A Better Behaved Belltown? The Jury’s Still Out

Thanks to our Flickr pool’s shawnmebo for illustrating that Belltown can be beautiful.

Last night Mayor McGinn and I’m-official-now Police Chief John Diaz had some squishy “news” to report in the battle to reclaim Belltown from drunken douchenozzles and menacing assmittens. A month and a half in, the pair claimed their Late Night Public Safety Initiative has “paid some huge dividends.”

The Seattlepi.com quotes Chief Diaz saying, “We’ve stopped at least two shootings that I know of that were this close to turning into something very serious, we were able to stop the individuals.”

For balance, the Seattle Times notes one woman complained that a morning walk to the store included “a pimp and a group of prostitutes, a drug dealer waiting for a buyer and a homeless man who was masturbating in a doorway.”

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Belltownpeople attended the public safety meeting, and notes that besides the increased police presence, Belltown will see once-a-week foot patrols, new LED streetlights, a drug-dealer and mentally unstable diversion program (which needs funding), and faster cleanup on Aisle 4, thanks to a CleanScapes pilot project.

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While these steps are applauded, Belltownpeople’s Jesse is critical of the idea of “increased” police presence, since it gives the impression there was an acceptable level of patrolling to begin with. 

I would say that 90 percent of the problems could be tied to one single issue. There are not enough police officers in Seattle. It is a fact. It is a problem that the Mayor has accepted is beyond his ability to fix. To me, that’s wildly unacceptable. The primary purpose of government is Public Safety. This should be priority number one.