(Two suspect vehicles from Lynnwood drive-by shootings July 13th and 14th)
The recent shootings in a larger, but normally-quiet suburb have that city’s mayor calling for everyone to help curb gun violence.
Lynnwood has always been home for Mayor Christine Frizzell, who says it’s easy to blame violence on COVID isolation but who says we need to get past our polarization and return to collaboration to deal with it. “We have to talk about mental health, what’s going on in our schools, what’s going on in our communities, what’s going on in every area of life,” Frizzell says, “It’s not just an isolated incident.”
While Frizzell has opened the door to conversation and ideas, like the parks director’s suggestion for at-risk youth programs, she says Lynnwood is also taking action with the building of a new community recovery center “where people can go and get help with mental health issues, with drug and alcohol issues, domestic violence issues before it becomes a gun violence situation.”
As Frizzell has these conversations, she wants to include former gang members for their perspective, and she wants to have talks with state lawmakers, whom she says have made policing harder with new laws in the past few years. Lynnwood is trying to recruit new officers. Frizzell says de-escalation training is so important they do 40 hours while the state only requires 8 hours.
You can watch Ryan Harris’ entire interview with Mayor Frizzell below:
