Seattle Mayor Wilson Renames Shooters to Trigger-Pullers
Seattle Interim Police Chief Andre Sayles decided to stop calling violent criminals “shooters.” He now calls them trigger-pullers instead. This change happened on a Monday and caught many people off guard. The term sounds softer than the reality of the violence we face every day. Sayles said this new name helps identify individuals known in the community.
He wants to put cases on these people and bring them to justice. Yet the choice of words feels strange when families have lost loved ones. The families deserve justice, but they do not need a new name for the killer. Calling a murderer a trigger-puller does not make the blood on the street less red.
This move aligns with Mayor Katie Wilson’s own soft-on-crime attitudes. She previously pushed for the total dissolution of the Seattle Police Department. Her administration seems more focused on policing words than backing cops, according to the Daily Wire. While violent criminals run wild, they worry about how we name them.
The city is paying a heavy price for these ideological choices. Bloodshed has shaken Seattle, such as a mass shooting occurring in July. That attack at the Bite of Seattle food festival left two innocent bystanders dead. Four others were wounded, including a toddler who survived the gunfire. Wilson removed former Police Chief Shon Barnes rather than providing officers with needed support.
She replaced him with Sayles, who uses this delicate terminology. The city scrapped $50,000 signing bonuses for experienced officers. This move cripples the Seattle Police Department’s ability to attract veteran cops. The department is already down hundreds of officers from normal levels. They cannot fill the ranks while the mayor cuts the money needed to hire them.
Kent Loux, who leads the Seattle Police Officers Guild, has offered unreserved criticism. He repeatedly slammed Wilson’s dangerous priorities earlier this year. An attempt to coerce the union into removing a social media post came from City Hall. A violent triple shooting outside a nightclub was revealed by that post. The mayor claimed the cops leaked sensitive footage, but the union stood its ground.
While slashing police incentives to handle a budget deficit, the mayor spent money elsewhere. More than $800,000 of taxpayer money was directed by Wilson toward specialized LGBT and trans initiatives. She calls this “community stabilization” while officers fight for resources. The mayor commanded that high-tech surveillance cameras near the Stadium District be turned off.
She refused to activate crime-fighting technology because of “privacy concerns.” This choice left detectives begging the public for footage to solve crimes. Kent Loux bluntly pointed out that Wilson believes public safety means bus lanes. He says activist payouts matter more to her than the safety of real people. Rank-and-file officers know that safety requires boots on the ground.