E-bikes are great in Seattle until they are stolen. Bike theft is the one single issue that is driving down bike ridership in the city, since police and the city government don't really care about it.
This may surprise you, but not every ebike is guaranteed to be stolen. Get a heavy chain or angle-grinder-resistant U-lock, don't leave it out overnight, and you'll greatly reduce probability of theft.
The cops don't do much about bike theft. The perpetrators are the homeless, and they're basically untouchable. They have no assets, they can't pay any fines, and it's too expensive to keep them in jail.
Edit to add: It would be nice if they at least recovered the bikes and returned them to their owners but it seems like if they can't collect fines or put someone in prison they aren't interested. It woudn't be hard. Go to the local homeless hangouts. Any bikes nicer than what you could buy at Walmart are stolen, and most of the other ones are too. Run the serial numbers against theft reports and load them out.
Cops here in Chicago will not do anything about bike thefts. Multiple cases of vigilantes getting arrested after they took the law into their own hands when cops wouldnt retrieve their airtagged bike.