Wilson taps Seattle CARE Department as command center in new gun violence plan

Police place evidence markers after a July shootout on 11th Ave that injured bystanders caught in the crossfire

Seattle’s mayor has unveiled her budget plan to address shootings in the city that would make the CARE Department the central command center for gun violence reduction, focusing $13 million in spending on the city’s emergency response system and human services to power a new approach that integrates Seattle’s 9-1-1 resources with community responses and intervention teams.

Mayor Katie Wilson unveiled her administration’s gun violence reduction plan this week designating the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department as a new central command center to take on the public safety priority.

The goal, Wilson says, is for Seattle City Hall to take “faster action when shootings occur.” The result is a possible new direction for the city that would focus new energy — and spending — on community public safety and intervention resources at CARE and not with traditional policing at the Seattle Police Department.

“Together, these efforts aim to give the city stronger regulatory authority, reinforce youth focused safety programs, and improve protections for neighborhoods experiencing persistent harm,” the plan reads.

According to the plan, the mayor’s proposed 2027 budget will include transferring “$5 million Community Violence Intervention contracts with nine organizations, from the Human Services Department to CARE,” moving the community violence interrupters into the 9-1-1 emergency response system to pair frontline teams with 9-1-1 dispatch, the Seattle Police Department, and the Seattle Fire Department.

These contracted services include hospital-based support for gunshot victims and their families in partnership with Harborview Medical Center, place-based work focused on “outreach, conflict mediation, hotspot stabilization, and incident recovery,” and individual interventions directed at the “small subset of individuals involved in the majority of gun violence.”

The plan would also include the creation of a new Director of Gun Violence Reduction role at CARE funded in 2026 and a new coordinator added in the 2027 budget to oversee and manage operations. Alongside new personnel, the proposed 2027–2028 budget expands CARE’s Community Crisis Response working hours by 85%, increasing service from 10 hours to “over 18 hours per day” with daily operational hours running from 6:30 AM to 1:00 AM.

The plan also integrates legal enforcement tools with CARE’s community-level deployment. The mayor proposes maintaining a 2026 investment in a dedicated attorney inside Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans’ office to file civil Extreme Risk Protection Order petitions. This attorney will review violent crime intelligence, retaliation threats, and witness intimidation alongside SPD to remove firearms from individuals presenting significant community danger, focusing on Rainier Beach, Aurora Avenue, and Belltown.

The Wilson plan does not lean heavily on traditional policing. One area of SPD investment would be spending on increased bicycle patrols including across gun violence hot spots, while taking preliminary steps toward a “focused deterrence approach in coordination with CARE and trusted community partners.”

The mayor’s plan would mark a significant expansion of the CARE Department and Chief Amy Barden’s role. CHS reported here on CARE’s crisis responders’ expanded hours of service even as Barden says she is continuing to guide the department to overcome limitations placed on its responders by the Seattle Police Department. Barden says CARE crisis responders remain hamstrung and sidelined by the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild union and that SPD’s approach has limited CARE responses.

Wilson’s proposal comes as business leaders and officials including District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth have criticized her administration’s approach to public safety and called for an emergency “100-day plan” to address shootings and street disorder in the city. Hollingsworth and the coalition of regional CEOs say low officer totals, slow 911 response times, and the stalled expansion of SPD’s Real Time Crime Center camera system as issues that require immediate response and cites an August Chamber survey where only 34% of 500 registered voters expressed confidence in Seattle’s public safety approach.

The business coalition’s public safety push arrives as Wilson faces a looming budget deficit while prioritizing civilian alternatives, harm reduction, and administrative accountability over traditional police expansion — forcing out Chief Shon Barnes, targeting hotspot patrols, and freezing surveillance camera expansion.

Recent weeks have also brought a burst of gun violence including a man shot and killed, and three others injured in a shooting at Denny and 4th Ave, a woman shot and killed near 3rd and Blanchard, and a 17-year-old shot and killed near Elliott and Bell. Meanwhile, police investigated bullet damage to vehicles after a burst of gunfire left no injuries at 22nd and Jackson — all on the same weekend.

Despite the burst, officials say gun violence continues to trend lower in Seattle and King County. The latest report from King County Prosecuting Attorney showed the first quarter of 2026 marked a new milestone in the return to safer levels coming out of the pandemic as deadly shootings dropped to “single digits” for the first time in nine years. In the first three months of the year, the county recorded nine “gun violence homicides,” the lowest mark since 2017.

Still, shooting deaths and gun violence continue and community groups including Capitol Hill and First Hill’s Circle the Blocks are calling for more to be done to address gun violence hot spots in the city.

Broader prevention measures in the Wilson plan include over $8 million in ongoing Human Services investments and more than $600,000 allocated to Rainier Beach High School for after-school programming and peer mentorship.

The mayor is also planning academic partnerships.

Under the mayor’s plan, the University of Washington’s Center for Firearm Injury Prevention will map existing data and service gaps, while the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions will help launch Seattle’s first Violence Reduction Council to conduct multidisciplinary action reviews of every homicide to “identify where systems and services failed and correct them so similar homicides don’t occur again.”

Wilson’s plan does not include a contract with the National Network for Safe Communities research center called for by Councilmember Maritza Rivera and her counterparts setting up another potential battle with the council as it takes up the mayor’s complete budget proposal when it is unveiled next week.

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