Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson is facing fierce blowback on social media after a 77-year-old man was seen on video being beaten by two individuals in a crime that was captured by closed-circuit television cameras, a tool that Wilson has denounced in the past as something that makes the community feel unsafe and “vulnerable.”

The elderly man was walking down the street in downtown Seattle last month when two men walking by him stopped, without any provocation, shoved him to the ground and beat him, KOMO News reported.

Ahmed Abdullahi Osman, 29, was later arrested and charged with second-degree assault, and police are looking for the second suspect. Osman was reportedly booked into jail the night of the assault and then released back onto the streets before a bail hearing.

“Turning on more cameras won’t magically make our neighborhoods safer, but it will certainly make our neighborhoods more vulnerable,” Wilson said in 2025 after Seattle City Council’s approval of expanding the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) CCTV pilot program, the program used to capture the video of this specific crime, according to KOMO News.

Conservatives on social media quickly pointed to Wilson’s policies, which have been much maligned as “soft on crime,” as a contributing factor, as well as her previous comments on CCTV.

“They elected a SOCIALIST,” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez posted on X. “What did they think would happen?”

“Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson remains clueless on the job,” journalist Jonathan Choe posted on X. “So she’s allowing far-left activists to make public safety decisions for the city.”

“Go ahead and explain the ‘sOCiONoMic rOoT cAusES’ of this heinous crime,” Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael A. Mangual posted on X.

“Ahmed Abdullah Osman beat a 77-year-old in Seattle,” conservative influencer account End Wokeness posted on X in a clip that has been viewed over a million times. “Police ID’d him thanks to street video cameras. Mayor Wilson: ‘CCTV puts refugees at risk.’”

Wilson has amplified concerns from local activist groups that CCTV cameras will pose a threat to illegal immigrant communities.

“We are deeply concerned that the expansion of these tools will create an infrastructure where federal agencies can more readily target vulnerable communities, including immigrants and refugees,” the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Washington and the Church Council of Greater Seattle said in a letter last year.

The victim in the incident spent a week in a hospital after suffering a broken arm, knee and facial injuries, KOMO News reported.

Wilson’s office directed Fox News Digital to a March press release in which she outlined her position on the cameras, saying she is leaving the current cameras on but “pausing expansion of the pilot” program until “we have completed a privacy and data governance audit, and taken significant steps to strengthen our policies.”

Wilson acknowledged there’s “no doubt that these cameras make it easier to solve some crimes” that include “serious ones like homicides, but also, cameras are not the one key to making our neighborhoods safe.”

“I want to acknowledge that this is a controversial issue,” Wilson added. “For some people, seeing CCTV cameras in the neighborhood where they live or work or attend school makes them feel safer. For others, those same cameras make them feel less safe.”

“Those feelings are important, because our quality of life is partly about our feelings of safety or lack thereof, and our sense that our city is a welcoming place that is designed with consideration for our well-being and our humanity.”

Wilson continued, “But precisely because different people and different communities experience the cameras differently, it’s important to base a decision on more than feelings. It’s important to ground our actions in a thorough understanding of how the cameras are being used, of the public benefits they are providing, and of any harm they are causing or could cause.”

In a Tuesday press release, the Redmond, Washington Police Department announced the second suspect, Jes’Sean Tyrell Elion, was arrested with the help of Seattle police officers.

However, Osman is on the run and “currently wanted on a $200,000 warrant” and “officers are actively searching for him,” the press release said.

Last month, Fox News Digital reported on city advocates who say they are struggling to find solutions as homelessness and open-air drug use spread across Seattle’s streets, amid growing concerns about the direction of Wilson’s new administration.

“You can just see the foil is like blowing down the sidewalks like autumn leaves,” Andrea Suarez, founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle, told Fox News Digital in an interview.

“Very common to see property damage of our parks and shared spaces. You can see Narcan is used to reverse an overdose, so you’ll see cartridges. But at least we’re remodeling the bathroom to be gender-neutral. I’m not [kidding] you, that’s where our priorities are.”

