West Seattle Crime Watch: Keep watch for vandals

The screengrab at right from the city’s police-call map tells the tale: The spray-paint can is the city map’s icon for property-damage reports; the map is not real-time, so the icons represent mostly incidents reported last night or this morning. Though details on those reports aren’t available, so we don’t know details of the “property damage,” the icon locations correspond with what we’ve heard anecdotally through a variety of channels – a spate of vandalism incidents against cars. First word we had was this morning, when a WSB’er who asked to be anonymous reported, “This morning coming back from coffee at 6 am i noticed a truck with its street side window broken out. The truck was on SW Hill St between 42 and 44th streets. And a few minutes ago I found half a blue rubber glove hanging on a trailer lock handle and a fresh thumb print in the dirt on the trailer door lock. This happened near Hill St and Sunset.” We got two other reports as well – read on:

Later in the day, Ty e-mailed to say:

Several cars were vandalized (including mine) last night between 2 am and 4 am. I’d encourage any readers who may have suffered any amount of damage to report it to the police. …

A large flower pot was used to break off the side mirror of my Smart car and scratch the door. The police officer I spoke to said another Smart was overturned near Alki and at least three other cars were damaged in some way.

This was actually the second night in a row when the car was damaged; Friday night the other side mirror was hit hard enough to dislodge it, but that was minor.

WSB scanner ace Katie heard that “overturned Smart car” call just after 3 am, and it corresponds with one of the markers on the crime map screengrab. Meantime, Katherine in the 2100 block of California SW – not far from Ty – told us via Facebook that her car had been hit by vandals, and she heard another one in the area had been too. And last but not least, another section of the crime map shows a property-damage report in the 6000 block of 42nd SW; we had passed by at midmorning and noticed people looking at a car with a broken window.

With all this, we’ve asked police tonight if they had any reports of anyone being arrested; we don’t have a definitive answer so far, so the best advice we have is the same one you hear all the time: If you see or hear anything suspicious, call 911.

3 Replies to "West Seattle Crime Watch: Keep watch for vandals"

  • sven December 4, 2011 (11:14 pm)

    I noticed a couple car windows had been smashed in on the street behind the new Admiral Safeway when I was out today. Hopefully these punks are caught.

  • Kim December 5, 2011 (11:12 am)

    There was a group of (whom I assume were drunk) people making their way through Admiral Saturday night around 2 AM. I woke up to them making a lot of noise and messing with some of the cars outside my apt. I got up and went out but I think me turning on my lights scared them off. I reported the incident.

  • Michael Rosbach December 6, 2011 (1:17 pm)

    My car was stolen from the Boeing parking lot of of Highway 599 near the south end of Boeing Field around 2:00 pm on December 5th. It’s a blue oldsmobile cutlass supreme brougham, it has distintive vinyl graphics on the doors that say streetglow, and a large chrome hood ornament. The roof is padded and the windows are tinted. The rear window has a graphic that says pacific street. A witness reported that the alarm was blaring as they were driving it away.

Sorry, comment time is over.