Tag Archives: third

Crime, News, Politics

Looking for a Fix on Third Avenue

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Photocoyote's SEPIA STREETSHOT from our Flickr pool was taken in 2009, the year of the drug sweep.

Ironically, it is fairly easy to get a fix on Third Avenue in Seattle (or get stabbed or beaten nearly to death) because it has become the entrenched home of a large open-air drug market. But the City of Seattle has so far struggled to fix that problem. Better crowd control late-night, when bars are letting out, has helped reduce aggressive brawling, and despite bullets flying less frequently, overall confidence in personal safety is still low.

It’s not that the City is unaware. The City Council’s Tim Burgess writes on his blog: “Residents and small business owners in Belltown send a steady stream of complaints to Council members and the Mayor asking why drug dealers are allowed to sell heroin and cocaine with near impunity near their homes and shops.” Let’s start, he suggests, “with an increased presence of uniformed police officers.”

Burgess also thinks Third Avenue could use a facelift in general:

It should be converted into a restricted “complete street” that serves only transit, pedestrians, bicycles, and delivery and emergency vehicles all day.  Sidewalks could be expanded and streetscape improvements installed, such as hanging flower baskets and other “green” enhancements, public art, wayfinder signage, and additional lighting.

Is it possible to stop Belltown’s illegal drug market?, asks Seattlepi.com. A 2009 sweep of drug dealers, reports Casey McNerthney, led to 32 being charged. But they soon popped up again. SeattleCrime.com’s Jonah Spangenthal-Lee calls them “catch-and-release drug arrests.” Newly ensconced at Publicola, Spangenthal-Lee details the city’s new drug diversion program, which seeks to separate the major dealer wheat from the small-time chaff.

Beginning October 1st, small-time drug dealers and drug users arrested with less than three grams of crack, heroin, meth or drug paraphernalia in Belltown by members of SPD’s West Precinct Anti-Crime Team and bike patrol officers will be given the option to go to diversion DEFINE or go to jail as part of the Law Enforcement Assistance Diversion (LEAD) pilot program.

Essentially, the program tries to distinguish between addicts selling (or carrying) to support their own habit, and the more troublesomely entrepreneurial dealer. Addicts will get “housing, social security benefits, job training, or on-the-spot treatment,” and aren’t booted from the program for relapsing, as addicts will do. If there’s an 80/20 rule in effect, this should have the effect of emptying the sidewalks and pocket parks of small-time illegal activity, providing less cover for the serious drug dealers.

“LEAD, which costs about $1 million a year,” says Spangenthal-Lee, “already has enough funding to run for the next four years.”

Crime, News

This Summer, Don’t Miss Third Avenue’s Improv Knife Skills Workshops

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(Photo: MvB)

Seattle is many things, but this August, it also seems like a great place to get stabbed as you go about your business on a notorious stretch of street downtown. SeattleCrime.com characterizes the latest incident as “Yet Another Stabbing At 3rd & Pine.”

Sunday afternoon, a man was arrested for stabbing, “without provocation,” another man who was taking the bus with his mother and the rest of his family. The Seattle Police Blotter describes the proceedings:

For reasons unknown, the suspect instigated an altercation with the victim as he was trying to exit the bus. The bus doors opened and the victim and suspect exited the bus at which time the physical altercation between them continued on the sidewalk. Just north of 3rd Avenue and Pine Street the suspect pulled out a knife and stabbed the victim at least twice before fleeing the scene on foot.

The 38-year-old stabber actually cut himself on the 3.5-inch folding knife he was using, and had to be taken to the hospital before jail; the wounds he delivered to the victim were described an “non-life-threatening.”

On the 17th, a man walking down Third Avenue was bumped into…well, here’s the Seattle Police Blotter once more:

Preliminary investigation indicates that the male victim was walking southbound on the west side of the 1600 block of 3rd Avenue when an unknown adult male suspect bumped into him.  The victim thought nothing of the contact until a few moments later when he realized that he had been stabbed.

We are to be on the look-out for a “white male in his 30s wearing a black leather jacket, black pants, and black boots.”

On July 30th, there was a stabbing and robbery at, of course, Third & Battery. A man withdrawing money from an ATM told police someone had come up behind him, stabbed him in the back, and taken the money he was withdrawing. (A 68-year-old man was also robbed at Third & Cedar, but as he was beaten to the ground by four or five men in their 20s, he’s outside the scope of this knife-centric post.)

Detail from SeattleCrime.com's Google Map of criminal activiities

To judge from last year on SeattleCrime.com–“More Details on That 3rd & Pine Stabbing“–Seattle police have not made all that much headway in Third Avenue safety in the intervening time. In fact, anyone who spends time downtown will likely tell visitors to avoid Third, so we will, too.

March over to 600 Fourth Avenue, instead, and ask the residents why the events a block distant have attracted so little of their time, while they are busy discussing a “Tourism Improvement Area” and seem to find “aggressive canvassing” such a pressing issue.