Seattle After Dark

We take a street-level look at Seattle’s sudden cleanup for FIFA and ask what it means when a city can change overnight under global pressure. Steve Hickey joins us to explain how he reports major incidents across the Pacific Northwest and why one juvenile case exposes bigger cracks in public safety and the courts. 
• FIFA stadium rebranding and why the core looks cleaner 
• where visible homelessness and disorder seem to move rather than disappear 
• how Steve works as a stringer, licenses footage, and follows cases through court 
• why violent crime can trend down while fear stays high 
• DNA advances, backlogs, and how older cases get solved 
• gang violence, Glock switches, and rising severity among repeat offenders 
• RTCC cameras vs Flock and the privacy tradeoffs 
• the 15-year-old suspect case from Kent to Federal Way to Skyway 
• juvenile justice, lenient outcomes, and what “decline” to adult court means 
• Aurora Avenue enforcement, shock-and-awe tactics, and sustainability after FIFA 
If you're not a subscriber to the podcast, you can do so by going to your favorite podcasting platform and search US Phenomenon with Mario Magania. 

Transcript

July 4 Welcome And Theme

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to U.S. Phenomenon, where possibilities are endless. Put down those same old headlines. It's time to expand your mind and question what if. From paranormal activity to UFOs, Bigfoot sightings, and unsolved mysteries. This is U.S. Phenomenon.

Mario 0:19

From the Pacific Northwest in the shadow of the 1962 World's Fair, the Space Needle. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be on God's Green Earth. This is a special edition of U.S. Phenomenon. It is uh the birthday of it's the 250th birthday. So we have a great show coming up. We're gonna sprinkle in some paranormal uh stories to go along with what's been going on around the Pacific Northwest, but we're gonna focus our guest tonight who is a beat. He's pounding the pavement. This guy is always out here pounding the pavement. He's got people attacking him. I don't think he's having people throw bats at him. We'll kind of talk about some of the stuff that's been coming up on socials in regards to what I've seen in the last uh the last week. I think there was a uh an incident that happened up on Capitol Hill. We're gonna talk about what's going on around the Pacific Northwest. We're kind of gonna focus a little bit on the Seattle side. I know some people say Seattle looks like trash. We're gonna kind of get into that a little bit tonight. Um, our guest has been on many of times. What's interesting to me about our guest is he I don't even know when he sleeps, to be honest with you. Uh, if you ever find him, everybody loves. I mean, he's doing selfies now. This guy is out here. He's like a he's like a Walter Cronkite of the new millennia. So it is my pleasure to welcome back to the shows Steve Hickey to uh U.S. Phenomenon. Welcome back to the show, dude. Uh let me see if I got you back in here. There we go. Welcome back.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Good to be back. How you been?

Mario 2:04

Man, you know, great. Lots been going on. Dodger grab my daughter graduated. Uh, we got to get her off to college. Just so much going on. Graduation parties, you know, all that fun stuff. But the world still is turning in in the in this so-called thing called life. The anniversary, the 250th anniversary of the country is this weekend, or is today. So happy 4th of July. If you're listening to us on our flagship station 570 KVI, that's amazing. Can you believe a quarter of a millennium?

SPEAKER_00 2:44

I don't know. We're not even that old, really. I mean, it's not even that much compared to everybody else. I mean funny seeing

FIFA Branding And A Cleaner Core

SPEAKER_00 2:50

people come in from out of town for FIFA and stuff and go, your stuff's only a couple hundred years old.

Mario 2:54

Right, right. It it is it is quite interesting. And and on that same realm, I know that there has been a lot of stuff been going on. People talking about the streets of Seattle have been just they look different. And if you're in that uh Sodo Core, um the stadium's been renamed. It looks kind of tacky, and it's it's it's not just our stadium, but it's all the FIFA stadiums have been renamed to Seattle Stadium or you know, Kansas City Stadium, or whatever the case may be for these different uh FIFA venues, Miami, things of that nature. But FIFA, you could have you could have done a little bit better by just I know it's you want to be Seattle Stadium, but can't you just cover up where it said Lumen Field and just put a temporary banner that says Seattle Stadium? So you're not just putting a piece of black on top of the um in top of the the the Lumen logo. But I wonder if that was something that the the city or the venue had to pay for in regards to covering up these certain things. Um Yeah.

unknown 4:04

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

You know, as long as we've been doing these big events, these are typically we don't make any money, we'll usually go backwards. They're more of a they're considered a long-term investment. I saw Levi Stadium, like Levi the Jeans brand. Right. They covered it up, but it was so obvious of what it was because it was such a unique shape that then the company turned that into their own marketing campaign online. Smart. And so though they were blocked out, it actually became really a boost. A lot of people then talk about it, and uh for them it worked out fine. It worked out better than if it had been left alone, really.

Mario 4:33

It looks great. The stadiums all look fantastic, I will say that. Um I I don't know. I mean, uh the crime look, I mean the streets are cleaner. Um I know that there's still a lot of I saw that the McDonald's on Third Avenue. Look, you can walk into it now.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

I mean it's been a long time since that happened.

Mario 4:55

I mean, I yeah, it's been forever. I mean, it's it's since the pandemic pre-pandemic, right? Um at least. At least I'm trying to think of what else. It just I I there have been people in that have mentioned to me in talks and also who have sent text messages to the show saying, wow, where are they putting all these people at? Where where are all the homeless people at? They're still there. They're still uh they're they're within the city, they're still there, they're just not within that core. Um I see a lot of them under this uh Spokane Street Viada. I see a lot of people down there, maybe Ballard, maybe they're still hanging out in Ballard. I I don't know. Um quite interesting times. The city looks great. I mean, the showcase, everyone says that the stadiums are looking fantastic. Obviously, we're not a uh a FIFA spurts or anything of that nature, but we're talking about how the Seattle's being showcased right now during the on a world venue stage. Um and it looks great, you know. So, you know, congratulations to the city, uh, Paul Allen for envisioning what he thought would look, you know, what it would look like. And sure enough, you know, everyone says this is probably one of the best venues that they've you know have played in and things of that nature. So uh congratulations to the former uh uh owner of the Seahawks uh and the late Paul Allen. So, you know, congratulations to him and you know for for that vision and that long vision. It's too bad he wasn't around to uh see it to fruition. Uh so Steve, what what what what do you been I know that you've been on the streets, you're out here taking selfies with people. How the hell are you taking how do you do it? How how are you able to be in the street? And I know with you know summer being more an active time, you're probably seeing more social media people who may run into you, like who follow you, things of that nature. I know some of our audience may not even have social media, but you you really have paved a way for kind of the new medium uh as one of these reporters that is out here pounding the pavement, getting these news stories, then also packaging them up, send them to terrestrial TV stations if they would like to use them. Uh explain to some of who may be listening to us or watching us on the stream for the first time, kind of give them

How Steve Reports From Scenes

Mario 7:25

a kind of a synopsis of what you're doing out in the street as a reporter.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

