November 1

Car prowls (most common crime in the city) in the news

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Update 11/8: Danny Westneat has a new column.

“As hard as this may be to believe, it gets more embarrassing for the Seattle police.”

Update 11/3: Seattle Police say they will “review” their policy.

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There’s an interesting discussion this morning at The Seattle Times over what’s believed to be the most common crime in Seattle: car prowls.

The occasion is Danny Westneat’s column: “Police allow car-prowl crimes to turn into growth industry.”

So far there are something north of 100 200 500 comments on the piece (not counting the ones wanting to turn it into an argument over gun control).

In Maple Leaf, as summer ended, roughly a car a day was broken into.

The map at right shows car prowls in Maple Leaf so far this year.

Incidentally, this stolen Subaru, reported to police half a month ago, is still sitting on 12th Avenue Northeast.

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Sara W

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  1. I figure I can add this from the SPD Blotter:

    Woman Arrested After Early-Morning Wine and Pie Incident
    Written by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on November 7, 2014 3:03 pm

    After drinking a bottle of wine inside a Northgate grocery store early Monday morning, a 48-year-old woman roamed the store eating handfuls of pie before she was arrested by police.

    The incident began around 6 AM, when an employee saw the woman drinking a bottle of wine in the store and asked her to leave. Instead, the woman drank the rest of the bottle and walked over to the store’s bakery where she picked up a blueberry pie. The woman then proceeded to eat fistfuls of the pie in the store’s coffee shop before ditching the dessert and walking out of the store.

    By this point, employees had called police, who arrived, arrested the intoxicated woman and booked her into the King County Jail for theft and trespassing.

  2. @Lisa M: Very disheartening to hear about your incident at the bus stop last week. Seemingly another example of the continued decline of our quality of life here in Seattle. Yes, this could (and does) happen anywhere, but it is exceedingly frustrating to know that the perp gets away, and will most probably be assaulting someone else before too long.

  3. On a related note, I was assaulted at a bus stop last week, waiting for the 75 bus on the corner of Northgate Way and Roosevelt Way NE. It happened about 9:20 p.m. I had been waiting for about 20 minutes (unlighted stop, no schedule) and was suddenly fending off someone who was punching me in the head. I screamed and managed to hang on to my purse, and the bas finally showed up. I did report it, but it showed up on the crime map as an attempted purse snatching, NOT an assault, which it was. The word is that there have been more atacks at bus stops lately, but apparently Metro and the police don’t feel it’s there job to communicate this to us.

  4. Maybe I’ll mosey up to the Subaru and see if the registration is in the glove box and contact the owners if the police can’t be bothered.
    MLL: Tried that. Registration doesn’t match plate, also is years old. Police came out Monday, tho car still there.

    Agree it feels as if there is a work slow down by the police, unless they are in the last three years of service and padding the pension.

  5. While admittedly the main point of the article at this blog, and Danny Westneat’s column was indeed protecting one’s property, events can easily and quickly change the paradigm.

    When dealing with desperate people, who have turned to car prowls as their main means of supporting oneself, there’s no predictable outcome. That’s what makes the job of a police officer so dangerous: its unpredictability.

    Admittedly, for those not in a police uniform, acquiescing to theft might be the most judicious course of action; but how much cowardice is required before someone tires of it and says, “Stop” in an effort to protect their home, their associated property and the lives of their loved ones?

  6. More to the point it seems we are talking about protecting ones PROPERTY. I would imagine almost all car prowls do not concern protecting ones life. Agreed if police would do a better job with property crimes citizens would not feel like they need to take matters into their own hands. I would also imagine insurance is not that helpful due to deductibles. I’m very glad this matter got media attention.

  7. As a neighbor who has been the victim of a burglary said to me, “The police are essentially on strike.” That’s understandable, given the seemingly never ending Department of Justice investigation and what happened to the police officer who unnecessarily (so were the findings) shot and killed a Native American wood carver (who was deaf in one ear and may not have heard the command to stop).

    So the police are reluctant to act, without two key words: probable cause. Which even for citizens, can lead to a hearing.

    Nonetheless, with an increase in crime combined with the ineffectual nature of police protection, the onus is definitely on citizens to protect themselves, if not their property, by whatever means necessary; but given how one citizen was treated in September of 2008, when he did what he felt necessary to protect himself, after a car – or rather a truck – prowl, the citizens of Maple Leaf are in a similar situation to the police.

    In September of 2008, just up the hill from the intersection of 5th Avenue NE and NE 97th Street, three men reportedly attempted to steal the sound system from a pickup truck; a truck that was parked in the parking space of an apartment complex. They were interrupted, when the owner of that same truck, saw what was going on, armed himself with a rifle and came out onto the deck above where his truck was parked. He alleged later, that one of the men made a furtive movement and appeared to be retrieving a weapon from his clothing; so the truck’s owner shot and killed that man, while his associates ran away.

    That truck owner was tried for manslaughter (if memory serves) and sentenced to several months in jail.

    What sort of message might that have sent to those intent on finding easy pickings for burglary and car prowls? Consider that a rhetorical question.

    Maple Leaf is certainly considered “easy pickings” as the saying goes. Which begs the question of: what’s it going to take to change that? Will someone have to be hurt or killed before either the police start doing the job, in full for which they are paid; or will the citizens of Maple Leaf have to start consulting with attorneys, in order to protect themselves, as they seemingly need to do?

  8. “De-policing” of property crime has been a trend with the Seattle Police. Sadly, the “we don’t care attitude” of the Seattle Police has trickled down to its citizens who no longer bother to call the police when they see suspicious activities or are victimized themselves. Why bother when the police won’t respond and make it feel as if you’re making a nuisance call. However, if you’re caught jaywalking or rolling your car through a stop sign at 3:00 am on a empty street, you will be stopped, questioned, and ticketed.

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