On February 13th, a metal, bus-shelter trash can exploded near NE 45 Street and 42nd Avenue NE in Laurelhurst. Police said the can was “totally destroyed” by the explosion, though nothing in the area was damaged, and a heavy rain prevented a fire.
Then yesterday, February 14, someone blew up a five-gallon cooler at the corner of NE 55th Street and 31 Avenue NE. This detonation left a 25-foot debris field, and the Bomb Unit is investigating.
So far no one has claimed responsibility for the can or cooler. Given the physical proximity between the two sites, it seems likely that the same person or persons was involved. Still, the question remains: Why Laurelhurst?
The Laurelhurst Blog is clueless about what motivation anyone might have for disturbing the sleep of wealthy people. Seattle Times commenters are equally at a loss, except for Snowcapped, who offers this critique: “In Laurelhurst, this is news? Where I roll there is gunfire every other night and it’s not in the news!”
One of our Instivate network partners is Seattle Crime, the work of the indefatigable Jonah Spangenthal-Lee. Besides his reporting on crime around Seattle (Ex. A: “The Worst Jack in the Box in the Country“), another arresting feature the site offers is a Google map view of the city’s 911 log.
This, not coincidentally, is what greets you when you open the new free Seattle Crime iPhone app. When you want to find out what the flashing lights down the street are about, this is the app for you. Version 1.1 lets you zoom in on your location, and also remembers where you were. Three tabs in total let you view the map, peruse the live 911 log feed, and skim crime headlines.
And yes, it looks like The SunBreak will be joining the iPhone app revolution soon enough. Now, in fact, is a good time for you to hit us up with features you’d like to see. We’re kicking around events maps and listings, but if you have bright ideas, we, like President Obama, are listening.
Seal Sitters reports two California sea lions and two harbor seals were found dead on the beach this week, but not from natural causes. They were shot. According to the West Seattle Blog, at least five sea lions have been found shot: “One, Gorman says, was a federally protected Steller sea lion–a species not commonly seen in Puget Sound.” Necropsies performed by a Department of Fish & Wildlife biologist turned up the bullets, but officials have not released information on whether it’s the same gun.
One day in seventh grade, I was waiting for the #14 bus across from Washington Middle School when three teenage gang members approached this kid in my class. One gang member, who was wearing brass knuckles, suddenly punched the kid in the temple, knocking him cold.
A few teachers came out to check on the kid, who soon came to and staggered down the alley leading to Odessa Brown Childrens’ Clinic, vowing revenge. No Metro security guards were there. No hidden cameras caught the scene. And so KING-5 didn’t cover it. The Seattle Times was likewise silent.
Which is why you haven’t heard about that beating until now, unlike that of a teenage girl in the bus tunnel, which occurred in the presence of Metro security people who did nothing to stop it, and a surveillance camera which caught the whole episode on tape. That sickening beating has sparked a fresh round of city-wide Metro-targeted outrage.
But consider this–if Metro hadn’t deployed security to the bus tunnel, would a fight between teenagers even be a story? If Metro didn’t have video surveillance, would the TV news be reporting it? The bad publicity Metro’s getting stems from the agency’s attempt to do the right thing.
Let me pause here for full disclosure: My mom works for Metro. (Shut up! Your mom works for Metro!) So perhaps, having heard several million dinner-table laments regarding the unrelenting stream of public complaint she and her co-workers endure, I’m inclined to give Metro the benefit of the doubt. Actually, drop the “inclined.” I give them the benefit of the doubt.
Indulge me, will you? One pro-Metro voice among the hordes of accusatory local TV newspeople? Thx.
Metro has 9,549 bus stops. The Metro Transit Police force, according to their website, is just 47 strong, which apparently includes the bomb-sniffing dog. That’sa “cop” for every 203 stops.
So Metro hires these independent security guards, who are paid fifteen dollars an hour, and who are instructed to do no more than “observe and report” crimes. Yes, ideally, those guards would’ve pulled a Mills Lane and stopped the fight. But, strictly speaking, it wasn’t their job. Put yourself in their bargain shoes. If you had been in that tunnel–untrained, unarmed, and “outnumbered by this pack of people 3-to-1,” as authorities have stated, would you have tried to stop the beating? Even though it wasn’t your job?
Given the massive swath of publicly-accessible real estate under Metro’s control, beatings at bus stops are inevitable. So what would you have Metro do? Leave the policing to the ridership? We don’t want that job. Hire a cop for every bus stop? We don’t want to pay that bill. Given that deploying your entire police “force” will cover less than half of one percent of your existing stops, should you let the remaining 99.5 percent revert to a state of nature?
No, you hire a few minimally-trained, low-wage people–citizen lookouts, practically–to keep an eye on things and call the cops if shit goes down. And you back them up with video surveillance (which, incidentally, cops have since used to catch the assailants). Sounds reasonable, right? Yet you end up with a public relations disaster on your hands.