So, you know, at its core, I go out to the larger incidents, major incident scenes, which is going to be major crimes from homicide all the way down to uh assault ones, we call them assault can still really change your life forever. But not typically your purse snatchings, break-ins, things like that. I don't usually focus on. And then I also put a lot of effort into uh ICAC, which is Internet Crimes Against Children, but and other types of crimes against children. So through that, uh I'm out on a lot of scenes as they happen, especially when you get to the homicide standpoint and there's still an active investigation going on. But and and from there, I'll sometimes sell and license footage out to local and national media. From there, uh a lot of times people do what I do, and that's kind of called stringing. They just leave it at that. They're just continually onto the next, onto the next. What's a little different for me and my model is I stay with the case all the way through. So if there is an arrest, I'm gonna be at the court date. I might even be there at the time of arrest, as I had just recently in one. Uh, and then I try to, you know, my goal is not to say, oh, it's so chaotic out there. I think a lot of people's perception is just there's more ability to get this type of stuff out to people than there was 10, 20 years ago. And so it it's not as much as saying, oh, there's all this chaos, so on. It's you need to understand how the stuff works. It is your tax money at work. You are paying for all these agencies. You should see how it comes together and what those results are. And it's not always pretty. Uh, sometimes it doesn't work out like we'd like. And let's look at why that is and and just have a realistic uh conversation and expectation. You know, I think it's so easy for somebody to see something and go, oh, it's soft on crime politics, it's this, it's that. I mean, it's it's a lot of things. It's a whole lot of things. I think the way information is processed now. Um, you know, I I like to think I'm pretty responsible about this, but there are times you could you can still get it incorrect. Or you get a lot of other people out there who come into this space with an agenda and they call themselves journalists, but really they are lobbyists. They are privately funded. Whenever you find somebody who really just talks about the same three to five things over and over again, sure, uh, you can you better believe that they are funded to push that. Um my stuff's pretty broad. You know, I go from all different types of scenes, different type of response, the court side, uh, also try and get in with some of these agencies to show how they operate. Uh, that's probably why I struggle to find solid funding for this, but I think the work is better for that. And um, you know, I think if anything, I I don't get into politics or what my politics are. I think the best way to explain me is somewhat of an institutionalist, and that the institutions are not perfect, but they are what we have, and we want to get them to be better instead of this tear it apart and say, well, that group's we're not gonna trust them because of this and that agency over there, we don't trust because of that. These are much bigger than someone's belief system or someone's wants for justice. And so let's take what these are, continue to make them better as a society and demand better, but also respect what has gone into this as we are a 250-year-old nation. We're not that old, but some of these agencies have been around for

Violent Crime Trends And What Changed

SPEAKER_00 10:35

a long, long time, and they're not gonna go away uh just because you're pissed off at them.

Mario 10:39

And we we we're at the halfway point of the year, six, twelve. How how is the city looking in regards to? I know maybe some of our uh radio affiliates in ocean shores may be like, you know, I'm retired. But you know, they used to have a vested interest. You know, we have our commuters from Duval who, you know, some of them live in Duval, work in Seattle. What's the city looking like in regards to that? I I I I know this is really I'm throwing you a curveball here, but I know we've talked about this in the past, Steve, about the city itself and like the crime and you know, the murder rate and things like that. Are we seeing an uptick here? I know with the World Cup and everything going on. Where are we how how are we looking?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

I didn't check the number. I was gonna do that today before sitting down, so I don't have the complete uh accurate number right now, but we are still on a downturn as far as violent crime. I I think it's the most common thing. I put out any story and everybody's like, I thought the crime was down. Yeah, it doesn't mean it's not still gonna happen. You're not gonna stop crime overnight. But what the the biggest indicator that I look for and others in the public safety space is the violent crime numbers. Uh, you know, I don't track car break-ins, car thefts, things like that. Now, if that stolen car then gets used as a missile to go through a building, yeah, I'm probably gonna go show up.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

And and car thefts matter. I'm not saying they don't matter, they're just not my specialty. I try and stay in my lane. So uh from that, I don't know where those numbers are, but we are still down on the violent crime stand. So what has changed though is the level of violence in these crimes on the habitual offender side. Uh, you have people who are continuing, that's part of why the numbers went down the first place. Is DNA testing has evolved a lot just in the last three to five years, really kind of post-pandemic. So then you had pandemic, and there were all these tests requested that were just backlogging for years. Now, what was before not seen as a viable sample is now very viable. And so they're able to go back and catch people. Well, what they're finding is generally one of the people we'll talk about today is tied to multiple murders. And he's only 15 years old. So that's, I think is there's you know, there is a gang component out here that that has a large part of it. They're the ones out there spraying with Glock switches and automatic machine guns and and wreaking a lot of havoc. So when you take a handful of those people out, the number's gonna go down. Now, when you get into your you know, uh more I guess traditional killer, uh, you know, the domestic violence, those types of things that really don't have an up and down. They're not they're not a seasonal road place. Those have stayed pretty steady. I think where we've seen some movement though is in these crimes where you have gang violence and they're committing more than one and a lot of shootings, and we're getting more headway there.

Mario 13:28

What do you think, in regards to the gang violence, do you think it's more of a trend because we're seeing an uptick of young the youth not having the opportunity to spend time in like uh parks and you know, sports recreationals? Um is that a I don't know. I I I wonder if there's if we're in like a cycle again of you know early 90s where we started to see the the kind of the gang activity really start to take a spike and really move over territory because of the the drug wars that were kind of going on. What are we seeing right now? And I and I know I kind of like giggled here just a few minutes ago, and I think what made me kind of laugh was when you said normal, I think I laughed when you said normal in regards to crimes. And it's it's almost like the level of of acceptance is what we're we're allowing to be normal now, right? And in regards to none of it's normal. I'm not saying that crimes are great, I'm just saying that I think our tolerance has said, oh, well, you and I, the average you know, Joe living our lives, we're like, well, you know, okay, cool, the numbers are going down, but we're not seeing duress in the streets, we're not seeing civil unrest like we did during you know the pandemic and things of that nature. And I think that's why I I I chuckled there and was like normal. And I was like, what the hell? Why am I laughing when he says normal? But I think as I'm like going through this in my own head, I'm like, I have to explain myself so I don't get myself canceled. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

You know, in anything, any civilized society is gonna have some acceptable number of everything. Just like in a in a corporation, there's an acceptable, let's say a food one that's producing food product, there's a certain level of shrink that is okay. That's an oversimplification compared to murder, but every organization is gonna have some sort of metric. And it's the same thing in public safety. Uh, you know, fires. There's a certain amount of fires that will happen. And when you see an uptick, well, why is it? What changed? Did did buildings change? Is there an arsonist out there? What do we have? And it's gonna be the same thing in homicide. And so, you know, last year we did see a pretty significant decline. And that is also that was not actually by the rate, that was just by the simple N number of the amount of homicides at a time where we're having significant population increase. For people who don't like it out here, I can tell you there's many people who do not agree with you. The reason we are so expensive to live here is because people want to live here. Now we do have some challenges on the commercial real estate side, as offices are fundamentally changing what their function is. But from a residential real estate standpoint, we continue to go up. And that is a supply and demand issue. It's simply supply and demand. So if people really were trying to all go to Idaho to a point where our population was decreasing, you would not have that population increase. But you get that in the homicide side, you know, there's there is going to be a certain amount of accepted. Now, if we really got it under control, I think people would pay even more attention to the you know, then lower number, and then we would ask for more. But there's always got to be an acceptable moment because it's it comes back to cars, right? You could make a car where nobody would ever die in a collision. No one could afford that car. Right. So you have to find a balance. And if that means a vehicle that is 50,000 and gets us pretty much there, or a vehicle is a half a million and nobody dies,

Cameras, Flock, RTCC, And Trust

SPEAKER_00 16:45

until you find a way to get that car affordable, this is what we expect. And it's similar with homicide. We could go and put in cameras on every corner. We could have a drone program, we could have police out there armed to the teeth every day and probably take the numbers down. That's probably not a civilization we want to live in.

