Great Weekend For Outdoor Activities, Shootings

With clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid-to-upper sixties it was beautiful weather for parking it for an afternoon or hitting the bike trail this weekend. Maybe you pulled the tarp off the boat, maybe you dug a frisbee or a tennis raquet out of the closet, maybe you shot a bunch of people: You really can't go wrong with weather like this.

Shootings were reported in Pioneer Square, Lake City and Greenlake over the weekend and we had another one at Mr. Lucky sometime last week.

From the P-I:

In the past month, nine people have been killed by gunfire, and at least 10 have been wounded.
The bloody streak is a grim contrast to the crime statistics released last month, which showed violent crime had remained low in Seattle.

The 25 homicides reported last year were roughly 40 percent fewer than a decade ago.

"The overall violent crime rate is unbelievably low for a city of this size," Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said at the time. "It's clearly one of the safest big cities."

WTF?

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By Dan in News on April 24, 2006 10:40 AM

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Courtney

Malcolm Gladwell covered a little bit of this phenonmenon in The Tipping Point--e.g. how after a publicly visible suicide, there is a spate of suicides in the same area soon thereafter, far above the normal rate. Following the Cap Hill shooting, I wouldn't be suprised if this falls in the same category. People who've been on the brink of shooting someone themselves are (perhaps unbeknownst to them), subtly given that final "shove" by hearing about another shooting.