Seattle News, Views, and Brews
Jun 17, 2026 · 28 min · 14 segments
Learn about the latest in local public affairs in about the time it takes for a coffee break! Brian Callanan of Seattle Channel and…
Brian CallananHost
David, we saw just about every city agency that exists show up for a press conference late last week to talk about what's next for Aurora Avenue North, where gun violence and prostitution, lingering problems for many, many years, have seemingly come to a head in the last few weeks.
Neighbors actually led a protest there, and the city is listening, with Mayor Katie Wilson agreeing to shut several streets down in the area.
Police are stepping up patrols, and with a somewhat unorthodox move, the city attorney is calling for the use of Extreme Risk Protection Orders, ERPO, to take guns away from pimps and human traffickers.
Importantly, how is the city going to pay for this? Because Evans, it sounds like, is asking for an extra prosecutor just to focus on this.
Yeah, the use of extreme risk protection orders is interesting because the standard of evidence is lower than a criminal prosecution.
You don't actually have to charge someone with a crime in order to strip them of, at least temporarily, of their guns.
domestic violence or if somebody is in a mental health crisis and the family, a lot of the time, sort of fears that without quick action, they may use these guns to harm themselves or others.
That's why this is pretty novel in the context of You know, pimps or human traffickers, because the implication there is that they do believe there is some criminal activity happening, but maybe they wouldn't be able to act on it.
And so, you know, they think, hey, maybe if we see them posting something on social media or some kind of thing.
video footage that shows them acting unsafely with firearms you know we may not be able to get a criminal charge right away but we think we can use this to at least on paper bar them from having guns so that that opens up the door to basically a felony because if they're later found to have the guns then police can move in and and more criminal charges can be layered on top so you know it's it's kind of in the context of what we were talking about before which is essentially kind of creating new avenues for criminal prosecution that might not have been there before the cynical way of looking at that is creating a pretext but in this case it's using a tool that has been legally upheld many times yes i think including by the supreme court actually and and using that as a way to kind of go after the gun part of it yeah and then i think the hope is it opens up the door to go after the other kind of you know human trafficking drug related activity as well
Can you touch on the dollars part of it? I talked with Councilmember Bob Kettle last week about this, who's the head of the Public Safety Committee for the council, and he had some concerns about, okay, this sounds great to have this extra prosecutor, but that sounds like extra dollars, and is that something the city can afford, especially in the middle of a budget crunch? Some thoughts about that.
Yeah, I mean, and they're going to be getting a lot from a lot of different departments asking for money.
There's not a lot of creative solutions out there to close the budget gap in the way that maybe there were even in previous years.
There is a reason why public safety tends to be the last thing to get cut because there's a lot of political pressure,
David, we saw just about every city agency that exists show up for a press conference late last week to talk about what's next for Aurora Avenue North, where gun violence and prostitution, lingering problems for many, many years, have seemingly come to a head in the last few weeks.
Neighbors actually led a protest there, and the city is listening, with Mayor Katie Wilson agreeing to shut several streets down in the area.
Police are stepping up patrols, and with a somewhat unorthodox move, the city attorney is calling for the use of Extreme Risk Protection Orders, ERPO, to take guns away from pimps and human traffickers.
Importantly, how is the city going to pay for this? Because Evans, it sounds like, is asking for an extra prosecutor just to focus on this.
Yeah, the use of extreme risk protection orders is interesting because the standard of evidence is lower than a criminal prosecution.
You don't actually have to charge someone with a crime in order to strip them of, at least temporarily, of their guns.
domestic violence or if somebody is in a mental health crisis and the family, a lot of the time, sort of fears that without quick action, they may use these guns to harm themselves or others.
That's why this is pretty novel in the context of You know, pimps or human traffickers, because the implication there is that they do believe there is some criminal activity happening, but maybe they wouldn't be able to act on it.
And so, you know, they think, hey, maybe if we see them posting something on social media or some kind of thing.
video footage that shows them acting unsafely with firearms you know we may not be able to get a criminal charge right away but we think we can use this to at least on paper bar them from having guns so that that opens up the door to basically a felony because if they're later found to have the guns then police can move in and and more criminal charges can be layered on top so you know it's it's kind of in the context of what we were talking about before which is essentially kind of creating new avenues for criminal prosecution that might not have been there before the cynical way of looking at that is creating a pretext but in this case it's using a tool that has been legally upheld many times yes i think including by the supreme court actually and and using that as a way to kind of go after the gun part of it yeah and then i think the hope is it opens up the door to go after the other kind of you know human trafficking drug related activity as well
Can you touch on the dollars part of it? I talked with Councilmember Bob Kettle last week about this, who's the head of the Public Safety Committee for the council, and he had some concerns about, okay, this sounds great to have this extra prosecutor, but that sounds like extra dollars, and is that something the city can afford, especially in the middle of a budget crunch? Some thoughts about that.
Yeah, I mean, and they're going to be getting a lot from a lot of different departments asking for money.
There's not a lot of creative solutions out there to close the budget gap in the way that maybe there were even in previous years.
There is a reason why public safety tends to be the last thing to get cut because there's a lot of political pressure,
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.