Mario 17:02

Well, I mean, I know that Big Brother is uh living its peace right now in certain uh in the in the core, I believe. Is that correct? They turned on the cameras in the uh soto area for the uh Yeah, in the stadium district.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

And that, you know, that was I think pretty predictable. I think what people may be finding, they don't want to acknowledge it, but I I think uh Mayor Katie Wilson is a little bit more centrist than they wanted to give her, more centrist than maybe she even knew. Uh, once she got in and she started dealing with the pressures that be and the reality and the statistics and the data, I think she realized she kind of put herself in a corner here that she didn't know how to get out of. So the easy way to get out of it is say, well, now there's a threat, so we're just gonna turn them on, and then hoping that I think it'll stay on and people will kind of look to the other shiny object. But you know, that system is different than Flock, too. I know Flock gets a lot of heat. Yeah, this RTCC thing is a different type of setup, it's not as AI-based as Flock is, yeah, and it is a closed, closed system, so it it it can't be used by federal agencies and so on. I was kind of going through some of the normal things that people have issues with Flock on. Right. It really can't be used that way. I think she would have maybe done herself a favor to try and sell that a little bit more, but I think she really just wanted to say, hey, there's a threat, there's something I can do, we'll leave it on out there. And I was just hoping that life goes on.

Mario 18:20

All right. So uh speaking of AI, I uh had our AI producer go and look at uh the stats. Uh and so at Homicide Seattle tracker for the year 2026, the total homicides say six as of uh the last uh tick. So uh do with that what you may. I know last year, 2025, in the full year, there was 36 homicides for the year, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

I'm I'm not sure on six how they're calculating that. Yeah, they may geography-wise, there may be a little bit more to that.

Mario 18:53

Okay. Um, I figured we'd give the uh the the viewing and listening audience something to work with there.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

But six would be great. Man, if it's six, that's a good number. You know, but I I think there's there's probably some county

Downtown Avoidance And Earthquake Talk

SPEAKER_00 19:05

to city geography stuff going on there.

Mario 19:07

Um I I I gotta I gotta tell you, Steve, um, some of the things that, you know, and we'll kind of get into this. I know uh everything right now just seems to be around the city, uh had changed, and and I know that um when I've I've I've spent the last I've purposely have the last couple of weekends have been directly in the core. Well, I I I I should say I shouldn't say the core, I should say the waterfront. Um that is not the core, that is the waterfront. So someone who has lived in Seattle or has lived in Washington, in the Seattle metro area for a majority of my life since the pandemic, I would say I void everything in the downtown core. It to me does not exist. This isn't now this is my thinking. If you're listening to me, hear me out. Seattle center, cool, I'll go there. Waterfront, love it. Uh I'll go up to the market first half, cool. Second, you yeah, that's pushing it. That's red zone, that's yellow, third's red, um, you know, and then I I'll if I can get to Westlake, I'll I'll I'll there's some stuff in Westlake, then then I go to Lake Union. So I I feel bad for the downtown town core, but I there's not much going on. I mean, it's really the business district that needs to be revamped into I I think changed into some of these skyscrapers. Should be if they want to regentify the neighborhood, here's what I say they do. You take that a lot of these businesses, turn them into condos. High, high-class condos where people who have money can move in, live that downtown style life, eat, do their thing, and and and it will change the core. Now, if there's a great earthquake, because this is a paranormal radio show, if there is a massive earthquake, uh, all bets are off that the liquefaction is going to take of effect. So hopefully I know that the core is not going to be in great shape when the major earthquake hits. I know because I went to some public uh uh meeting, they're telling they were telling individuals who are going to this meeting, they better pack for two weeks, minimum of food. And people are like, Well, we live in this little condo. This old lady, uh, little old lady was live was there at the meeting, was like, this was years ago, was like, and this was at the formerly the uh Hard Rock uh cafe, they were doing the meeting there. She she was like, Where do I store all my stuff? Where I can't put in my one-bedroom apartment, and I can't put two weeks worth of food and water, you know. She's like, So I get a storage unit, but I can't get to the storage. Virginia because of the earthquake or whatever. It's like, yeah. Anyhow,

The 15-Year-Old Suspect Case

Mario 22:05

um, get back to um back to the the prize of B. Okay, so we know, Steve, that there's been a ton of stuff going on that has been going that has been spraying around all over the Puget Sound area from Federal Way um up through the whole Puget Sound area. Um Seattle, too. Is that is that correct? If I am I mistaken on that piece?

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Or we're we're talking about the 15-year-old or we're just the 15 year old. Yes, yeah, there is a Seattle component. Yes.

