Even more online-services news today from the city: Seattle Police now have an online-reporting system for certain “low-level” crime categories. Read about it here. SPD cautions that this is just for certain “low-level” crimes – it doesn’t replace calling 911 for something urgent. Here’s the home page for the new service. (We have also linked this atop the WSB Crime Watch page, in case you need to find it fast.)
I’m glad to see this come about. I’ve been thinking for quite sometime that it would be nice to have an online option for reporting non-urgent stuff. It’s a bit disheartening to read posts here from crime victims that might get a “call back later” message from the non-emergency phone line.
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WSB’s frequent reminders to report incidents, no matter how minor, has really impressed upon me how important doing so really is. As WSB has mentioned billions upon billions of times, even if the Police can’t respond right away, and/or do nothing more than take a report, at least having a record of each incident can influence the powers that be to dedicate more resources where they are needed.
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I hate to say it, but with SPD’s long time shortage of Officers, and the budget woes being what they are, and thus the uncertainty of when we’ll be able to hire more, I’m afraid it might pit neighborhood vs neighborhood, in putting pressure on SPD to allocate more resources to specific neighborhoods, based on complaints of more crime, or even the perception there’s been an uptick of crime in a specific area.
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Mike
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