Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is spending $1.7 million in taxpayer money to put security guards and upgrades in crime-plagued grocery stores, a move critics say treats the symptom while ignoring the disease of rampant retail theft.
Wilson's Office of Economic Development announced the initiative this week, describing it as a program to provide "technical assistance" and "security enhancements" to supermarkets across the city. The office said it will "partner with supermarkets experiencing high rates of retail theft to fund one-time security and facility upgrades, consistent with Crime Prevention by Environmental Design principles." Wilson framed the spending as a way to increase access to healthy food, drawing immediate public backlash on social media.
The program will fund security upgrades and business support for 10 independent grocery stores hit hard by theft, Breitbart reported. A pilot version already ran at a supermarket in Seattle's Chinatown neighborhood, where the city covered repair costs after break-ins and scoped out further security improvements.
But the question residents keep asking is blunt: why is the city paying to protect grocery stores instead of arresting the people stealing from them?
The spending plan lands against a grim backdrop. Seattle police recorded nearly 7,500 larceny-theft offenses across the city's five precincts through May, making theft the most commonly reported crime in every single precinct. Washington state reports 48 percent more retail thefts than its expected baseline, making it the most heavily impacted state in the country for that category of crime.
And the force tasked with responding has been hollowed out. Seattle's police department fell from 1,424 officers in 2019 to just 1,054 by 2024, Fox News reported, a collapse that followed budget cuts pushed during the 2020 protests. That is roughly a 26 percent reduction in sworn officers over five years, in a city where crime has not followed the staffing downward.
Target already shut down two of its Seattle locations because of the rise in retail theft. When a national chain with deep pockets and sophisticated loss-prevention systems decides a market is no longer worth the trouble, independent grocery stores with thinner margins face an even steeper climb.
Josh Velliquette of the Seattle Police Department's retail theft unit acknowledged the structural problem. Grocery stores, he said, are "among the most open and high-traffic retail environments in the city, intentionally built to be accessible."
"Unfortunately, this approach also creates potential security vulnerabilities for retail theft, which impacts the well-being of customers and staff and strains businesses financially."
That candid admission from a police official sits awkwardly next to the mayor's plan. Velliquette is describing a design problem that makes grocery stores easy targets, but the city's response is to spend money on facility upgrades rather than on the officers who might actually deter or arrest thieves.
Wilson has faced scrutiny on public safety before. Her administration scaled back a major homeless shelter pledge after campaign promises ran into fiscal reality, and the pattern of ambitious announcements followed by underwhelming results has become familiar in Seattle.
Conservative commentator Jason Rantz, host of Seattle Red, offered the sharpest public criticism of the initiative.
"The best way to support grocery store, and all businesses, is to actually enforce the law with a fully staffed and funded police department. Giving money or resources to fix businesses that are broken by crime is a bandage on a bullet wound."
Rantz's argument cuts to the core tension in Wilson's approach. The city slashed its police budget, lost hundreds of officers, and now watches theft dominate crime statistics in every precinct. Instead of reversing course, Wilson is proposing a workaround, taxpayer-funded security and repairs for the damage that under-policing leaves behind.
Critics also question what, exactly, city-funded security guards will be empowered to do. As Breitbart noted, observers expect the guards will likely only watch theft happen rather than intervene, a concern that echoes the frustration of residents who already see shoplifters walk out of stores unchallenged.
The backlash on Wilson's own Facebook post was pointed. One commenter asked, "If crime is a big impediment to a profitable store, doesn't that confirm what all these retailers have been saying?" Another wrote, "Does this mean security and law enforcement are going to start arresting people for stealing every day from the grocery stores across Seattle?" A third demanded specifics: "What exactly is the expertise and technical support? They need to control shoplifters and other criminal activity. How will that be addressed?"
None of those questions have received clear public answers. The city has not explained how the pilot program at the Chinatown store was evaluated, which stores will be selected for the full rollout, or whether any enforcement component accompanies the security spending.
Wilson's broader political trajectory has not inspired confidence on public safety, either. Washington's own Democratic governor publicly rebuked her over her response to a shooting and then deleted the criticism, a sequence that suggested even allies see gaps in her leadership on crime.
Wilson is not operating in isolation. She was identified as a potential member of a progressive mayors' coalition alongside New York City's Zohran Mamdani, Chicago's Brandon Johnson, Boston's Michelle Wu, Oakland's Barbara Lee, and Los Angeles' Karen Bass, the New York Post reported. The group was organized to counter federal policies, but critics note that every city on the list shares a familiar set of problems: rising homelessness, budget shortfalls, and crime concerns driven by the same progressive policy framework.
Doug Kellogg of Americans for Tax Reform put it bluntly: "If you're a taxpayer, it's like Freddy and Jason are teaming up to create your worst nightmare." New York City Councilman Frank Morano offered a more measured warning: "Collaboration among mayors can be very productive, but if the premise of the club is that capitalism is the problem, they may end up sharing the same ideas that got many big cities into trouble in the first place."
That concern applies directly to the grocery store program. Wilson's initiative treats retail theft as a problem that businesses need help enduring, not as a law-enforcement failure that the city needs to fix. It is an approach that makes sense only if you have already accepted that policing is the wrong tool, a premise most Seattle residents, judging by the reaction to her Facebook post, do not share.
Seattle has seen the real-world consequences of that premise play out violently. A food festival shooting that killed three people was later traced to gang conflict, a reminder that under-policing carries costs far beyond stolen merchandise.
Meanwhile, Wilson's own political standing remains shaky. A recall effort against her recently collapsed, but the frustration that fueled it has not gone anywhere. Spending $1.7 million to hire guards who may only observe theft while the police department sits 370 officers below its 2019 level is unlikely to ease that frustration.
Wilson's plan asks Seattle taxpayers to pay twice for the same failure. They already fund a police department that the city deliberately shrank. Now they will fund private security to fill the gap that shrinking created. The grocery stores caught in the middle did not cause the staffing collapse. Neither did the shoppers who just want to buy food without watching someone walk out with an armload of unpaid merchandise.
The mayor told supporters the initiative is about keeping "every Seattleite" close to "a reliable, affordable grocery store." That is a worthy goal. But reliable, affordable grocery stores do not need $1.7 million in government-funded security upgrades when the city enforces its own laws. They need that money only when the city has decided enforcement is someone else's problem.
When your grocery stores need bodyguards, the problem is not the grocery stores.
