The Spotlight

This week on The Spotlight, a mystery man is stabbed on the bus and now detectives are trying to find him to bring charges against his attacker. Also, home surveillance cameras capture the face of a man who tormented Snohomish County ? why did he bring a butcher knife on his rampage? And the debate over police body cameras: why one of the largest agencies in our state doesn?t have them yet.

Today?s meth is cheaper, more powerful, harder to quit ? and everywhere you look. It generates billions of dollars in profits for cartels, while low-level dealers shoot it out in downtown Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett?s Casino Road. The Spotlight goes back to the begin of the drugs sordid history, how it fueled a world war, created billionaires, and built an underground economy.

A man with 22 convictions attacks a nurse heading to work, a felon facing life without parole kills Pierce County Sheriff’s Deputy Dom Calata, and pot shop bandits armed with an Uzi turn a robbery into shootout. Dangerous criminals who should be behind bars or in treatment, instead are locked and loaded on our streets.

As Seattle Police staffing dwindles and crime rises to historic levels, many businesses are turning to private security. The Spotlight goes inside the secretive world of protection for hire. And talks to families shattered by the violence spurred by downtown’s open air drug markets.

Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin and Police Chief Dan Templeman speak on their efforts to reduce gang violence and help kids find a different path.

Gang shootings can pop off over graffiti because while some of it is just vandalism, other spray paintings carry a hidden meaning. The Spotlight went for a ridealong with Burien Police Chief Ted Boe to hear how his city is calming tensions.

For an overview of how gangs are operating now in Washington state, we turned to Gabe Morales. A former marine, he's a gang expert who served as a corrections officer at California's notorious Folsom State Prison, worked with youth offenders in Los Angeles, and spent 25 years working at the King County Jail in Seattle. He says gangs aren't just a city issue anymore.

Hidden messages in songs and graffiti that are leading to murders. The role of gang feuds in our spike in shooting deaths. How slickly made, self-produced videos and TikToks are being used to recruit kids as young as age 12 into gang life. And the efforts to show youth another path in life.

The Sea Mar Street Medicine Team along with staff from Multi-Care Chemical Dependence Specialists and Great Lakes Housing Case Managers visit homeless encampments in Pierce County to treat a wide range of medical conditions.

Fake opiod pills laced with fentanyl called ?Mexi-blues? or the ?blues? on the streets are driving the spikes in addiction, crime, homelessness and death. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration launched a public awareness campaign called ?One Pill Can Kill? and has been targeting the efforts of Mexican cartels to smuggle the pills across the border. ?This is an existential threat to the United States. China and Mexico are flooding our city streets with poison,? said Frank Tarentino, DEA Special Agent in Charge of the Seattle Field Division in an in-depth interview.

Fiercely addictive fentanyl-laced pills are flooding our communities and tearing families apart?driving the spikes in crime, homelessness and death. We hear from the feds who are fighting to kill the cartel smuggling business and raise awareness about this health crisis.

A man survived being shot six times in a marijuana shop robbery in Shoreline, Washington.

Amid a rise in pot shop robberies, police are trying to track down the bandits before someone ends up dead: "I got shot in the leg, I got shot through and through in the arm, I got shot through the abdomen." And legal marijuana dealers who pay billions in taxes are asking why the government put them in a bind and then turned a blind eye: "If we could take credit cards, everything would change overnight."