then go hang out there, knock yourselves out.

10

@3 Where have you actually gone in your time as a ā€œworld travelerā€? Would you leave a bag sitting out in plain view while parked in San Francisco, or New York, or Milan, or Rome, or Chicago, or even Vancouver? Iā€™ve been to all those places (among others) and leaving a bag sitting out, particularly in a rental car (which a halfway clever thief assumes might contain substantial lucre) seemed like (and was) a bad idea in all of them.

11

I'm going to guess they parked under the viaduct by the encampment at the bottom of the Pike St. Hillclimb. I saw a lot of broken auto glass there last week.

@3: are you running, then? you seem to have it all worked out: causes of homelessness, solutions to homelessness. all we need is "will"!

12

Not sure about WA law, but tourist-heavy areas in CA are prime targets because, besides being replete with valuables like cameras and passports, even if the perps were somehow caught, tourists aren't coming back to town just to testify (legislators are working to change that necessity, however).

@5 I was thinking something similar. To be fair, car break-ins and car thefts are higher in the West than in most of the U.S. I don't know why that is.

13

Hot Fuzz: Crusty Jugglers and the Greater Good. Cities have never been safe. Take an Uber or taxi if you need to get around. This isn't the Village Green, you moronic touristy types. Now go away or we will taunt you a second time.

14

lol, literally no city on this earth gives a shit about your car getting broken into.

15

Of course Detroit is safe. Robocop is patrolling the streets.

16

Downtown Detroit has been renovated and revitalized with a shit ton of money and within a very narrow square mileage it might be "safe" from property crime. The rest of the city is a wasteland that has been allowed to rot. Does it suck these tourists got robbed in broad daylight? Yeah. Is Detroit safer than Seattle? Only examination of crime statistics can prove that. Will their single bad experience and telling all of their other friends how awful Seattle is change anything? Doubtful.

If you do ANY research on Seattle at all (which i did prior to going there for the first time in 2002 and then subsequently moving there), you will find that property crime, especially regarding automobiles, is HIGH in Seattle. Almost every person I know who lives in Seattle and owns a car (actually I can only think of one who hasn't had it happen) has had their car STOLEN outright, MORE THAN ONCE.

Leaving all of your belongings (where they can be seen) in a rental car is basically like spray painting "we're tourists, rob us" on the vehicle. Some personal accountability and common sense has to be used when traveling - no matter where you are.

17

"from the Detroit area"

HAHAHA. Yeah. Grosse Pointe.

KIRO just can't stop shitting on this city. How sustainable is appealing to an audience that hates it's own city?

18

If only there was a way to look at crime stats comparing Seattle and Detroit that show Detroit is much worse in pretty much every category.

https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=Detroit%2C+MI&country2=United+States&city2=Seattle%2C+WA

19

Seattle and Detroit are pretty much equal with regard to property crime. Violent crime is much higher in Detroit. Percentages below provided by Sperling's.

Violent Crime Seattle 52.7 Detroit 95.5 The United States 31.1
Property Crime Seattle 65.4 Detroit 66.1 The United States 38.1

20

"As a world traveler, I observe that they are correct."

HAHAHA. Oh. Jesus. You haven't been anywhere you pile of shit trolling dipshit.

Crime rates (other than murder) in Paris, London, Rome, and just about every major non-US city other than Tokyo or Copenhagen are higher than Seattle. And there are more street people to boot. You'd fucking know that if you'd actually been to any of those places or even looked up the statistics you facile gormless nitwit.

https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp

Of course, thanks to the stumbling throng of mouth breathing gun nuts in America, your more likely to be murdered in America. Nearly anywhere out side the US in the developed world you're far less likely to be shot or murdered than you are in any city the good 'ol USofA.

Yet among those cities Seattle has one of the lowest crime rates of city it's size in the country - 598.7 per 100,000 residents. Fuck. It's not even in the Top 40 of crime rates in the US.

Red State paradises like Anchorage (1070.9), Houston (966.7), Wichita (984.8), and fucking Tulsa (903.6) have higher crime rates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

Fucking idiot.

21

"Seattle and Detroit are pretty much equal with regard to property crime. Violent crime is much higher in Detroit."

Well. I guess then liberals have made this an unlivable hell hole, haven't they. I mean, you can barely even get raped in Seattle but somebody MIGHT snatch your shitty radio out of your car.

Meanwhile in the paradise of the Red State cities you might just get to keep the change you have in your car ashtray... buuuuut get your brains blown out by some lunatic goober marching around with his magical arsenal of Freedumb.

22

@17, It seems to me that people who live IN the city don't tend to watch TV news as much as people who live around the city do. Thus shitting on the city plays very well to the moms in the 'burbs.

23

"life in the city is the natural state of the human being".
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/07/17/humans-and-nature
which apparently means that theft and property crime are what Charles thinks is natural.

24

@23 theft is natural anywhere humans beings congregate.

25

@23 Civilization has never been more safe than right now. And most of humanity in the developed world lives in big cities.

