John Bryant: Shawn Yim was failed. Our city and public officials can do better to protect our residents.

By John Bryant

After the tragic stabbing and death of the metro bus driver in Seattle, I’m contacting city officials here in Spokane to ask for advice of what is wanted from us as residents and businesses? How do we proactively prevent this from happening here? How do we ensure we are not waiting around to be victimized?

Seattle bus driver Shawn Yim was a friend of mine since 1985. He was an intelligent, kind and hard-working family man. Shawn chose to work an overnight metro bus shift to earn money for his family.

Last week, Seattle police say a homeless man dragged him out of his bus, beating and stabbing him to death. Given the issues that I’ve seen develop in Spokane over the past several years, I worry now about what’s to stop this from happening in Spokane?

This year’s theft and robbery (after hours) at No-Li was by a transient felon who used the public bus system to navigate and subsequently escape the downtown area. We had another incident of vandalism and theft last Friday at Joya, with two new encampments by the Iron Bridge and Centennial Trail. Across the city, we are building more fences for protection and self-defense versus making sensible decisions to address root causes.

Our business is safe partially because we choose to be on-site even more, and have so far spent more than $80,000 on deterrents (fences, cameras, security guards, key pad locks, etc.). Last year, we moved away from accepting cash for transactions to remove the lure of theft. We submit emails and incident reports into Crime Check and 311 on a weekly basis.

At this point, I’m not sure how to support positive change. Like my grandmother taught me, sensible acts of kindness are needed, but only with the requisite amount of accountability. Compassion and love are not weaknesses and they should not be manipulated by lawlessness. At our business, and in our family, we try to be civic-minded, selfless and servant leaders. This does not equate to being weak-minded or weak in conviction. We believe that an essential aspect of serving others is addressing root causes of problems without enabling the same behaviors that led to them. This is what we teach and expect from all No-Li staff and guests.

My grandmother built community and brought people together with simple role modeling, caring, expected accountability, consequences for wrong doing, and tough love.

The city could do more to help. There should be more lighting on the Hamilton Street pedestrian bridge by the Warehouse. College students and Gonzaga fans use this bridge at night and the darkness creates an opportunity for bad actors. The safety of the Centennial Trail area, near Gonzaga, No-Li and JOYA needs to be upheld by public officials.

The city could do more to help. There should be more lighting on the Hamilton Street pedestrian bridge by the Warehouse. College students and Gonzaga fans use this bridge at night and it’s dark. There and near the river embankment is very close to transient encampments and some are violent felons. The safety of the Centennial Trail area by No-Li and JOYA needs to be upheld by public officials. We are very intentional in spending money on safety measures to protect our employees and guests at No-Li, but not every business or organization has the same bandwidth and resources.

I’m not sure where to turn and feel stuck in the middle. It is exhausting to play defense every day, especially as damages and harm are inflicted. The senseless act of violence that killed my friend worries me for what’s to come, because, so far as I can tell, we are not proactively engaging with measures of meaningful accountability to keep our city safe.

John Bryant owns No-Li Brewhouse in Spokane.