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Comment by sedev | Hacker News Reader

You are factually wrong and also your news sources are factually wrong. If you find that insulting, that's a you problem.

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cool cool, what part am I factually wrong about? The growing homeless population? The drug problem? The growth in violent crime? The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and the related killings?

I lived on the hill during the protests. I walked through the 'capitol hill autonomous zone' with my children numerous times and never felt unsafe. 15-20 years ago I used to catch a late-night bus at Pike and 3rd which was considerably sketchier than anything that's ever happened on Capitol Hill and even that was tame compared to other large cities I've visited.

Friend, respectfully... 5 people were not shot over a few days on the late night bus. I'm glad you felt safe and that you were able to walk your kids through it but lets not down play what really happened to the people that were shot and killed in that small area during that short window of time.

I don't watch a lot of news so I can't really speak to the facts you're citing, but I've also spent some time living southeast of Capitol Hill in the Central District where people actually routinely get shot and where I've been mugged at gunpoint so it's possible my 'safety tolerance' is just different from yours. By comparison, nothing I saw on the hill during the 'CHAZ' even came close, it was mostly drum circles and graffiti-art.

I remember feeling a similar disconnect between the news cycle and my lived experience during 'Occupy Wallstreet' when I watched a crowd of hundreds of people walking two blocks from in front of Westlake to protest at the Bank of America stop and wait for every pedestrian signal.

I've never heard of anyone getting mugged at gunpoint in Seattle before. I'm not doubting your experience, but usually they try to steal your bike or pirate your packages, crimes that the SPD usually just ignores, pulling a gun on someone is rare, since the SPD doesn't really ignore that. My maternal aunt from Alaska did claim to be mugged by a black guy in Seattle in the 70s, but she was also kind of racist, so I'm not sure if her story was true or not.

An extended family member did get shot outside of an SLU bar a few years ago. I'm not really clear on what was going on, they didn't catch whoever did it, and he wasn't seriously wounded, but it was scary that someone I knew was shot at at all, since this place isn't really know for that (and I worked at Third and Pine McDonalds for a year in the mid-90s, so have seen some crazy sh*t).

If it helps your collection of anecdotes, I gave the mugger my wallet while remarking that I was sorry there was no cash in it but I had $150 on the EBT card and he handed it back and said 'that's all right, have a safe night' and ran away.

Oohf, ya, mugging people these days is tough. No one carries cash around anymore.

There used to be a protective Pride patrol in Capitol Hill because there were regular physical attacks on LGBTQ people in the street. I moved here in 2009 and I remember multiple incidents where people were mugged at gunpoint on the Hill just that year. Pulling a gun on someone is not frequent, but it's also not a once-a-year headline act.

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