Rapper Big Sean says he’s stunned by the squalor of Seattle – and says it is as bad as his hometown of Detroit was when he was growing up.
The artist – whose real name is Sean Michael Leonard Anderson – offered the anecdote mid-concert at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Washington, a few miles away on August 10.
He told those convened how he had seen the woman during a walk back to his hotel with friends in Seattle the day before.
‘We saw a young lady doing crack,’ he recalled. ‘I know it sounds crazy! With kids around!
‘And she whipped the pipe out and was doing crack, and there were cops around,’ Anderson continued, as the audience expressed their disapproval. ‘And I was like, “Damn, Seattle. I didn’t know Seattle was like that.”‘
Sean’s indictment is a particularly damning one, given that he grew up in a neglected city notorious for severe social problems.
Detroit is undergoing a slow renaissance after losing many of its manufacturing industries during the 70s and 80s. Seattle is home to tech giants Amazon and Microsoft and is blessed with stunning natural beauty.
But its progressive pursuit of ‘harm reduction’ policies which try to encourage ‘safe’ drug use have been blamed for helping to crater its image.
Big Sean called out the city of Seattle after he saw a woman smoking ‘crack’ in front of local children and police the day before a performance in Auburn on Monday, August 10. Pictured, the rapper performing at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn on August 10
‘We saw a young lady doing crack,’ he recalled. ‘I know it sounds crazy! With kids around! ‘And she whipped the pipe out and was doing crack, and there were cops around.’ Pictured, a homeless encampment in the city in March. Post-pandemic crime there has persisted
Seattle, like many other major cities, has been plagued by a surge of crime since the pandemic, after which violent crime hit a 30-year peak in 2022.
The chaos continued in 2023 when the Democrat-led city recorded 69 homicides – tying a record for violent death last seen in 1994. Drugs, gang violence, and homelessness has persisted ever since.
It caught the attention of Anderson, who is no stranger to tough streets.
‘I went to high school in Detroit, in, like, a kind of a crazy neighborhood,’ he admitted on-stage.
‘I haven’t seen this since high school.’
Seattle’s ‘defund the police’ politics – touted by several city leaders at the time – also played a part, causing the Seattle Police Department to downsize from about 1,300 officers to just 907 just last year.
A study of 15 major cities released in May of this year by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund pegged Seattle as one of the worst offenders when it came to its failure to quell post-pandemic crime.
‘Every one of the 15 cities has seen its homicide numbers drop since 2021 — except Seattle,’ a portion of the analysis read.
It also noted how Seattle was the ‘only city that did not see any increase in police enforcement’ and that cops there currently make 60 percent fewer stops than they did prior to the pandemic.
‘While the murder rate is 50 percent higher,’ the study noted. ‘The city’s experience provides a useful, if tragic, counterfactual that proves the impact of re-policing on murders.’
Elections in November offered some hope to citizens, however, after it ousted several members of its progressive City Council.
‘I went to high school in Detroit, in, like, a kind of a crazy neighborhood,’ the artist – whose real name is Sean Michael Leonard Anderson – admitted on-stage. ‘I haven’t seen this since high school’
Street disorder in the city – fueled by drug use, incidents of homelessness, and mentally ill citizens -still persists, as city leaders take steps to ‘re’-police its ‘defunded’ police force. Pictured, a woman living in an RV in a Seattle encampment in 2022
‘I was like, “Damn, Seattle. I didn’t know Seattle was like that,”‘ Anderson told an also outraged audience. He’s seen here at the T-Mobile arena in 2024
Street disorder in the city – fueled by drug use, incidents of homelessness, and mentally ill citizens – still persists. But city leaders have begun to take steps to ‘re’-police its police force.
So far, the department still has work to do – only securing about 10 percent of the staffers it lost since 2019.
The city’s Downtown, Capitol Hill, and its International District are still problem areas, where drugs like fentanyl are still smoked out in the open.
Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. Startlingly, it is undetectable by sight, taste, or even smell, and it is often mixed with other drugs, causing overdoses.
Meanwhile, New Seattle police Chief Shon Barnes announced that his force had seized 900 illegal guns off the streets last month.
Such steps have made strides in combatting violent crime, with homicide down 41 percent from this time last year through June. Shootings are similarly down 29 percent, and car theft down 25 percent.
Overall, violent crime is down by 12 percent, statistics from Seattle’s dispatch center show.