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FOX 5 San Diego is provided by Nexstar Media Group, Inc., and uses the My Nexstar sign-in, which works across our media network.

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Facing pressure from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy to quickly finalize a bill to support the Alaska LNG megaproject, key members of the Senate on Tuesday expressed skepticism that they’ll finish the task before the session ends later this month.

Senate President Gary Stevens told reporters that he doesn’t think the lawmakers can finalize a bill by May 20, which could open the door to an immediate special session, or whenever the governor chooses to call one.

Senators are being asked to move quickly, creating the possibility of unexpected outcomes if a bill is passed now, said Stevens, a Kodiak Republican.

“There’s a lot of work yet to do, and I think you’re seeing the concern around this table of the mistakes we could easily make,” he said during a press conference alongside other leaders of the Senate Majority.

The concerns came one day after Dunleavy urged lawmakers in both chambers to quickly pass a bill to give the LNG developer Glenfarne a substantial property tax break, so North Slope gas can be delivered to Southcentral Alaska and overseas to large Asian buyers.

The governor argued Alaska LNG will generate billions of dollars in production taxes, gas royalties and other revenues, create thousands of jobs, lower energy costs and resolve a looming shortage of locally produced gas.

Dunleavy indicated that the Senate and House resources committees burdened the bill he introduced in March with excessive costs that would block the project. Although Dunleavy floated the idea of introducing his bill early in the session, he didn’t formally introduce it until March.

Those committee substitutes would sharply increase the alternative volumetric tax the governor had proposed to tax natural gas shipments in order to bring in more state revenue. That new “alternative volumetric tax” would replace the state’s property tax for the project.

Dunleavy said he will only support a bill that allows the project to receive financing to move forward. He said he would call a special session if a bill he doesn’t think makes the project workable fails to pass the Legislature.

Members of the Senate Resources Committee said Tuesday they lack a clear picture of the important financial details they need to determine what size of tax break the project should receive, if any.

Some of the missing pieces, they say, include a recent update to the project’s $46 billion price tag, a figure that’s been around for more than a decade, and a better understanding of the estimated cost of gas to Alaska ratepayers.

Before the project can receive a tax reduction, the developer needs “to help us with this bill, giving us actual numbers so that we can credibly set a realistic AVT, alternative volumetric tax,” said Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage and chair of Senate Resources.

Adam Prestidge, with project developer Glenfarne, told Senate Resources on Tuesday morning the company can share financial details with lawmakers if the state takes a stake in the project, under confidentiality agreements or confidential executive sessions.

He said that publicly releasing the project’s cost estimate would put the project at a competitive disadvantage at a time when it’s negotiating agreements with contractors for work, and purchase agreements with entities that would buy and sell the gas, he said.

In such cases, he’s seen the “counterparty try to back calculate what they think the cost of the product is that we’re selling, using what they’ve seen as public information, and it creates a real challenge for being able to commercialize the product,” he said.

Giessel said confidential agreements are problem for lawmakers.

“Confidential executive sessions put us at a real disadvantage because now we have to craft a bill based on what you’ve told us privately, and yet we can’t tell the public what those numbers are,” she said. “It doesn’t work very well.”

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, and vice chair of Senate Resources, said he won’t vote on a bill that could remove potentially $1 billion in annual property tax revenue — referring to Dunleavy’s original version — without having solid numbers on the project.

“From my perspective, this bill should not go to the floor because, me personally, I don’t want to commit generations of Alaskans to billions of dollars in tax breaks without firm numbers,” he said.

Tim Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson with Glenfarne, said in a statement Tuesday that “the state, along with other potential investors, will have the information needed to make an informed investment decision.”

“The state has no financial risk in Alaska LNG and as testimony has made clear, publicly releasing sensitive cost information harms the project’s competitive position and ability to deliver reliable, low-cost energy for Alaskans,” he said.

“Alaska is rapidly running out of reliable, affordable energy, and state and local policymakers and the legislature’s own consultants have highlighted the need for tax reform for over a decade, during which no project has progressed,” he said.