Seattle Mayor launches new gun violence prevention plan

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has announced a new plan to combat gun violence, positioning the city’s Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) Department as the central hub for the strategy. The initiative includes integrating community violence intervention workers into the emergency response system to work alongside law enforcement, increasing police bike patrols in specific neighborhoods, and conducting homicide reviews to identify prevention failures.

The plan also involves utilizing “red flag” orders and collaborating with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. The administration intends to hire a gun violence reduction director and coordinator to oversee the efforts, focusing on “high utilizers”—a small group of individuals responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime.

This move follows a Seattle City Council resolution that proposed a different approach, which would have involved a $400,000 contract with the National Network for Safe Communities to identify and intervene with violent offenders through counseling and potential arrests. City Councilmember Maritza Rivera criticized the mayor’s proposal, suggesting it repackages existing programs rather than offering a transformative framework.