On December 18 on a grey, rainy afternoon, three staff of the Chinatown International District (CID) Ambassadors Program walked their regular route through the neighborhood to check on businesses and respond to any public safety concerns.
Early in the walk, they saw a car parked outside Phnom Penh Noodle House with its front seat window smashed into pieces all over the street. The driver was inside, talking on the phone. The ambassadors checked in with her; the break-in happened while she was inside the restaurant.
Approaching 12th and Jackson St, ambassadors greeted a man sitting on the sidewalk, who they recognized. They offered him water and moved on. As day turned to dusk, they visited business owners, chatted with people on the street, and swept the underground garage in the plaza by Henry’s Taiwan Kitchen. They erased possible gang graffiti by the stairwell. A few people stood or sat in the garage, slow to react as ambassadors checked in and asked them to move along.
Clad in reflective yellow vests, the ambassadors walk the neighborhood seven days a week from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. They are an unarmed alternative and supplement to the police, responding to public safety calls and helping businesses. If a person is blocking a storefront, for example, ambassadors will move them along, usually just by asking nicely. They can also help connect people on the street to services. They are trained to de-escalate situations, and carry Narcan to respond to overdoses. For more serious incidents, they will direct people to emergency services.
The program was launched in June 2025, the second half of Bruce Harrell’s last year as mayor. It is a partnership with the City, the Chinatown International District Business Improvement Area, Amazon, and The Asian American Foundation (TAAF), funded by $1 million dollars over two years by the City and TAAF.
The ambassadors, one of Harrell’s visible public safety legacies in the CID, are popular so far among CID business owners surveyed by TAAF.
But the CID’s public safety problems remain acute and often in plain sight.
“Obviously [Harrell] didn’t make it better immediately, but he inherited a big mess because of the lack of police, lack of emergency response, and all the homelessness that was in Chinatown and the drug sales,” said Gary Lee, a member of the CID Public Safety Council. Lee said his views shared with the International Examiner do not necessarily represent those of the Safety Council or any other organization.
Open drug consumption, overdoses, break-ins, vandalism, illegal vending of stolen goods, and violent crimes have been persistent challenges in Little Saigon for the past four years, according to a report from the Seattle Police Department prepared by Barb Biondo, Seattle Police West Precinct Crime Prevention Coordinator.
Quynh Pham, executive director of Friends of Little Saigon (FLS), thinks the Harrell administration had a mixed record on public safety, with the first few years of his term relatively unimpactful. “I think it does take a lot of time to see any major outcomes, but I wish that a lot of the work had been done sooner,” she said. “I feel like we were sitting around kind of waiting on things for the most part, and then only this past year did it feel like the city was taking direct action and making real investments.”
As Katie Wilson takes the steering wheel as Seattle’s new mayor, people in the CID are eager to see how her administration will tackle longstanding public safety challenges. Signalling her intention to focus attention and resources to the CID, Wilson named Pham as one of four co-chairs of her transition committee, advising on policy and staffing.
Callie Craighead, who was a spokesperson for Harrell until he left office at the end of 2025, told the Examiner that under Harrell, the City prioritized public safety in CID, including helping implement the new ambassador program and improving the street environment with police patrols and cleaning as part of the Downtown Activation Team’s work. She noted that according to police data, violent crimes decreased in the CID in 2025 compared with the previous year; homicides were down by 33% and property offences down by 18%. She also noted Harrell’s office contracting with We Deliver Care, which performs de-escalation and outreach services and helped 38 people in the 12th and Jackson area move from the street into temporary lodgings. Harrell’s office initiated or supported other efforts to connect people with behavioral health and substance use services, Craighead said, such as expansion of the CARE crisis response team, the Health 99 post-overdose unit, and a first-in-the-nation pilot program allowing firefighters and EMTs to administer buprenorphine (a medication to treat opioid use and reduce the risk of future overdoses) to people in the street. Harrell’s office also collaborated with Friends of Little Saigon on its Phố Đẹp (Beautiful Neighborhood) initiative to reduce crime and improve the public realm through environmental design improvements.
“Sustainable progress on long-standing public safety and quality of life challenges takes time and consistency,” Craighead said in an email to the Examiner. “Mayor Harrell and our administration used every resource available to improve the health and safety of the CID, and we now pass the baton on those efforts to the incoming Wilson administration.”
Phillip Dang and his wife Lynette haven’t noticed much improvement in public safety since the pandemic. They own Kim Ngoc jewelry store in Jackson Square. Nearby, open drug use, people loitering outside the business, and sporadic violent incidents, have not abated.
“The public does not even want to come down because there are so many issues in this area,” said Phillip.
The jewelry store uses two sets of doors for security. Inside, a row of empty display cases once showcased shiny jewelry, which is now kept out of view. Increasingly, the couple ask customers to make an appointment to peruse jewelry. They fear robberies and break-ins.
“I’m just feeling it’s not safe,” said Lynette. The two were shaken by a series of shootings near the end of 2025 that occurred in the open nearby.
Phillip and Lynette said they appreciate the ambassador program. Sometimes the ambassadors will wait with them until closing time to walk them to their car, a service they provide to other businesses owners too. But the ambassadors can only ask people who are loitering to move aside temporarily.
The couple want to see more regular police patrols in the area on foot or bike. Phillip suggested Hoa Mai park should have weekly programming to encourage more visitors to spend time there. They hope the new mayoral administration will focus more on the CID. “I know it’s not a one day solution, but it has been building up all this time,” said Phillip.
