Small business owners in Seattle, Washington, report crime worsening two years after the city defunded its police. Seattle’s City Council reduced its police funding by almost 17% in 2021. “Rarely do [police] come down anytime soon enough for it to matter,” said owner of Elliot Bay Community Fitness Rohan Joseph. Another local business owner said “it’s almost getting impossible to survive these days with a small business.”
From The Daily Caller:
Peter Morse, the owner of West Seattle’s Mission Cantina and new board member of the neighborhood’s chamber of commerce, said he and many neighbors struggle with transient people repeatedly stealing from them without sufficient law enforcement deterrence. “You’re getting robbed, and you’re seeing these people in your neighborhood doing laundry next to you,” Morse told the DCNF, saying one man had stolen from his restaurant’s property multiple times, taking a pressure washer and a box of churros two weeks ago. Morse and an associate forced the man to return the pressure washer after one incident, but police subsequently suggested that the man had not really robbed the restaurant since he gave the property back, Morse reported.