Mario 22:34

What's interesting to me, and I know we briefly talked about this, but for those who may not know, this is a pretty big one because this has been going on for a while. The investigation, the footwork, the the labor that has been going, the intensified investigation that has been going on. What do we know as of late?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah, so I'm gonna keep calling the 15-year-old or the suspect uh because a judge put in a ruling last week that uh, and I was one of the only media to be there, so it felt very direct, but it was too all media. Uh, can't name him. Uh, I can't show his face or identify. So uh I believe we can use his initials, which are KW, but I've also been using his street name, which is Odie. So this individual has been around for a little bit. He's only 15 years old, but how this kind of came to a head was a couple of well, let's go back three, three weeks, a little more than three weeks. There was a homicide in Kent, and it was a 16-year-old girl. She was out with a group of friends standing out in front of an apartment complex, and gunfire starts coming into that group, she gets hit and she dies. Investigators don't believe that she was the target, that the target was in that group, but nonetheless, she is deceased. And you know, it's interesting. Some of these come up and they're the they're the most heinous, and they don't get much public uh uh curiosity, and then other ones are the opposite. This one was kind of in between. I didn't see anything that really stood out, but I think she was known by a lot of people, and there was really a lot of uh public uh concern about this one. And Kent PD was very guarded about details out there, and so fast forward uh a couple of weeks. So uh week before last, I am at home. Most of the way I get info a couple of ways. Number one, I'm always out there and you know monitoring uh police radio, but I also get a lot of tips. That's the one really um unfair advantage I have by getting a large audience is that's you know, over two million people out there who can be seeing something and and DM me. So I'm at home. It was a Monday, and I around noon, one o'clock, somewhere in there, I start getting messages about, hey, SWAT's out here staged at a safe way off 320th. And at the time I didn't really take it too seriously because usually those type of hits are not like the more, those aren't like standoffs you get in the evening. They're showing up, they're gonna go affect a warrant, they're gonna be in, they're gonna be out. And so I wasn't gonna worry about going there. And but everybody who sent me said, I think it has to do with Uptown Square, which is the apartment complex right across the street. Uh, that is a reasonable thing to think. A lot happens at Uptown Square. I've been to a uh homicide specifically at Uptown Square in the past, which actually will tie into this story here amazingly. Uh so I don't take it seriously. I take a nap. I do sleep sometimes, just odd times. No. And I wake up about an hour, yeah. I wake up about an hour and a half later and I got like 15 more messages. So I'm like, all right, fine. I'll go on out there. I drive on out and pull into the side parking lot. And sure enough, there are like four marked county units, uh a couple sprinter vans with guys in tacked out gear. And this is 92 degrees, by the way. That'll that'll matter here a little bit. It's one of those really hot days. But then I also notice what appear to be two FBI suburbans and a few other undercover trucks. And I noticed when I pull, usually I recognize some of them. It's not like we've even talked. You just you do this long enough, and you're like, I've seen you before. And I notice I'm not recognizing a lot of people. So I intentionally kind of drive through that side of the parking lot because they know my vehicle, and sometimes they'll say, Hey, are you here for the whatever? And say, Hey, would you mind going to that side or the whatever? They don't acknowledge. I'm like, cool. I go sit out front of the store in the front parking lot, and as I'm sitting there, my car's idling with the AC on. I notice uh Dodge Durango, a Ford Explorer, and another vehicle that are clearly spotter vehicles. So they got uh all around tent, including windshield. But you can see the outline of somebody with binoculars looking straight at uptown square apartments, and then about every 10-15 minutes, they move to a different location. It's a busy enough parking lot. You can kind of do that and sort of blend in, I guess. So I'm like, what are they up to, man? This is if this is undercover, this is kind of silly. And so I noticed then two guys in like head-to-to-toe tack gear are gonna go inside the store. I don't know if they got a pee by sandwich or what, but as they're walking in, people are looking at them and stuff. So I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go grab a sandwich too, I'll kill some time. Maybe we'll pass each other and whatever. We pass each other, don't really nobody acknowledges, we don't even smile at the other. So I don't know. I'm like, all right, maybe they're out of town. I don't know. Or, you know, I knew there was at that point, I knew there was an FBI component. So I didn't think too much of it. And I go back out to the car and I sit there for about another hour. And stakeouts sound really cool on in movies and such. They suck. It's like the worst thing possible.

Mario 27:20

It's like white watching paint dry.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Yeah, and I'm sitting there first, I'm like, oh, it's gonna be really cool. Something's gonna happen. And I'm like, man, that roof on the safe way is not that high. But if I jump head first, maybe I could just end it right now. I don't have to be here anymore. So so I'm I'm messaging some people though, and I'm like, hey, what do you know? What do you know? What do you know? And I get word that it involves a homicide and that there's other uh components to it too that are also being tracked. I'm like, all right, so this is significant. I didn't think about the 16-year-old because the 16-year-old that had been killed, because when I knew there's FBI, I'm thinking, okay, you usually have a multi-state component when you have FBI involved. So I thought, okay, and I had just done an interview with a publication out of England that was working on a drug trafficking story out here. And so I was kind of, I was like, oh man, what would be the odds? So I text

Federal Way SWAT Operation Breakdown

SPEAKER_00 28:10

them and I just on the air, I said, hey, we may get something out here, stay by your phone. Well, finally I head home. And the next day, I get word that they every SWAT and every vehicle is heading to Federal Way. So I start screaming down that way as fast as I can, that is safe and reasonable and legal and all that stuff. And I'm getting just blasted one after the other as I'm going down Highway 18. And then I start getting word from some of the outlying agencies going, hey, you know, they're sending people from here. They even want Port of Seattle there, they want all the SWAT, all the Valley SWAT, they want Auburn, Kent, Federal Way, they want everybody.

Mario 28:47

That's a that's a big uh that's huge.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Huge. And and with the FBI components, I'm driving, I was like, oh, I wonder if this is like a FIFA terror plot kind of thing. Like it just because you a lot of you know, one SWAT team can do some damage, right? When you need this much, like what are you worried about? So as I get out there, about 30 seconds before I get there, apparently word goes out that the cover's blown, they got to go in. So as I park and I'm walking up, they're just starting to roll in. And I put out a little bit of footage of it, but I not that day, but later of just kind of how chaotic this scene was. And it was these apartments are like five stories high in the garden style, which can mean a few things. But one of the things that means is out outside stairwells. So the stairwells are in between the buildings, but they're open. You can see people going up and down them. Right. So garden style apartment. Uh, as I get there, SWAT wasn't quite there yet. It's just all the undercovers and some marked units, and they're just kind of setting it up. Well, it's you know, this day now, it's like another 80-degree day. There's kids outside, there's families out. This is a heavy family community, a lot of Somalis out there with lots of kids. And so they're out trying to enjoy the weather, and this stuff just comes in. So they kind of move back, but there's no crowd control component, right? They weren't, they they said their cover got blown. They weren't even ready to do this yet. So thankfully, most people are holding back. And there's this one lady, and uh man, I went back to try and find her on camera, see if I got any audio. But I walk up and she's like, You need to grab your mother effing kids. We got to get out of here, they're gonna shoot somebody, blah, blah. And she's just going to say this over and over again. People are probably then she sees me and she goes, Photox, your photo G Stees here. We know they're gonna shoot somebody. Oh no. It's I was like, I don't even know what that means. I don't know if that means she likes the work or you know, but but so she comes over, kind of talks to me for a second. I said, No, this is this ain't like normal hun. This is because I've been to SWAT stuff out there. I go, you you don't even see half of who's coming yet. Everybody should really move out.

Mario 30:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

So they do, and then uh SWAT comes in, two two bear cats come in, fully loaded. They get out there building barricades, and they had a by this point, a sniper's now propped up on the hood of a pickup and aimed up with a red dot on the building. And I look at the sniper rifle, he's got and I was like, it's got desert camo and a desert camo silencer on it. Like, who is this guy? And I'm like, I kind of recognize, I think he's local. What is going on here? So SWAT gets out, they go up the stairwell, they go to like the second floor flight below. So use kind of the thought process being, hey, if they shoot through the wall, it'll go over our head because we're down one, but we're right by the door, kind of concept. Around that time, there were a few females and a male in there. I don't know their age range, one looked adult to maybe late teens between the group. And they run out to the balcony. One of them runs through the screen door saying, you know, don't shoot, we're in here. They knew clearly it was coming to that unit.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

And as this is going on and there's a tenseness of it, and nobody's really knowing, like, hey, what do we want to do? Do you want them to come out? Do you want them to stay? They start panicking, and one runs out the front door, she goes into custody. Then ultimately they all come out the door and go into custody. They're all handcuffed. And the women in that group are yelling and they're unhappy, and the male's like, stop talking, we didn't do anything wrong. And I'm still just watching all this. Meanwhile, there's all these like kids and adults and people, people wanting to come take selfies.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

And so all of a sudden, they start wrapping up. They're just gonna pull out, and I'm like, Oh, maybe they got him. There's a there's the one male who was in handcuffs. I was like, Maybe that's him. Come to find out, no, he was not there. The intel they had was from FBI. Now that was a good location, it wasn't good then.

