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Seattle’s socialist mayor Katie Wilson is facing fierce blowback on social media after a 77-year-old man was seen on video being beaten by two individuals in a crime that was captured by closed-circuit television cameras, a tool that Wilson has denounced in the past as something that makes the community feel unsafe and “vulnerable.”
The elderly man was walking down the street in downtown Seattle last month when two men walking by him stopped, without any provocation, shoved him to the ground and beat him, KOMO News reported.
Ahmed Abdullahi Osman, 29, was later arrested and charged with second-degree assault, and police are looking for the second suspect. Osman was reportedly booked into jail the night of the assault and then released back onto the streets before a bail hearing.
“Turning on more cameras won’t magically make our neighborhoods safer, but it will certainly make our neighborhoods more vulnerable,” Wilson said in 2025 after Seattle City Council’s approval of expanding the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) CCTV pilot program, the program used to capture the video of this specific crime, according to KOMO News.
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Conservatives on social media quickly pointed to Wilson’s policies, which have been much maligned as “soft on crime,” as a contributing factor, as well as her previous comments on CCTV.
“They elected a SOCIALIST,” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez posted on X. “What did they think would happen?”
“Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson remains clueless on the job,” journalist Jonathan Choe posted on X. “So she’s allowing far-left activists to make public safety decisions for the city.”
“Go ahead and explain the ‘sOCiONoMic rOoT cAusES’ of this heinous crime,” Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael A. Mangual posted on X.
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“Ahmed Abdullah Osman beat a 77-year-old in Seattle,” conservative influencer account End Wokeness posted on X in a clip that has been viewed over a million times. “Police ID’d him thanks to street video cameras. Mayor Wilson: ‘CCTV puts refugees at risk.’”
Wilson has amplified concerns from local activist groups that CCTV cameras will pose a threat to illegal immigrant communities.
“We are deeply concerned that the expansion of these tools will create an infrastructure where federal agencies can more readily target vulnerable communities, including immigrants and refugees,” the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Washington and the Church Council of Greater Seattle said in a letter last year.
The victim in the incident spent a week in a hospital after suffering a broken arm, knee and facial injuries, KOMO News reported.
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The Space Needle stands over the Seattle skyline with Mt. Rainier visible in the background in Seattle, Wash., on March 13, 2022. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Wilson’s office directed Digital to a March press release in which she outlined her position on the cameras, saying she is leaving the current cameras on but the “pausing expansion of the pilot” program until “we have completed a privacy and data governance audit, and taken significant steps to strengthen our policies.”
Wilson acknowledged there’s “no doubt that these cameras make it easier to solve some crimes” that include “serious ones like homicides, but also, cameras are not the one key to making our neighborhoods safe.”
“I want to acknowledge that this is a controversial issue,” Wilson added. “For some people, seeing CCTV cameras in the neighborhood where they live or work or attend school makes them feel safer. For others, those same cameras make them feel less safe.”
“Those feelings are important, because our quality of life is partly about our feelings of safety or lack thereof, and our sense that our city is a welcoming place that is designed with consideration for our well-being and our humanity.”
Wilson continued, “But precisely because different people and different communities experience the cameras differently, it’s important to base a decision on more than feelings. It’s important to ground our actions in a thorough understanding of how the cameras are being used, of the public benefits they are providing, and of any harm they are causing or could cause.”
Last month, Digital reported on city advocates who say they are struggling to find solutions as homelessness and open-air drug use spread across Seattle’s streets, amid growing concerns about the direction of Wilson’s new administration.
“You can just see the foil is like blowing down the sidewalks like autumn leaves,” Andrea Suarez, founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle, told Digital in an interview.
“Very common to see property damage of our parks and shared spaces. You can see Narcan is used to reverse an overdose, so you’ll see cartridges. But at least we’re remodeling the bathroom to be gender-neutral. I’m not [kidding] you, that’s where our priorities are.”
