The socialist mayor of Seattle is facing heat after a security camera program she slammed helped find a suspect who allegedly beat up a 77-year-old man in the city.
Katie Wilson swept into office with comparisons to New York City's Zohran Mamdani but has struggled early in her first year.
The 43-year-old has brought on more criticism after the violent beating of an elderly man in the city's downtown last month.
With the scene all caught on a security camera, the two men walked into frame and with seemingly zero provocation, shoved him to the street and beat him up.
One of the suspects, 29-year-old Ahmed Abdullahi Osman, was arrested shortly after thanks to the clip, as police search for the other attacker.
However, many have pointed to wrongheadedness on Wilson's part after unearthing statements against the city's CCTV program, known as the Real Time Crime Center.
'Turning on more cameras won't magically make our neighborhoods safer, but it will certainly make our neighborhoods more vulnerable,' she said just last year.
Wilson was responding to an expansion of the pilot program of the CCTV cameras that was approved for expansion, a policy that she placed a pause on.
The socialist mayor of Seattle is facing heat after a security camera program she slammed helped find a suspect who allegedly beat up a 77-year-old man in the city. Katie Wilson (pictured) swept into office with comparisons to New York City's Zohran Mamdani but has struggled early in her first year
With the scene all caught on a security camera, the two men walked into frame and with seemingly zero provocation, shoved him to the street and beat him up
One of the suspects, 29-year-old Ahmed Abdullahi Osman, was arrested shortly after thanks to the clip, as police search for the other attacker
However, she recently flip flopped on the subject after pressure from the media over several recent criminal incidents, KOMO News reported.
'I believe that CCTV cameras have an important role to play in our public safety system, and we also have to be very careful to make sure that our data storage and sharing practices don't make that system vulnerable to misuse or abuse.'
The victim suffered a broken arm, knee and facial injuries and had to spend a week in the hospital.
Osman was booked into jail the night of the assault and released before even a bail hearing.
He has since gone on the run and is currently wanted on a warrant of $200,000, according to police in nearby Redmond.
The other suspect, Jes'Sean Tyrell Elion, has been taken into custody by Redmond police with the assistance of authorities in Seattle.
The Daily Mail has reached out to Mayor Wilson and the King's County Prosecutor's Office for comment.
Wilson recently flip flopped on the subject of security cameras after pressure from the media over several recent criminal incidents
She has been referred to as 'the white Mamdani' and like her counterpart she ran on a campaign characterized by promises to increase affordability in the city.
Another core part of her platform is addressing Seattle's homelessness crisis, which is one of the worst in the country.
Critics have called Wilson privileged and out of touch, as she regularly receives checks from her professor parents to pay for childcare.
In August, Wilson won the mayoral primary by 9.5 points. Turnout at the primary in 2025 was slightly lower than the last election in 2021, according to Ballotpedia.
Unofficial King's County election results last updated on Friday showed that about 40,000 more registered voters cast their ballots in the general election than in the primary.
That represented about 46 percent of the city's registered voters, which is lower than the 2021 turnout of 54.6 percent in the 2021 general election.
That lower turnout also represents a stark difference with New York City's mayoral election, where 2 million votes were cast - the most by raw number since 1969 and the highest percentage of registered voters to engage in the election since 2001.