Mario 32:20

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

So now, yeah.

Mario 32:23

Oh, I was just gonna say for those who are listening, uh, the visual of where uh Steve was talking about if if you're familiar with the Federal Way area, the Commons Mall, also known as uh for most of us, the CTAC mall. Now, across the street is the safe way. You know, if you're on 320, if there used to be a um a bus barn for the Federal Way School District across the street, Steve, I believe those apartments are right next to the park. Um I I forget the name of Centennial Park or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

I think that I think so.

Mario 32:55

And I that that is how long I mean, I'm that old that I don't know the name of the park because I don't I haven't lived in Federal Way. Well, I grew up in Federal Way um in such a long time, and like I believe that you know that neighborhood, I uh it's right behind the safe way, right? It's right on the safe. On the front side.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

This is on the front side of Safeway. So when you look across, you can come out the door of the safe way, look straight across the town park.

Mario 33:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

And there's kind of two complexes over there, but built very similarly. So you when you go in, you think it's all just one unit, yeah.

Mario 33:26

Okay. Uh and so the this area is heavily trafficked. There's a lot going. That area has back in the day, it was very much a slower pace. I mean, 320 has always been an artery, but because of what the gentrification of Seattle has, they've really pushed a lot of that south. And Federal Way has really boomed. I mean, you got so much going on in Federal Way that it's almost unrecognizable to anybody who's who lived in Federal Way as a kid, and I I refer that to myself. Um but that's how I describe that area, much as Steve is talking about, is it's it's a it's a core area. It's so busy that you you are gonna see kids moving from a park, you know, going through the apartment, living life as an apartment child, which I was one in Kent over off a Pacific Highway and 272nd. Um you just lived, that was your neighborhood. You played in it, and you you lived that immersed life of the apartment. You had your friends, your apartment friends, and things of that nature. So I can see where that lady's like, come on, we gotta get our kids, we gotta we gotta stay safe. They see you on the streets. I mean, maybe you're gonna have to start to go undercover, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

You know, I think too, and also threw it off. A lot of the people who just started setting up containment also looked and they were like, man, he's usually early, but that's that's really early. And so I think it all just it was kind of a shock and awe moment when they come in with all of that force. Ultimately, though, the suspect's not there. And so all the people they just hooked up get released and they pull off. A couple more days goes by, so the next day they're out. Now they're surveilling a spot in Kennydale. Day after that, they're surveilling another location. Ultimately, it comes down to oh, and I'd also, by the way, by this point now, a couple days in, I got word that this possibly tied to this Kent homicide, but they really don't want that out yet because one of the good and the bad about juvenile suspects in this state and this county, they cannot be interrogated, questioned, or anything. And so what they were concerned about is they have other things that they believe he's gonna be tied to, but they don't want to give advance notice to him and his attorneys because they're not gonna be able to question him once he goes into custody like normal. So they just didn't want it really public. And I was like, that's fine, I'll just store this on the shelf. And I kind of want to get to the final arrest, anyways. A final arrest finally comes later in the week. Uh, he's at another apartment over this time up in um up in kind of like Renton Highlands, not Renton Highlands, but uh Skyway area, kind of over towards Skyway. And so he is over there and they move in very quickly, Taylor Creek Apartments is what that's called. And so they move in quickly with SWAT, with FBI, everybody, and they take him into custody. And that time they move that that Taylor Creek's very different. So if you think of Uptown Square, you know, there's one way you're gonna come in with a car, but you can pretty much come from any way on foot. A lot of foot traffic, a lot of paths, uh, just a much harder area to control. Taylor Creek is really kind of like one entrance in, one entrance out, and on each side, just kind of retaining wall and stuff. So they go in, they move quickly. I get the footage of him coming out. I didn't know his age at the time. And so I film him coming out, and he looks like a young man in his mid-20s, somewhere in there. He's you know, he's in shape, he's got tattoos all on his arms, tattoos on his back, and just the way he moved, I can't think of a better term. It's kind of, I guess, a boomer term, but kind of like a bravado that you don't really get until you become an adult. You know, you can you could be a young man and and be cocky and be confident. That's different than a confidence, right? And so he just had this way that he moved about him where I was like, Oh, okay, I'm you know, so I'm trying to figure out what he's about. And so they have him at the back of a car and they're gonna take the zip ties off that they first bagged him with, and they're gonna switch to uh steel, you know, steel cuffs for the the transporting officer. And he looks over at me, he recognized there's some other people there. There's a couple of selfies there, I think I even shared that day. And he looks over and he's like, Can he film me? I'm a minor. And I was like, What is this a joke? And they they kind of laugh and they're like, Hey man, it's out in public. So I don't again, I don't really think too much of it. Well, once they put him away, I finally say, Hey, is he actually a minor? Like, yeah, that kid's 15 years old. Oh, and that was the first time I realized, whoa. And at that point, I'm still just thinking the one in Kent. And so they take him in. Uh, again, they still kind of wanted this kept low-key, so I just left it until he was gonna have his first appearance. And then as he finally gets, he's in

Prior Cases, Switches, And System Failures

SPEAKER_00 38:05

jail now, so now I have an identity because I can see him on the roster. From there, I start digging into his past and what all he's been involved with. And it turns out this is really much more than just this Kent homicide. So it goes back a little ways. There's one that he's not charged with in any way that happened in Auburn a couple years ago. And I know the victim's mom. Uh, she's really become an advocate for families who've been torn apart due to this type of violence. And they have not yet arrested anybody and her son's death, but she she's really, you know, every family deserves to have their story told. You then find every so often you find one who's just knows how to how to grab a hold of the message and get out there and and doesn't panic on camera or whatever. And she's one of Nisha's great, she's she's amazing. And so uh she had believed back then this so I know I know her son's case because I was there the night of and I put some stuff out. And so she and I got contact shortly after that. We check in every now and then, and she hits me up because she hears that this man's been arrested here in just the last couple of days. I sudden put together with her case yet. So she hits me up, she goes, Hey, did you hear about you know Odie getting arrested? I was like, Odie? And I forget because the moment she hit me, I was like, Oh, that's that's him. Okay, so we get to talking. And she goes, Yeah, he's the guy. He had been bragging about it. He knew things that only somebody there would know. And it was a pretty stressful thing. Well, fast forward to something a lot of us will remember. There was a parade in Chinatown last year that became kind of a spectacle because a bunch of kids were arrested out there with machine guns. And this was big in the news at the time. There was a drill team, which is uh drilled, you know, like kind of like a cheerleading type drill.

Mario 39:52

Drill dance team, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

Yep. And so Nisha was there as a guardian for a couple of people in the drill team. And I remember being a story at the time of this popping up with these kids, and it was like this big deal. Like, can you believe at that time I think four 13 and 14 years old were having machine guns? And machines guns kind of a loaded term now. It is technically true, but really what they're talking about is Glock switches. So it's it's it's a handgun that's been converted into a machine gun, which does have federal implications. I mean, it's a it's a big deal. And come to find out, she goes, Yeah, he was there at that. That she was the one who first got the police because they were there, and this suspect sees her and starts mocking and taunting her about her son's death. And at this point, he had been identified as a possible. So she communicates to Seattle police who were out there saying, Hey, this guy who's a kid who's been implicated in my son's murder is over there taunting us. And so they decide to go make contact with them. Between him and the people who were with them, they recover a number of machine guns and they get charged, and they and it was a big deal, became a big deal in the news. Again, you couldn't show their face and so on, but it was just so over the top. So at that point, all they have there are gun charges. He has a nine millimeter type firearm with a switch on it. Uh, it had a polymer 80 lower, which lacked a serial number, so it was a an original piece that then had been had been deserialized. And so he ultimately gets 12 months of community supervision out of this. Wow. Showing up with a machine gun. So a slap in the hand. Absolutely. That is on top of another one that I was at. So uh or worked. So last year there was a homicide at Uptown Square apartments. Uptown Square is the one where I said that first attempt to take him into custody was with the FBI. So last year there was a young man who got shot, and I actually got video of it happening and put up a segment of it. He gets shot, and these juveniles come up around and they're grabbing stuff and then they roll on. So there was a 13-year-old girl who fired the fatal shot in that scenario. There was another guy who shot multiple times, or another another child who shot multiple times, and then was since charged and convicted, and that is our suspect. So there's body number two. Now that one he's been charged with, and he gets because he didn't fire the fatal shot, again, he gets a plea down. He gets uh a you know, a certain thing if you don't have more charges in a certain amount of time, kind of like a deferral type program, and he goes on about his way.

Mario 42:27

This is only because he's a juvenile.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

That's where a lot of this comes from, yeah. So the juvenile side is much different. I mean, and and I will give credit where it's due. These the thought process behind where this has happened, juveniles, they feel like, hey, if you got a 13-year-old kid who's shoplifted, there's still a chance to get them on a better path, and incarcerating them for years may not be it. And and I'm I'm I'm your advocate in that thought process. But that doesn't mean it should just be blanket across the board. I think it needs to be used carefully. But that same concept is being used now with a kid who fired a gun in a homicide, but because he didn't fire the fatal shot back out on the street. So we now have the Auburn homicide he's suspected of and is talked about. Now we have a body, this time, who's dead, but he didn't fire the fatal shot. Then you move forward to what happened here recently in Kent, where you have a young lady, 16 years old, dead on the street. And this time they believe that he knew that in that group was a rival. They put in the documents rival gang. They haven't said what type of gang, but rival gang, and he was unhappy about that. So if you go to that road, so you go down Central Ave and then you pull off the street, and it's basically you got the main drag here, and the road comes off, goes that way, and back to central. So he's kind of this horseshoe shape. On the back of that horseshoe is a river levee. He goes and hides on the other side of the river levee, waiting for them to show up, according to the docs, blast, and then leaves. That again, that is very different. That is that is pretty much. Meditated.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

That's methodical. Yeah. That's you know, that's that's that's wild stuff. So there's another homicide that happened in Auburn about a week and a half separate from the one I told you about Nisha's son.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

And there have been, there were a lot of rumors that he was involved in that. I don't think they've been able to tie it with any hard evidence. But what also is kind of wild out of this is I was working through it and I go through and I see all the docs. I talk to Nisha, I was like, I've been to every single one of these. I've been doing this now so many years, I've been to every single one. So I start going through all my old archives, and and there was even another one of the people that they took into custody back then required SWAT on another location. I got that on there too. So well, my plan now is I want to put together kind of a 15 to 30 minute documentary on this and then kind of dive into well, how did we get here? That's kind of the question I like to answer. And that doesn't mean how do we get to this chaos? It doesn't have to be overly dramatic, just how do we get here? And talk about the juvenile justice system. And so, you know, again, I I am I am an advocate in saying we just we don't need to incarcerate young kids for 10 years for small crimes. But like so many things, when these ideas get brought about, then it becomes this broad brush stroke. And now you have a young man at 15 years old charged with murder one, charged with gun crime for firing during the other murder at Uptown. Then we have two other homicides believed he could be tied to. That's a big deal. There should have been intervention so many times here to say this is off the roads. I really believe if you know a 13-year-old with a machine gun is not petty crime in my mind. That is that is a five-alarm fire. And nobody wants to go after parents. I'm gonna say that whether that makes sense or not, but there needs to be a chance to go, hey, what's going on here? The parents need to be brought in. They there needs to be a full assessment done to understand how did this kid get here? Was he at the wrong place, wrong time, with a bad set of friends and an otherwise reasonable path?

Mario 46:02

I mean, I mean that that's how I look. I I look at that piece where you're you know, sometimes the parents, you know, I know we always look back to the root of the, you know, of the tree, but in this in these types of circumstances, you you start to talk about where you know where he was growing up. What interactions he started to have with, you know, what what we do in quotations of friends who are actually not really friends, but looking for more recruits for these gangs. Um, yeah, it's very it's super unfortunate. And I I I'm you know, I'm I'm I'm miffed by the the the I I don't know if it's the court system or if it's the juvenile system. How I I I know that everything is black and white on how these things look, but I think back in the day, didn't they? If you if a like a teenager or someone murdered somebody, they would usually move them to try them as an adult.

Trying Juveniles As Adults

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Yeah. So they are trying that path here, but that will take a little bit. So there's two cases that I've been very involved with. This one and the Hummiston case, the Fall City massacre, where uh I think four family members were killed, and one was thought to be dead but survived, and then ID'd brother as uh the killer. And so that one now happened about a year and a half ago.

Mario 47:28

Yes, we talked about it briefly.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Yep. And so they have they called a decline hearing where they decline to go down juvenile and they try and take it over to adult court. That one won't have a ruling for adult court until this August. So almost two years since that happened. Now, that case has some differences. Um you know, and he also that that case has a a really good attorney. I think I don't think she uh thinks I think very highly of her, but I do she's a very good attorney. Uh, but because of that, there have been a number of things I've been pointing out that I think are are are not great about that, what's happened there. But she's good and she's really good at motion practice, she's really good at diving deep. And so that's really what's kind of drug that out. I think this individual's decline hearing right now, it's scheduled to happen in just a couple of months. There's a chance it will. I think when you get back to the Hummiston case, which again we can't identify the suspect, but the family is Hummiston family. There is a challenge of identity. So he says it wasn't him. He says it was another brother who's no longer here to defend himself. And the evidence is appears to be very much stacked against him, but you we don't know. You know, they you have to hear him out. What you have over here with this case in Kent, there was video of this happening, there was security video. And then you also have these previous convictions uh which had significant evidence there too. For those reasons, I don't think that this will be dragged out. Now, it doesn't mean he doesn't get a public defender who comes up with some novel argument, but I tend to believe that it's it's not worth panicking over that because generally those types of arguments are made and they may make some sort of bench, you know, some uh establishing argument for other cases, but you can't stack up that many bodies and and not face consequences to the world just doesn't really work that way.