From last year’s snow, to this year’s beating, people expect perfection from Metro. Sure, the agency could improve. Communications during the snowstorm were a farce. And calling people “guards” who are trained in little more than walkie-talkie-use is asking for trouble. That said, perfection–which seems to be the standard Metro is held to–comes at a price. Want a fleet of 4×4-equipped tank/buses? A cop at every stop? Then you should be sliding in a Jackson every time you step up to the fare box. Until then, a little slack, maybe?
Yesterday alone, if you were reading Seattle’s neighborhood blogs, you would have run across Queen Anne’s burglaries and break-ins; Beacon Hill Blog’s stolen cars, burglaries, and sketchy behavior; and West Seattle’s three break-ins. PhinneyWood was feeling exercised about graffiti, but they also reported on the armed robbery at a Ballard Walgreens.
At least anecdotally, it doesn’t look like that 22 percent increase in violent crime the first six months of 2009 has subsided. The rise was really led by assaults and robberies, with a smaller increase in property crimes (burglary and other theft). The news of workaday burglaries and break-ins continues unabated, with occasional stand-outs, like clock thievery, drawing attention.
Seattle Crime’s Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, taking the long view, argues that if Seattle really did just enjoy a 40-year low in crime rates, a regression to the mean doesn’t indicate anyone or thing is to blame. But his “Morning Blotter” post begins: “Burglars will steal ANYTHING,” and yesterday’s blotter contained a story about a man who claims a gang threatened to shoot him if he didn’t rob a store in Northgate. So once again, statistics provide cold comfort.
The Seattle Times op-ed pages also contain a “parsing the crime stats” piece with “sobering reality checks.” I’m not sure that I agree with the “parsing” that leads to this statement: “Nationwide, violent crime and property crimes have decreased. So what explains Seattle’s uptick? One answer readily given by criminologists is that crime tends to rise during tough economic times.” (That would not explain Seattle‘s uptick, would it? I can’t think the Times editorial board means to argue that Seattle alone is experiencing tough economic times.)
Whatever is going on, a recommendation for Seattle’s new police chief isn’t anticipated until May, so it is unlikely that a major strategic response to the surge in crime will arrive until after mid-2010. That said, Mayor-elect Mike McGinn takes office on January 4, so he will have six months to push his own public safety platform. For the moment, I’d settle for a good analysis of what controllable factors are making this crime wave so chronic that we’re being told we should all just get used to it.
In a stunning end to a long and often confusing trial, Amanda Knox was found guilty of murder and sexual violence today by an eight-person jury in the Italian city of Perugia. She was given a sentence of 26 years.
The 22-year-old Knox, now Seattle’s most famous exchange student ever, has been in jail since November 2, 2007, when the body of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, was found dead in the apartment the two shared. Knox had been accused of murdering Kercher with the help of her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 25. Sollecito was also found guilty by the jury but was sentenced to only 25 years.
In an agonizingly long trial process, the prosecution claimed that Knox and Sollecito were in the apartment on the night of the murder. According to the prosecution, Knox and Kercher had an argument that ended with Knox, Sollecito, and Rudy Guede–the fourth person in the apartment that night–attacked, beat, sexually assaulted, and killed Kercher.
Guede, whose DNA was found on Kercher’s body, was convicted in an earlier trial and is currently serving a 30-year sentence. He has appealed the conviction.
During the trial, the prosecution painted Knox as a sexually promiscuous, adventurous (one of the items introduced into evidence was a sex toy) drug user who participated in the murder while stoned. Under the prosecutor’s theory, Knox and Kercher grew to hate each other over Knox’s tendency to leave the apartment a mess, a sort of Odd Couple meets Sopranos.
Prosecutors also charged Knox and Sollecito with breaking a window to make it look like there was a robbery, and stealing money and credit cards from Kercher to distract investigators. In total, Knox stood trial against eleven charges in connection with Kercher’s death.
Knox said she and Sollecito were watching a movie at his apartment, smoked dope, had sex, and went to bed. Returning to her apartment in the morning, she found Kercher dead.
Knox frequently changed her story on the night in question and gave contradictory stories about what happened that night. At one point, she told Italian authorities that she was in the apartment during the killing and had to cover her ears to block out the sound of Kercher’s screams.
Throughout the trial, Knox proclaimed her innocence. Her emotional final testimony can be seen in the video link above.
Her contradictory statements probably carried the day, despite the fact that prosecutors were unable to tie Knox to the murder with any direct or even circumstantial evidence. Nor was there a compelling motive. Prosecutors tried to counter the lack of motive by saying violent crimes rarely have a motive, something we are struggling with in Seattle this month after multiple high-profile murders.
Locally, friends, family and interested parties, who have rallied to her support, will no doubt rail against the sometimes mysterious legal system in Italy and the historical tendency of the lead prosecutor to create wild, bizarre scenarios around the cases he is involved in.
Almost certainly, the case will be appealed and this long, strange, and deadly trip will continue.
An “innocent” trash can, courtesy of zenobia_joy.
