23 Nov Pioneer Square shooting

Shots were fired yesterday morning at 2 am outside of a local P² bar close to Occidental Park (surprise, surprise).  The SPD blotter makes it sound like police watched it happen (not sure what the language “on-viewed” means), and then formed a “team” to look for the potential shooters and/or victims. Although they didn’t find anyone on the scene at the time, the shooter was apprehended shortly thereafter. Almost 2 hours later, a man (supposedly the victim of this gun battle) went to Valley Medical Center claiming he had been shot outside a bar in Seattle. Once police interviewed him, however, he “became uncooperative” and changed his story.

Bar shootings was one of the reasons that the idea was tossed around that closing the streets surrounding Occidental Park might help with local violence. The notion was supposed to be that if people didn’t have access to their cars (where they may store their guns or have a quick getaway), there would be less chance of violence. When a P2 volunteer worked to close the streets on the weekends, however, she didn’t get much support from the local bar owners. On an article posted on Seattle Times online, someone made the following comment:

First of all, I’d like to ask TSeattle when it is that P2 was one of the “most safe” places for entertainment. But I’d also like to point out that where there are people drinking into the wee hours of the morning, there are bound to be problems. Pioneer Square isn’t the only neighborhood that has this affliction – there are shootings and violence in Belltown, Capital Hill, Downtown Seattle, etc. I’ve decided to discount TSeattle’s comment, however, solely based on the pun used in the comment.