Ergo all crime was astronomcally higher in the days of some mythical rural pastoral existence. So high in fact that for most human existence theft was only a crime inside your own tribal group. Everyone else was fair game. Theft and pillage were the main economies outside farming.

27

@24 - I would say more specifically, Theft is natural anywhere people are anonymous.

When people are in a tight social web, when people are known to one another, crime is far less because social norms generally preclude individuals from fucking over their People, their Community.

28

@26 - I bet that murder & violent crime track even more closely with poverty...

"third world shithole"... hm. No distorted stereotyping there...(ahem). Do you even own a passport?

29

Since I can't see #26, I assume he's one of our racist trolling shit bags that have propagated them selves like cockroaches.

Anyway. He's wrong. Crime RATE ( 90% of the gun nut trolls on the internet don't know what that even means) does not track all that closely. Particularly if you adjust for income.

But. Hand gun ownership rates - as in people who own more than one hand gun - track pretty closely to homicide. Especially domestic homicide. Because our toxic shit bag gun nut's in this country particularly enjoy killing their on helpless wives and children.

30

@Tourists, et al: Um...then quit "visiting"-then-moving here enmasse, and bringing your problems (i.e.: high crime rate, gridlock, pollution, escalating cost of living, etc.) with you?

31

I don't know, maybe you don't have to wait until the rival gangs are breaking out the grenades before you're justified in suggesting that maybe a place might have a bit of a growing petty crime problem?

32

Uh-oh, looks like our resident rebounding troll just got killfiled - again. Anyone want to start a pool on how long it'll take them to get their new account set up and back to posting stupid-as-shit comments again?

33

@20/21

Dr Z in a state of high dudgeon is a thing of beauty.

34

I wonder if these people leave all their packages sitting out in their car when they go Christmas shopping in Detroit.

35

@33. I agree! Zaius FTW!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JlmzUEQxOvA

36

On the bright side, these kindly michiganny folks made someone else's day!

37

I wish the story had said where they really parked at. They did stupid tourist shit. Most likely had their stuff in plain site.

39

This article and the responses from all of you to it are a prime example of your passive aggressive nature and the Seattle Freeze at its Paramount (see what I did there?).
Granted, the two nitwits from Detroit should've known better. But you all instead of having any empathy, and maybe relating to another human in a situation (likely preventable if they'd applied a pinch more of common sense) you make light of a horrible situation, just perpetuating the salt in the wound, fresh from the salty nature of the essence of your beings.
Passive aggressive? Nooooo, not from Seattleites, never that!
Judgemental dispositions? Nooooo, not from Seattleites!!! Nooo waaaay!
Exclusive of outsiders and being cliquey with each other towards said any-other-outsiders? Not from Seattleites!!!!!! Noooo efffing waaaaaay!!!!!
You are all like caricatures of your own damn selves. Bitter much?
You are being overrun by outsiders and hopefully your culture will get watered down enough by the influx of growth that this cynical, sour, salty nature will be bred out of you.
I hope you take the words above and but just for one moment, process the notion that they might actually just apply to you.
Unfortunately, I know better and so does every other outsider that looks at you and feels this high and mighty righteousness from you. Sadly, you will instead continue to blame others and deny that any of the above could possibly be true.
And this, dear Seattleites is what makes Seattle Freeze oh so real and keeps it alive and thriving.
So go ahead and try to rally and offer rebuttal. Any denial of my points, will just further prove my points.

Oh, and one more thing... your football team just royally imploded and everybody else took joy in watching it, and you suck and will continue to suck for at least the next 3 to 5 years.

40

39 I live in Baltimore, and we get stories like this about our city every few months. Tourist visit, are shocked by the conditions, are inconvenienced in some fashion, and then they get news coverage. I don't know what Seattle is like, but here these stories reinforce the idea, especially among the suburban audience that they are usually directed to, that the City (any city) is bad and scary and people shouldn't go there. The State should stop investing there, tourist should go to resorts, and no mention of people that live here and might be slightly more inconvenienced by institutional racism and deteriorating infrastructure than a couple of tourists that don't know not to leave valuables out in plain sight.

41

This is why I stay huddled in my eastside bubble. :)

42

Lots of victim blaming, and from the same people that shit themselves every time someone suggests pedestrians and bicyclists take common sense measures to protect themselves.

43

I've been reading your stuff for years, Charles. Of course I don't know you personally, but my impression is that I should be glad about that.

44

"So go ahead and try to rally and offer rebuttal. Any denial of my points, will just further prove my points."

IOW: "I declare my arguments protected for eternity by an impregnable invisible force field!"

Well. Seems legit.

WHAT ARGUMENTATIVE GENIUS!

This is what the Allies should have done int he face of the onslaught of the Wehrmacht! Not bother with D-Day. Just stand on the cliffs of Dover and shouted: "You can't invade us (because my mom said so?) and it will only prove my point that you'll never win."

Wait. In order to deploy this new Rhetorical Secret Weapon, do I have to make any hand gestures, wear a voodoo chicken foot on a necklace, or deploy a quantum dilithium generator of some sort?


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