Today the Seattle Times reports on a rape at a local car dealership. The manager, Jen Moran, called the attack “just sickening” and commented that the victim “should’ve been safe.” The accused is Christopher Teel, a 24 year old homeless man. While a homeless person committing a crime isn’t big news in Seattle, this person was known to police and had an arrest warrant out since March 2017.
What makes this especially different (or should) is Teel was living in Ballard Nickelsville for much of last year and was even featured in the Seattle Times in multiple photographs last November, seven months after his warrant was issued.
All our millions of dollars are supposed to be going to outreach, documenting cases and helping get the homeless into shelters and permanent housing. Moran was right, this rape victim should have been safe. Teel was in plain sight of all the city workers and contractors involved in Ballard Nickelsville.
He was also not hard for the police to find, given he was all over the Seattle Times in November. John Wisdom, a Ballard resident and member of Speak out Seattle!, even notes that Teel, “has a reputation in the neighborhood and it was never dealt with.”
What an utter failure by our city and what a tragedy for this woman to suffer this horrific event. It’s no surprise that one of the central arguments from businesses and residents to the head tax passed this week was how poorly our money is being spent. If our government was doing a better job protecting its citizens instead of sheltering a known criminal, it could have so easily been avoided.
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Well said! Infuriating!!!!
Criminals are getting emboldened under the umbrella of shelters for the homeless because they know police does not want to deal with them given that they are a huge burden.
This should be a top priority concern for the city but unfortunately the “turning a blind eye” attitude towards minor crimes committed by homeless people is encouraging them to stretch this limit and making tax paying citizens unsafe everyday.
As a woman, I am afraid to put the trash out after dark in this city. I have to deal with drug injecting, defecating, package stealing homeless on a regular basis, telling them off of my or neighbor’s property. The city should try to make it safe for families and children.
An average Seattle resident deals with rising cost of living and sad minor crime situation while trying to keep her children safe. We work hard and deserve some peace of mind. It needs to get better!
Socialism – which is functionally a godless philosophy – does not acknowledge any God-given unalienable individual rights to life, liberty and property. It also does not acknowledge individual responsibility. When someone commits fault such as kills, steals, etc., Socialism reasons that the perpetrator is only a product of blind genetics and environmental conditioning (not really even having any free will), and that therefore the person’s behavior is not their fault, but the fault of all of society. And therefore in the Socialist mind all of society must pay for the wrongdoing (i.e., social insurance), not the criminal.
You watch, just as with women being raped in Sweden, the reasoning from the Left will be that Western nations and the U.S. in particular (or simply “society”) have somehow brought this upon themselves, that the attack could even be considered natural and logical consequence for society having somehow stolen from or exploited the class or demographic that the perpetrator belongs to, and that because of this the perpetrator should be dealt with leniently and the victim basically hushed up.
I sympathize with the homeless, but things are out of hand now.
The City is clueless and now is literally being run by the homeless.
They are above the law, allowed to freely dump and trash and sleep wherever. Have you seen the streets downtown?
I’m not allowed to trash everywhere–why should they?
My kid can’t freely play in the park anymore as for fear of needles and sketchy interactions.
Just a 2 weeks ago I had one rifle through my vehicle and then they helped themselves into my basement where they slept, ate some of my food and likely took some tools.
My friend just had her house attempted to be broken into yesterday.
And none of us want to remember what happened to the woman in Lake City.
I think firm action should be taken and we should clean up the town. It’s not a simple solution but what we have is not working for anybody. And now things are getting real sketchy and dangerous as the homeless are above the law, they know it, and are pushing the fold.
John