Southwest Precinct follow-up on the “unusual doorknocker”

| Neighborhoods | Safety | West Seattle news

As promised, we checked today with the Southwest Precinct re: last night’s hottest topic, the “unusual doorknocker” reported by Larry Carpenter in Alki. Sgt. Jeff Durden, who leads the Community Police Team, says they were working directly with Larry to get more info, and also checking with area military — at this point. Sgt. Durden says, “I doubt this was any kind of military operation. Everyone we have contacted concerning the matter has agreed.” He adds, particularly in the light of the trouble that Larry had reaching somebody at non-emergency police numbers — “Also as said/posted many many times before – call 911. 911 will always answer and this is definitely a situation where we want to get a patrol officer dispatched to investigate.”

Todd April 23, 2008 (9:52 pm)

True, 911 might get more attention than the non emergency line but a citizen calling because someone is introducing themselves door to door is not going to get a very high priority call out from SPD. Dispatch has to chose between sending officers to a shots fired in Delridge, a car accident on 35th, kids throwing rock at cars on Admiral, a home robbery, or any of the many examples of crime posted recently on this blog. I am actually quite pro police but what frustrates me is a year ago when people posted on this blog about home robberies, the police showed up but did not dust for prints or were reluctant to dust. Now they are dusting for prints probably because robberies have become more common it seems. Why wait until a crime gets enough hits before taking more action? Being reactive just disturbs me to no end. How many people had to be victimized needlessly?

Irukandji April 23, 2008 (10:08 pm)

Seems we need victims before it’s really considered a crime. Just as we need more dead pedestrians before we do anything to regulate traffic. How many dead do we need? We aren’t told.

d April 23, 2008 (10:46 pm)

was walking the dog yesterday afternoon and spotted a guy just hanging on the corner. he was just meandering around and came over to us while a neighbor and i were chatting. he didnt make any sense so we told him we were busy. he went up and sat on the corner curb. had those large plastic noted things in his back pockets. this was west of the junction on 51st SW. went home and called 911 asked for non emergency and reported that he possibly may need to be checked out. the neighbor told me he had seen him going up to houses for about 30 minutes before we talked. drove by the corner 20 minutes later and he was still sitting on the curb. any way to check on whether the police came by? and what they learned?