“We want the business here to thrive and look nice,” said Lynette. “So that’s something to look forward to, to see if they can help.”
Outside the jewelry store, Brandon Sibel and a man who said his name was Money Seattle said they are homeless, and spend time in the area because they have friends who hang out there. In their view, the area could become safer if there was a dedicated place for tents, places for people to shelter out of the rain, a safe consumption site, and in the bigger picture, more employment opportunities.
Seniors living in the CID share consistent concerns with safety, according to Michael Itti, executive director of the Chinese Information and Service Center (CISC) which provides a senior center, case management, and caregiver support programs in the neighborhood. “Seniors expressed a strong desire to feel safe while walking in the CID, even during nighttime, however, they are often worried about the unpredictable behavior of people who are homeless,” Itti said in an email to the Examiner.
Restaurants closed at night make the area feel less safe to seniors, and they worry about safety on the public transport they rely on. “There have been numerous incidents and reports of Asian individuals being targeted, which has caused anxiety among the seniors when using public transit,” Itti said.
Lee of the CID Public Safety Council noted that a feeling of safety is subjective. People who are in the neighborhood daily might feel relatively safe, knowing the chances of being harmed are low. But even such things as people regularly drinking alcohol in Hing Hay Park can be unsafe, Lee said; intoxicated people can turn violent.
“We cannot say what is safe or not. It’s what every individual perceives,” said Sue May Eng, also a member of the Public Safety Council, who said her views do not necessarily represent those of any organization she is affiliated with. “If I’m old and I don’t understand the language, and I’m frail and I’m sitting there and some people are in their corner getting into an altercation, if now I’m feeling unsafe and anxious about it, then it’s not safe.”
Eng noted that public safety is a distinct problem from homelessness. “A homeless person themself is not an issue. It’s a person displaying erratic or potentially violent behavior.”
During Harrell’s administration, Eng believes the City was more responsive to public safety concerns brought up by the Safety Council, which could interface with high-level City employees. “Over the last couple years, it’s been a much more engaged relationship with those positions, and we just hope that that will continue.” When members of the Safety Council bring up a concern, “between then and the next meeting, the City departments are able to report back,” Eng said. “At least, they say you were heard and it’s being worked on.”
The murder of CID neighborhood protector Donnie Chin in 2016 shone a spotlight on the poor safety conditions. In response to neighborhood advocacy, the City established the Public Safety Council, composed of community members and City staff, including the Commander of SPD’s West Precinct, and a representative from the mayor’s office as a CID liaison. The Safety Council conducts meetings open to the public and is intended to create better communication between the City and the neighborhood, and carry out the CID Public Safety Task Force recommendations. A CID Public Safety Coordinator, and a liaison between SPD and the CID, are staff roles established based on these recommendations.
Eng hopes that Mayor Wilson will retain this structure. “We’re hopeful that she’s going to get insight from Quynh, not only to help rectify what’s going on in Little Saigon, but if that problem can be solved, all three neighborhoods are going to benefit,” said Eng, referring also to the Chinatown and Japantown sub-neighborhoods.
Wilson has identified both short and long-term solutions to public safety in places like 12th and Jackson St, which she said has been troubled for a long time. “I really want to do what we can to reverse that kind of historical neglect,” she said in a video interview with Omari Salisbury of Converge Media published on December 12.
In the short term, she called for the City to adjust public safety strategy, including closer collaboration between police and neighborhood outreach teams. “Making sure that that partnership is strong, that we’re getting the kind of consistent police presence on the street, but also ensuring that police presence is community-focused, not just called in when there’s an emergency,” she told Converge Media.
During the next month, as co-chair of Wilson’s transition committee, Pham said she will advocate for improved coordination between City departments so that strategy and resources are aligned and not duplicated, and “so that we can actually see impact on the street level.”
“We need real solutions for folks to get off the streets right now,” Pham said. “I think the outreach and the cleanup of the neighborhood is only short term, and people are still coming back to the area for different things, because there’s still a lot of gaps in housing services that fit the needs of the folks on our streets.”
FLS has learned that sometimes people may be housed but still come to Little Saigon to use drugs. “And if that’s something we don’t want to see or it’s hard to address, then we need a place for them to go, where it’s safe and where it doesn’t impact business.”
This year, FLS announced its Phố Đẹp (Beautiful Neighborhood) initiative, a community-led, place-based approach to solving the neighborhood’s challenges, in collaboration with the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and Police Department.
The goals of the Phố Đẹp initiative include bringing together community members, business owners, organizations, service providers and local government to improve safety in Little Saigon, as well as coming up with ideas and implementing strategies to address “the root causes and downstream effects of the neighborhood’s biggest challenges,” according to FLS.
Phố Đẹp was a turning point, Pham said. “Before we did our Phố Đẹp initiative, I think people were feeling hopeless, and we were going in circles in conversations and efforts. We were meeting with so many different types of decision makers, but never feeling like we were getting anywhere,” she said. The plan gave people actionable ideas both big and small. “I think that slowly changed people’s perspective around safety a little bit.”
For now, the problems in the streets haven’t changed much, but they could. “There’s only been some small changes because of increased cleaning and sanitation and some other things, like arrests and other efforts within SPD from the City level, that we’ve seen slight changes in the street level activities,” Pham said. “But I feel like this past year has been just setting the foundation for the work, and there’s just so much more that needs to be done for us to actually feel major impacts around safety.”