Mario 49:20

As we uh celebrate the 250th birthday of this country, uh happy birthday to the United States, happy anniversary. Um if you're out uh lighting fireworks off in your legal neighborhood, I know it's not legal in the city of Seattle. I don't know how many cities it's still legal to light off fireworks, but I I will say this. I remember driving home from uh probably the war zone of uh Muckleshoe casino. One and uh man, I'm I I know that they've done uh two places that I used to get fireworks as a kid. Uh it was either the Muckleshoe casino or we would go down to the Pewlop Tribe and the EQC uh had a really their parking lot was pretty much turned into this. Was back in the tent days when they still, you know, were it was it was like a a massive firework thing. Um so congratulations to everyone out here. Make sure you don't blow your fingers off. I have seen on socials uh some amazing uh firework uh paraphernalia. I'm not sure where these videos are coming from, um, and how some of these things, these rockets that are taking off, and like they're like, you know, they look like little missiles. And and then they when they explode, it's like boom, and every car alarm within a 250-foot radius of whatever. You hear all these alarms. Now, uh, for those of you who um don't have AC, make sure you let my tip to you as you drive this evening, if you're out celebrating the 4th of July, there are some mischievous kids that are gonna take bottle rockets and shoot them at cars, which we do not condone, but they're gonna do it because it's happened to me. Um leave your windows cracked. This is probably today's probably not the day, or the 4th of July area is not the day to be uh leaving your windows down. You may get a you may get a bottle rocket in your car. Um this is true. Um so as everyone's enjoying beers, sodas, hot dogs, brats, whatever, chicken. Um Steve, what's your favorite uh barbecue? What's your favorite Fourth of July food?

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Oh man, I was gonna if you said barbecue, I was gonna say type of steak I like, but that's not usually how Fourth of July goes, right? You got the uh the a lot more people to feed. I like chicken wings.

SPEAKER_03 51:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:57

Uh you know, I I'm a big fan of chicken wings, and I also I love corn on the cob. I'm gonna try something this year, though. I've been seeing videos lately about people frying it. Ooh. A little bit of oil, so you cook it, then you fry it, crisp it up, and I really want to try that.

Mario 52:10

Oh, that sounds good. That's what it's all about. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Um, I love watching the hot dog eating contest on uh to watch Joey Chestnut or whoever's competing devour seven, uh you know, 50, 60 something hot dogs just makes I like I there's something about it that I really enjoy and I don't enjoy, but it's like I know that I can no longer eat that. I can't I not that I've ever been able to eat, maybe two, three, four hot dogs. Yeah, I I get one, I got one dog in me.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

One, you know, it's always really skinny people who win that too. People you wouldn't expect to be eating huge beats.

Mario 53:00

Yeah, well, Kobayashi has won it in the past. It's just it's it's interesting to me how many people have uh have won that thing, and you're like, wow. How do you eat so many hot dogs? Um fun facts um about uh the the the signing of the declaration of independence. Did you know what did uh that uh Thomas Jefferson was only 33 years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence? When he wrote it, I did not know that. Yeah, it's a fun fact there, huh? Um so I know we were talking about some of these different crimes. And if you're listening to us, I know we're getting close to the end of the show here. Uh you may catch this in the bonus hour, uh, the bone in the bonus feed. A couple things I want to talk about. Uh and I know that we haven't really touched it. Where was I going with this? I know we haven't talked about ICAC crimes. Uh any updates on Tanika Lewis? I always like to bring it up because I know this is a family.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

Uh Tika Lewis, no, there is not. Uh I've actually been focused a lot more on Lindsay Baum here the last few weeks. We're trying to put together a series for local cold case for streaming for Amazon or Netflix.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

And I think Tika Lewis will probably come into one of the later episodes. Sure. But for now it's been Lindsay Baum.

Mario 54:21

Uh who else? I know, I know that uh for those uh your 15-year-old, the suspect here, and not that he's your 15-year-old, but the guy that you've been working on, is he almost to the point where he may be classified as a serial killer? Or is it I mean, what do we know?

SPEAKER_00 54:42

That I mean, don't believe so you gotta get into motives, right? So uh and this probably not. I mean, these seem to be I my take is this is mostly gang violence, um, which I don't think they generally consider those to, you know, it's like mafia hit men are not generally serial killers, or it's a whole other category. I think serial killers typically get some sort of enjoyment. I'm not saying this kid doesn't maybe get enjoyed, but that doesn't seem to be his motivation.

Mario 55:08

Got it.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

I that's not my sense from what I read.

Mario 55:10

So I I wondered if there was like um a component where you were the the threshold, and I I guess you wouldn't make that threshold.

SPEAKER_00 55:19

Um it could I mean you could still be a serial killer if it but it depends it's the motivation is really the classification. You can kill far more, but if you are you know hired a hired gun, sure you may categorize the numbers just seen differently. It's a very different uh profile of a person.

Mario 55:36

Any updates to the uh murder of that young um that I don't uh young uh dancer who was murdered by alleged um former I don't uh he's already pled guilty.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

That one closed out so he's uh months ago. Yeah, he's done. He's gone. Um not as long as I I think it's I I'd have to look it up. It's not a life sentence. I mean, he could I think theoretically still see sunlight one day, but he's gonna have to his he's not somebody who makes great health decisions either.

Aurora Avenue Enforcement Before FIFA

SPEAKER_00 56:10

So I don't know how long he's gonna live, but there's a theory that he could see the light of day.

Mario 56:15

Um I I think as we kind of wrap things up here, um the core of uh uh 99. Have you heard of anything changing? I mean, I know it's been like a war zone up there, and I say war zone, but it I think it's more a night, right? Is that what that's and it I I know because of you know the the nature of the business is really more of a you know a study of of what's going on, but what i are things changing? I mean, you gotta you even have a police precinct up there, right? And it still hasn't really changed. Uh but is it if if I'm asking for your commentary on the subject matter, do you because I have my theory on it, but my theory would be like if you put more police like you if you did in Delridge in West Seattle, where they were putting these neighborhood precincts to have a presence, do we think that would change? But we're not seeing any changes up in that area, and I don't I'm not sure why.

