DOWNTOWN ALERT UPDATE: Police standoff over


(Texted photo – added after incident ended)

3:05 PM: With pm commute time approaching, you might need to know about road closures and bus reroutes related to an ongoing standoff downtown with a man in crisis who is said to be armed with a knife.

Metro says that “buses are rerouted off 3 Av between Spring & Union Sts. Use stops on 3rd Av south of Spring St or north of Union St.” Updates to come.

3:31 PM: SPD says the situation is “static” but acknowledges its negotiators are working on it.

3:58 PM: SPD update:

4:22 PM: Standoff continuing. (We’re monitoring via scanner as well as via public channels such as Twitter.)

4:25 PM: And now … it’s over. SPD says the man gave up his knife and was taken into custody without incident.

4:33 PM: As police have barricades to remove, among other things, it’ll take a bit for the streets to get back to regular flow, so don’t rush out just yet.

4:55 PM: As of a few minutes ago, Metro says, buses are getting back to normal on 3rd.

5:43 PM: Here’s how the incident was summed up on SPD Blotter, including a photo of the man’s knife.

24 Replies to "DOWNTOWN ALERT UPDATE: Police standoff over"

  • newnative March 28, 2017 (3:20 pm)

    Thanks, I’m no longer surprised that there are no alerts on metro.

    • WSB March 28, 2017 (3:29 pm)

      FWIW, I have a text alert from 2:19 pm that begins “Buses are rerouted off 3 Av…” and one from 3:20 pm that says “Buses are currently not serving the University St. Station.”

  • Leslie March 28, 2017 (3:35 pm)

     I never got an alert and I usually get more than I ever need!  But it doesn’t matter, it’s happening in front of my building and they won’t let us out (at least out of 3rd).

    I’m trying to figure out if I walked to the Columbia and 2nd stop, would a rerouted 55 or 56 or C show up or are they stuck. Anyone know?

  • DaPuffin March 28, 2017 (3:44 pm)

    RqpidRide rerouted down University.  Moving a few feet every few minutes.  

  • Mary March 28, 2017 (3:59 pm)

    They’re stopping at 2nd and Columbia but they’re pretty full. If you can go To the stop prior to the closed stop you might have a better shot.

  • misoginger March 28, 2017 (4:00 pm)

    Has anyone caught a bus at 2/Columbia? Watching bus app and it appears they’re arriving (albeit late). I don’t trust the app though. Are they actually arriving? 

    • Jamie March 28, 2017 (4:37 pm)

      I was at that stop about half hr ago, with like 200 others. 120 came down 1st and got on viaduct with empty bus. Go to water taxi!!!

  • newnative March 28, 2017 (4:05 pm)

    I got two identical alerts at 3:52 :/

  • Irishlady March 28, 2017 (4:12 pm)

    Per KCM on Twitter: Re-routing all 3rd Ave buses between Spring and Union.  They are advising to catch south of Spring and north of Union.  2nd/Columbia, I assume, is good to go…just late.    

  • mitts March 28, 2017 (4:14 pm)

    In the 20 minutes that I waited for the Water Taxi, I didn’t see a single southbound bus on the Viaduct. 

  • misoginger March 28, 2017 (4:20 pm)

    Caught the 415 water taxi. Lots of empty seats. 

    • Irishlady March 28, 2017 (4:22 pm)

      Thank you for the reminder!

      • WSB March 28, 2017 (4:29 pm)

        Just ended. So things should be getting back to normal … though the residual backups always take a while to unravel, especially at this hour…

  • sam-c March 28, 2017 (4:29 pm)

    so glad it ended peacefully    

  • Pam March 28, 2017 (4:47 pm)

    The SWAT teams have packed up and traffic is now getting down 3rd to Columbia. 

    • WSB March 28, 2017 (4:56 pm)

      Thanks! Metro has also sent an alert saying buses are getting back to normal on 3rd.

  • mfg March 28, 2017 (9:09 pm)

    Given the army of cops and other emergency personal on the scene, it’s disappointing that the best idea they could come up with for subduing one guy with a knife was to barricade downtown during rush hour. That must have been of heck of a knife.  

    • Double Dub Resident March 29, 2017 (12:42 am)

      Says the armchair critic.  What should they have done, send in Mel Gibson and Danny Glover? This ain’t the movies and the police and other emergency personnel also want to go home at the end of there work shift too. 

      No one’s going to rush in and “be the hero” and tackle and subdue the guy, not to mention  if they tried something like that or anything for that matter you’d probably have that wanna be activist cop hating council member Sawant trying to start a protest about it with all the other people living in a snow globe around here

  • Jennifer March 28, 2017 (10:00 pm)

    It’s interesting that not everyone signed up for the Metro alerts got the emails. I am signed up both at home and work and didn’t the majority of the ones that were sent out.  I did get one about the 128. It seems some people did but others didn’t. It would be nice to know why. Also I’m signed up for the Alert Seattle emails and didn’t get anything there either. It seems like we should have. It took forever to get a bus home but I don’t blame anyone, these things happen. I’m just thankful that the police were able to end this without anyone getting hurt.

  • Gene March 28, 2017 (10:04 pm)

    MFG- gee sorry you were so disappointed.  Maybe next time SPD will take rush hour into account when dealing with a situation like this.

  • Diane March 28, 2017 (10:07 pm)

    I don’t see a photo of the knife in the SPD blotter

  • Diane March 28, 2017 (11:12 pm)

    thank you for link to knife photo

  • Kelly March 29, 2017 (6:45 am)

    Yay! Nobody got shot! Nice work SPD!

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