Recent Stories with tag crime

Friday afternoon is a jumpy time for banks. Regulators shut down Everett's undercapitalized Frontier Bank and sold it to Union Bank. That's the fifth Washington bank closed this year, says the PSBJ, which also has a bummer of a story on King County's worsening foreclosure crisis. (Can we give a hand to the Puget Sound Business Journal? They're reporting the hell out of stories.) Speaking of real estate, did you hear the one about the Bravern?

The state has returned bearing gift baskets of 520 replacement tweaks: less traffic for the Arboretum, "perhaps" a 45-mph speed limit over Portage Bay, a second drawbridge across the Cut. After 13 years of design, there's been a positive flurry of redesigning, prompting Seattle Transit Blog's Adam Parast to comment:

This is all great to see but the fact that so much can easily be "improved" or "changed" at the last minute to make it better for transit and non-motorized transportation to me shows how little the state has thought about them in the first place. These changes are low hanging fruit. And I still don’t see any guarantees. I don’t think it is unreasonable to be skeptical until I see it past 60% design....

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Tim Burgess

Admittedly, my first reaction to City Council member Tim Burgess's proposal to tackle the problem of aggressive panhandling was skeptical. Seattle already has an aggressive panhandling law on the books, after all. Why not just add more police patrols to weed out troublemakers? And I was critical of the media coverage that repeatedly conflated panhandling with major crimes.

On Crosscut, Jordan Royer warned Burgess, via his experience with the Alcohol Impact Area process, that panhandling is a hot button issue that stirs up arguments, and wondered if new restrictions wouldn't put the police in a no-win situation. Over at Real Change, Tim Harris demonstrated just the kind of pugnacious opposition that Royer predicted.

On his blog, Burgess responds to the skeptics, while first noting that only the panhandling element of his proposal is seeing much blowback:

I guess the good news is that no one has objected at all to the other four elements of my proposal: more police officers on foot patrols in neighborhood business districts, hiring more police officers so the full Neighborhood Policing Plan can be implemented, enhanced and better coordinated street outreach services to identify people in need, and more "housing first" options with support services so the chronically homeless get a place of their own. 

He also says the police themselves have requested "additional tools" to deal with the problem of threatening thugs--I don't know if that refers specifically to new legislation, but I'm willing to take Burgess's implication at face value....

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520: Can't live with it, can't get a redesign consensus.

In our thirteenth year of 520 replacement design talks, the City Council has found none of the designs acceptable, and has asked, in a letter [pdf] to Gov. Gregoire, Sen. Mary Haugen, and Rep. Judy Clibborn, for four months to make tweaks. They're looking for dedicated transit lanes, a smaller profile, and better transit connectivity. In fairness, no one loves the new 6-lane designs, not Mike McGinn, Frank Chopp, Jamie Pedersen, nor the residents of Montlake--it's just what the people who wanted four and the people who wanted eight lanes can grudgingly agree on.

It seems like every Friday is bank seizure day, doesn't it? Yesterday regulators seized Bainbridge's American Marine Bank and sold it to Tacoma's Columbia State Bank. The Puget Sound Business Journal story notes that American Marine is the sixth Washington bank to fail since 2009, that Columbia Bank also recently bought Columbia River Bank, in Oregon, and that as of Q4 2009, Columbia Bank had almost $130 million in nonperforming loans itself.

On the bright side, "we are now experiencing the warmest January in Seattle recorded history!" according to Cliff Mass, who is a scientist and should know. He adds that: "Not a single day has had a mean temperature below normal." Our monthly mean temperature should come out to about 47 degrees, and for the foreseeable future, all our winter weather is headed California's way, thanks to El Niño.

Youth crime continues to rattle people: a 15-year-old beat a Metro bus driver into unconsciousness, and a student assaulted a teacher at Cleveland High. State Sen. Pam Roach made the news twice, first for browbeating Bellevue Police Chief Linda Pillo, on behalf of assault weapons, and second for being banned from the GOP caucus and being urged to get anger management counseling. Roach says she's being "persecuted" by Republican leadership. (God, I know that feeling, Pam.)...

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This video of drug dealing was shot around First Avenue and Cherry Street in Seattle's historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, just a few days ago. The great part is that I think that's the theme to Australia hit soap opera Neighbours that's been added as the soundtrack.

