Amazon.com is temporarily removing workers from a downtown Seattle office so employees don’t have to travel to an area that’s seen a spate of shootings, carjackings and other violent crimes.
“Given recent incidents near Third and Pine, we’re providing employees currently at that location with alternative office space elsewhere,” an Amazon spokesman said in an emailed statement. “We are hopeful that conditions will improve and that we will be able to bring employees back to this location when it is safe to do so.”
The office at 300 Pine St. in the old Macy’s building is about three blocks from Pike Place Market, a popular Seattle tourist destination. Since Feb. 21, there have been at least three shootings, two stabbings and one carjacking in the area, according to information from the Seattle Police Department’s Twitter account.Â
Last week, Mayor Bruce Harrell, flanked by law-enforcement and local prosecutorial officials, talked about cracking down on crime in city “hot spots,” including the blocks around the Amazon office. Harrell said he would put a mobile police precinct at Third Avenue and Pine Street.
About 1,800 Amazon employees are assigned to the office, which occupies several floors above an old Macy’s department store, but many of them had been working remotely due to the pandemic, according to the company. The office is about a half-mile from its main headquarters on Seventh Avenue.