Frustrated by years of chronic gun violence and what they describe as abandonment by city leaders, residents living along Seattle’s North Aurora corridor have taken matters into their own hands. Following a massive weekend shootout that left dozens of shell casings scattered across the pavement, neighbors mobilized to physically block vehicle access to three residential side streets.
Early Saturday morning, a major shootout erupted near N. 98th Street and Aurora Avenue N. near a local business, with two groups exchanging a volley of more than 40 gunshots. While surveillance footage captured people scrambling for cover and several surrounding properties were damaged, miraculously no injuries were reported. However, for the surrounding Greenwood community, the incident was the final straw. By daybreak, residents hauled in large, industrial steel planters to completely seal off residential traffic where N. 97th, 98th, and 102nd Streets intersect with Aurora Avenue.
The illegal blockades represent a direct revolt against City Hall. When representatives from the mayor’s office and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) arrived on-site to contest the street closures, defiant neighbors turned them away. Residents, speaking anonymously due to fears of retaliation from criminal elements operating in the area, stated they are no longer waiting on bureaucratic processes and intend to keep the barriers in place indefinitely.
The community’s desperation has peaked after a string of terrifying close calls. Just one week prior to the latest shootout, a stray bullet pierced the wall of a neighborhood home, passing mere inches from a bassinet where a six-week-old baby boy was sleeping. Despite repeated pleas to public officials and multiple subsequent nights of gunfire, residents report receiving little to no support.
A community letter revealed that neighbors have engaged daily with city agencies for over three years to combat the spillover of the corridor’s rampant drug and sex trafficking trades into their neighborhood. Following a high-profile shootout the previous summer, SDOT had agreed to close several residential access points, but the directive was never authorized by the mayor’s office. Instead, violence has pushed deeper into residential zones. Local leaders point to critical staffing shortages within the Seattle Police Department—which has dropped from roughly 1,203 deployable officers in 2020 to just 861—but for neighbors dodging nightly gunfire, political explanations are no longer enough to justify their lack of safety.
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