"Seattle fog" courtesy of The SunBreak Flickr pool's Simple Insomnia

It's cold and blustery outside, but Cliff Mass says we're going to stay dry for a few days, with only the possibility of fog. Personally, I'm all for fog. We don't get enough, in my book. If we do get a pea-souper, I welcome any and all fog photos to our SunBreak Flickr pool. Drop 'em in there--you know it's free to join, right?

I know it seems like Black Friday was just yesterday--and it was--but thanks to internet technology, TechFlash can report that Amazon gained significantly on WalMart, so far as Black Friday online traffic goes. Amazon's traffic jumped from a 9.6 percent share in '08 to 12.4 percent in '09. In other online news, the Seattle Public Schools new student assignment maps are up.

In news featuring guns, a Seattle attorney is suing the city for $1 in damages, after being told to leave the Southwest Community Center when he arrived with a permitted Glock. His principled stand suffers from the bad timing of fellow pro-gun Seattleites though.

Last night a man was shot to death near St. James Cathedral on First Hill, just a week after last week's First Hill shooting. And in South Seattle, a motorist had his tire shot out--a group of 10 to 15 teens may have been doing target practice with a .45 caliber handgun.

Here at The SunBreak this week, we talked over the Metro bus service restored by the King County Council, Seattle's parking fine increase, and the likelihood of getting mugged at a bus stop.

Seth NIT-picked Seattle U's basketball team and reviewed Ray Charles singing "Old Man River" (for as yet unknown reasons), and I went downtown to get an enhanced driver's license and shop for booze, which I realize are two things that do not go together. At the movies, Audrey pointed out that "nothing says Thanksgiving like Asian gore."

There is a downside to the King County Council restoring all our bus service: It may mean more muggings. Seattle Crime says robberies are up 19 percent in Seattle, and I have noticed a remarkable amount is occurring at bus stops all over the city. [UPDATE: A bus stop mugging occurred the day I posted this.]

Just recently, a babysitter was mugged waiting for the bus in the Central District, a man was robbed at gunpoint at a Greenwood bus stop, and a man was jumped at Third and Pike downtown. That's all in the last month or so. Earlier than that, and you get bus stop crime on Lake City Way and Roosevelt.

That's about five minutes' worth of looking--I didn't have to dig much harder than typing "bus stop," "mugging," and "Seattle" into the search box. While some people have been mugged by someone walking up behind them, the man in Greenwood was held up by people in a passing car.

The only lesson I can draw from this is that if you're alone at a bus stop at night, no matter where you are, you're a sitting duck. Keep the whistle and mace handy, and don't flash your iPod or cell phone. These seem to attract the wrong kind of attention. Last but not least, use OneBusAway to keep your waiting time to a minimum.

Parella Lewis

"Why," I wondered, "is a TV weather forecaster part of the Washington's Most Wanted team?" This seemed like a form of modern metaphysical poetry: heterogeneous ideas yoked together by violence.

I met Parella Lewis in a Starbucks before she was due in at Q13 offices, determined to get to the bottom of this, like a newshound in an ersatz Jonathan Lethem novel. She was dressed for the weather. Point: Lewis.

I had researched, of course. First question/broadside: "I see that you are from Louisiana. Yet you never mention Jimmy Buffett." Turns out Lewis was born in Mississippi, is "not a cajun," but does love crawfish, in boiled or etouffée formats. She came to crawfish late, in her 20s. Relevant? Too soon to tell. Her anti-Buffett stance (not loving Jimmy is anti-) makes sense: the man's a pirate, an outlaw.

Lewis was on a two-track media-and-mayhem course from early on. She began in radio, which accounts for that cadenced enunciation you hear, while in college. But her goal back then was police work, despite the fact that she's medium height and willowy. (Since Wayne Cody, everyone in Seattle TV is thinner than me.) She attended the police academy, graduated in '99, and went to work as a reserve officer on the Lafayette force, logging 30 hours per month as a crime-buster.

She talked her way into undercover work early, and soon reported to her parents (her father is a preacher) that she'd be working as "an undercover hooker." This turned out to require a "gun in your back pocket, and a wire on," as well as detailed knowledge of Louisiana's Napoleonic Code. There was an awkward moment when she was solicited by ex-high schoolmates who, fortunately for everyone involved, didn't recognize her.

Yet, in the meantime, an appearance on a local TV telethon catapulted her out of radio and into the local TV market. Would she trade in her police uniform for forecasting courses? She would. Leaving Louisiana, she moved to Little Rock and then Indianapolis, becoming well acquainted with tornado weather. (A nearby tornado brought a finish flag to the 2004 Indy 500 at lap 450.)

