2020.01.24 - The Seattle Times - Letters To The Editor: Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses and other Seattleites share their frustrations

‘Criminals and thugs have laid claim to downtown’: Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses and other Seattleites share their frustrations

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Mayor Durkan, I implore you

I am a lifelong Seattleite. I have a history of drug and alcohol abuse, but I have been clean and sober for 25 years. I got with the Union Gospel Mission, and have visited “the jungle” and talked to the homeless on a few occasions, and am aware of the different hot spots in the city for different drugs and crimes.

I’ve spent the last 35 years traveling the planet, and have become a student of how different cities operate and change over time.

Two years ago, my band Guns N’ Roses played in Seattle. One of our security staff took a walk to the health and nutrition store GNC downtown from our hotel, and came back shaken up. In all of his travels — and we go to some pretty “bad” cities, crime-wise — he’d never seen anything like downtown Seattle. And this particular individual is a large and very physically able man who served in the U.S. Army Special Forces. I was crestfallen.

Seattle is the only city in the world that I take a knife with me downtown when I go to my gym, or take my family to the theater or dinner.

Something has to be done here. This is enough! More police. No open drug zone. I implore Mayor Jenny Durkan to make Seattle’s downtown a place of safety.

Seattle is my city, and it’s gotten way past the point of being scary.

Duff McKagan, Seattle, bassist, Guns N’ Roses

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https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/downtown-seattle-violence-readers-say-enough-is-enough/