Tom - what are you not getting here that you are looking for? I ask sincerely, because I can tell you whether what you are looking for is available. And if there's something you're looking for that IS available, we can do our damnedest to try to provide it.
The central thing we do is share the reports that come in from those who provide them. Police reports are NOT publicly available online - aside from the select few incidents citywide written up daily on SPDBlotter (and those are not police reports per se, they are blog-style entries written by the SPD Media Unit). Processing the actual police reports requires manual downloading from discs that are delivered to the local precinct with PDFs from the entire city, several days' lag.
That's why we have cultivated the concept of "send us your crime reports too" - because they can be shared in a more timely manner than they can be procured from the police department, at this point. There are some block watches around West Seattle that share reports amongst themselves, but the one thing they don't have that this site has is a mass "audience" (hate that word but nothing else is coming to mind), 25,000 homes/businesses checking in here at least once a week, so that if somebody in Seaview shares word they were broken into, folks in Arbor Heights will hear about it too. This site has lots of room for improvement but the value of a place where thousands gather cannot be underestimated, in terms of information-sharing, so if anyone has ideas on how to make things better here and better yet, the ability to execute those ideas, we would be more than thrilled to hear from you. We plow a sizable portion of our monthly revenue back into resources to make the content here better - freelance reporting, photography, technical help - but as the saying goes, 'we don't have all the ideas' - if you do, love to hear 'em, maybe somehow we can find ways to make it happen.
Regarding a network of block watches, many have yearned for that kind of communication, but there's one big challenge: The police department will not share that information with anyone. About all you can do is put out a call someplace a fair amount of people will see it (hi!) and hope that the word gets around, if you really want to try to coordinate something like that. They are very guarded about putting out any kind of mass information - when it's National Night Out time in August, we can't even get a list of all the "Night Out" parties around West Seattle, we have to put out a public call for "tell us if you're having one." Of course I don't believe in taking "no" for an answer so I invite you to initiate the inquiry and escalate it as far as you can; maybe somehow the status quo can be broken through.
But what I recommend more than anything, is what I evangelize OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again: There is a West Seattle Crime Prevention Council. It is a monthly meeting attended by the #2 cop in the precinct and the entire Community Police Team, and usually the deputy city attorney who handles cases in this area. These guys/gals are there to hear your concerns and to answer questions. It is an INCREDIBLE opportunity. Plus, some of those positions are in flux right now and the folks taking them over - who have been with the precinct for years, just not in these roles - are sincerely interested in figuring out how to serve you.
But we bang the drum for the meetings, and then the same old 20 people (GOD BLESS 'EM) show up, maybe with a couple new faces. Third Tuesday, 7 pm, Southwest Precinct. I cannot stress strongly enough how much that would serve as a first step. If you are in southern West Seattle, go to the South Delridge/White Center Community Safety Coalition meeting on the fourth Thursday, 6 pm, DSHS office on 15th SW. If people are REALLY concerned about crime, those meeting rooms should be jammed to the seams each month. Comments and discussions here are read by SPD and city leaders but that's nowhere near as effective as showing up IN PERSON to speak your mind.
One more note. Regarding resources - they're at the bottom of the Crime Watch page. Burglary prevention, mail theft prevention, car prowl prevention, linking to what's on SPD's site. When appropriate, we also include those links in stories.
And if you want to check actual crime rates, SPD does put a lot of info on its website. Go to this page:
http://seattle.gov/police/Crime/2009_PrecinctCrime.htm
Choose the November stats, PDF, "precinct data by beat." You will see that for example, the entire SW Precinct (which includes West Seattle and South Park) had 72 burglaries for all of November, the most recent month for which stats have been compiled. So an average of a little over two a day.
There is also a neighborhood-level tool to check crime trends, although to be honest, I have not had much luck playing around with this - maybe you will.
http://web1.seattle.gov/mnm/?tabId=3
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