Seattle, across the country, far from family and friends, was not her ideal destination. Even our bad weather doesn't match up. In Louisiana, floods mean "bodies float away regularly," said Lewis--tombs and crypts keep the dead six feet in the air.

Here, the tricky part is not where the funnel will touch down, but the effects of micro-climates on whether it's raining when you look outside or partly sunny. Lewis, in about 30 seconds, gave me a mini-lecture on the interaction of ocean air with the effects of the Olympic and Cascade mountains. Automatically, her voice shifted into that incantatory weather-forecaster mode....

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If you're new to Seattle, you must first know that Medina is where Bill and Melinda Gates live. As the Seattle Times points out, the tiny hamlet of almost 3,200 souls has an average annual income of $222,000. But it turns out that crime is tough all over.

Last year, the number of burglaries almost doubled from the year before, from six to eleven, and the city council approved installing surveillance cameras that record the license plates of anyone who drives through town. The results are then sent off to a database. Police check for stolen cars or outstanding warrants for arrest.

A city council member named Lucius Biglow is quoted in the Times saying crime prevention "outweighs concern over privacy." I have to admit that the August police blotter looks just crammed with crime. And who knows, maybe it will help keep more Medina police officers from being accused of sexual assault.

But the last word on this, as is true in nearly all cases, comes from the comments section of Seattlepi.com: "It's a start, but...

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Yesterday, the big mayoral race news was the McGinn for Mayor camp's long-awaited release of a public safety plan, which matches our era of diminished expectations nicely.

Both candidates made it through the primary without addressing the issue in much detail. (Today, over at Joe Mallahan's site, there's video of police and firefighters endorsing Mallahan, which is...not a plan. But Mallahan does sound like Callahan, so he has that going for him.)

Still, it counts as a response to my post last week, asking a candidate to step forward and take on public safety. (The McGinn camp has not responded to my request for an interview on the "voter's remorse" topic, now that we don't have an experience pol like Nickels as an election "safety.")

McGinn's plan is built on "enforcement, engagement, and prevention." He's identified as top priorities gangs and crimes involving guns.

He'd bring back the gang unit--"Too often in the past, we have seen programs work--and work so well--that we assume they aren’t needed any more"--and push for bringing gun crimes to federal court, as well as for stiffer prosecution of minors who use guns. And though there are indeed people who strenuously argue for the right to enjoy public parks with guns, he joins Mayor Nickels in seeking a ban.

He wants better crime reporting and statistics. He supports drug and mental health courts. He would continue the Drug Market Initiative (DMI), and try to deal with the so-called "root causes" of crime through transition programs for newly released offenders, and working to find them jobs.

He would not prioritize stings like "Operation Sobering Thought," which, after 17 arrests at local bars and nightclubs, resulted in no convictions. (We have to agree, belatedly, with City Attorney Tom Carr, who called the 17 arrests "shocking"--making 17 arrests that don't stick is really remarkable.)

As Publicola points out, the plan is long on good and other people's ideas, and short on how to pay for them. More police officers in communities? Terrific. Now, about that $72-million-dollar city deficit? Not spending money the city doesn't have on a deep-bore tunnel doesn't actually increase city revenue.

I'd also like to hear more from McGinn on the petty crimes that make your blood boil--the smash-and-grab car break-in that costs you more in window replacement than whatever is taken, the rash of pedestrian and jogger muggings where a phone or iPod is snatched, and more disturbingly, the home intrusion robberies. These are all up in a down economy, and the level of police response has not always reassured victims that theft is a priority.

Dude, where's my mayor?

Last night two men had a shoot-out with a third man, firing at each other across 23rd Avenue at Jackson. (The bullets lodged in a Bank of America building, but it's not likely meant to have been a statement.) The city has recently launched a sweeping Drug Market Initiative that aims to reduce the open-air drug trade. Across town, in Belltown, there's been a high-profile series of assaults, and crime of all kinds is on the rise. Capitol Hill generates a steady stream of theft and assault. Oh, and there's an arsonist in Greenwood.

In the meantime our two mayoral candidates are squaring off over a streetcar. Mike McGinn is excited about getting government on your iPhone. Joe Mallahan is trying to become visible in daylight. One of the pitfalls of having accidentally selected two neophytes in the mayoral race (I know I was counting on Greg Nickels testing the primary winner's mettle) is that they don't have ingrained a sense of the job's fundamentals.

The Seattle Times is gamely trying...

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