SPEAKER_00 57:16

So there's been a couple of changes recently. And you know, there's an interesting study here, too. It's kind of think of the mob, right? The mob is like, don't sell drugs. If you sell, you can kill people, but if you sell drugs, right, we're gonna get the feds. Don't go out and do your hits in restaurants because we're gonna get the feds. This is kind of the the storyline that happened up here. You know, there it's very lax on prostitution up there. And this is we can get into a debate about whether prostitution should be legal or not. What we have up there is the illegal version, which then inherently uh get gets bad pretty quickly. And so it started getting up there where there's more shootings, drive-by shootings, shooting between pimps, between other people, and it got to a point where neighborhoods in there, their street would be the ways that somebody would fire and then use their street to get out. So uh I don't know, a little over a month ago now, people started getting these large planters they'd build in the street and they would offset them. So you'd have this planter box here, then up 10 feet, another one. So if you drove through, you'd have to weave through and you wouldn't want to do that at 60, 100 miles an hour. Right. And it was actually surprisingly effective. But that then got the city because the city's like, hey, you guys can't be putting the stuff in the street. And they're like, hey, you're not doing your job, we're gonna do our job. And so that again with the mayor, you know, she didn't want to go up there and do the meeting. She sent somebody else. But I think she realized, hey, you got a problem up here, and just turning a blind eye isn't gonna solve this. And to go and legalize it, you know, though we don't have an endless amount of time here tonight, but to legalize it is a is a very long, very complicated process. In Vegas, it is legal, but way outside of town. You can we don't really have a place to do that here. So legal the legalization path is not practical at this stage. So they then decide, okay, we're gonna put a bunch of cops up here, we're gonna look at mobile precincts, all these things. And then they sent the FBI up there uh a week and a half ago to try and make contact with every single person they thought was uh either prostitute being sex trafficked, whatever. And it was really, it was meant to be a shock and awe. No, I don't know that anybody was getting arrested, but it was like, hey, just so you know, we're here, we're not going anywhere. Uh and it was a lot of it was the lead up to FIFA. I don't, it's not sustainable what they're doing up there. Yeah. But it was effective. I mean, like anything, uh, you know, what you look and see right now in the downtown corridor is it's possible when there's enough motivation. And the motivation was FIFA. When that's done, they come back and they go, There's nothing we can do. Well, you did do something and it worked, and it worked for some time. Now you didn't eliminate the problem. To your point, they're somewhere else. But the problem areas were solved. You've uh right now in Aurora is much like we haven't had a shootout up there in a couple of weeks. Uh, there was I take that back. There was one the other night, but that was uh kids being stupid in a car playing with a gun, or then tried to say they got shot at, but it turned out it was an accidental discharge inside of a car. Beyond that, there has not been somebody gone, there have been no drive-by's, any of that. And so it is possible. Now, do you can you keep an FBI and police presence forever?

unknown 1:00:12

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

Yeah. But you can send a statement and take things more seriously. And there are efforts we can do up there, but you do have to look at what the next long-term plan is. We find every time they take down a large drug trafficking organization, what happens? You got a bunch of people who need to keep cash coming in, and a lot of drug dealers are spending for their lifestyle for the drugs they haven't even sold yet, right? You got to keep the cycle going, you got to keep the money in to go back out. And you shut down a lot of cash. So generally, when we see a DTO get taken out, there are other types of violence that becomes prevalent in the streets. We haven't really seen that up here yet. Um, and some of those types of, you know, pimps are they can more easily say, hey man, we're gonna go down to Portland, we're gonna go over here, let's load up and go. They can kind of move around. It's not the same as you know, in a drug organization, you usually kind of have your client, you already have your distribution, there's all these other moving parts.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

So pimps historically will then they call up somebody else and vey, hey, what's going on down there, man? What's going on? We'll we'll be out there in a few days, kind of thing. So it but it does show that these types of things do make a difference,

Cold Cases, Serial Killer Talk, Outro

SPEAKER_00 1:01:15

even if you don't solve the core problem.

Mario 1:01:18

As we get close to wrapping things up, um, Steve, uh, thank you for taking time to hang out with us on the 4th of July. What a fantastic holiday. Um I mean, fireworks and everyone's just it's it's a good time. Everyone's barbecuing, everyone's doing uh having a great time. But you know, someone still has to work, and you know, crimes are still being committed out in the streets. Um, so I always thank you for taking the time to hang out with us uh during this busy time, especially this busy time. You know, I I I I want to wrap wrap things up with this. Do you think the next time you're on the show, Gary Ridgway will still be alive?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:02

I doubt it. I think I think he will be on to the afterlife in the in the very few days of very few weeks.

Mario 1:02:11

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

Whatever that afterlife is for him, I hope it's uncomfortable, I hope it's painful, and I hope it's eternity, but it won't be here.

Mario 1:02:20

It's interesting because what was I where was I at? And they someone had talked about they thought maybe that was a Gary Ridgway body somewhere. Um wasn't was that I don't remember where I that that case between him oh someone thought it because him and um why can't I think of his name? Uh Ted Bundy were from like the same neighborhood, that they that there may have been a chemical imbalance of if they were drinking the same water. But what about the rest of the kids? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

Like there's a bunch of others who didn't do that.

Mario 1:02:58

Yeah, that's I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, as I say this out loud now, people are like, you idiot. Um I know someone had brought that up to me, and I was like, wait, what? Um yeah, so yeah, I just wondered. You don't we don't really you really don't see serial killers anymore. Not that, you know, I mean that thing is kind of uh I think they exist, but it's it's a lot it's really hard to evade anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:24

I mean, you look at Gary Ridgway, not only did he get caught, it was many years later, and then they tied a lot more because the technology caught up. Yeah, you got the Gilgo Beach killer that recently was caught. So I think there are still personality types out there that aspire to be such a thing, but it's not an easy thing to do.

Mario 1:03:42

As we wrap things up from the Pacific Northwest, I would like to thank our guest, uh Steve. If you're not a subscriber to the podcast, you can do so by going to your favorite podcasting platform and search US Phenomenon with Mario Magania. Uh Steve, where can they find you uh on your socials?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:59

Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. So Instagram and TikTok, it's Fotog Steve81 on Facebook. It's just Steve Hickey. Somebody already stole my name and repost my videos for profit. Wow. And then yeah, oh yeah, it's uh I can't stand that platform, but there's a lot of reach on there. Um, I also now am writing articles for Tacoma Weekly. So a little bit deeper dives, uh, no video. It's usually a thousand to fifteen hundred words, but I write one a week for them now.

Mario 1:04:23

Um you can find them there. Um what else is going on? If you're a huge um well, we're gonna put in the podcast. I'm gonna put in some other um trivial stuff. Um now if you're I'm gonna I need to do a couple shout-outs here before we get off this. Uh I need to shout out uh Craig White. Uh thanks for uh he's probably gonna be pissed that I said his name, but Craig, we'll say Craig. Um we'll say up to Ruby. Yeah. Oh man, he's Mike. Um, who else? Uh Steve. Uh if you like um like Bob Ross type uh painting, we'll link up Steve um Bixby's uh paint stuff. If you're really into oil paints and like the Bob Ross type stuff, go check him out. He's local here. You can find him at the Maple Valley uh farmers market on the weekends. His stuff is usually down there as well. Uh fantastic uh dude. Um so if you're um if you're into oil paints, things of that nature, uh go check him out. And uh you know, congratulations to all those the class. This is the last time I'm gonna say this. Congratulations to the class of 2026. We were like lung in the tooth. I know that my daughter had graduated. Uh, for those of you that are listening to the radio show, um, yes, she graduated. So now she's off to go do college. So um again to everyone who's been a part of the show, our radio affiliates K O S W, uh, K V I and K A P Y The Valley. Uh, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Like I always say, if you're not looking up at the sky, you never know what you might see. Have a good night. Good night. You're listening to U.S. Phenomenon with your host, Mario McGonya.