3 more Crime Watch notes this morning – but they start on a positive note, with this e-mail from Laura:

Good news for one West Seattle family! The police found our 2007 Acura (stolen last Friday night at 41st & Brandon) parked in front of a fire hydrant on Delridge near the Skylark Café. SPD ran the plates before ticketing it, it came up stolen, and they called us to come retrieve it. Damage appears to be negligible though we haven’t seen it in the daylight yet. We are grateful to SPD for their help in getting our car back!

We also have updates from two of this week’s meetings – South Delridge/White Center Community Safety Partnership Thursday night, Fairmount Community Association Wednesday night – with graffiti vandalism among the hot topics at both – read on:

First, from the monthly South Delridge/White Center meeting Thursday night, more good news. On the county side of the line, Sheriff’s Deputy Jeff Hancock said there were no shootings or felony assaults in the area in the past month, and only one reported burglary. On the city side of the line, Southwest Precinct Community Police Team Acting Sergeant Adonis Topacio said Highland Park got hit hard with graffiti vandalism last week, especially Highland Park Elementary School.

Now, crime (and crimefighting) information from Wednesday night’s Fairmount Community Association meeting at The Mount. Two SW Precinct reps were there – Community Police Team Officer Ken Mazzuca and Crime Prevention Coordinator Ben Kinlow.

As he had done at Monday night’s Fairmount Springs meeting, Officer Mazzuca discussed a wide range of incident types and prevention advice. Graffiti came up first — “seems to be a chronic problem through West Seattle,” he acknowledged, including SW Alaska, the border between Fairmount and the Triangle district. He sought to debunk the myth that all graffiti is the work of gangs, saying most of what’s seen in West Seattle is the work of taggers, not gang members, whose vandalism tends to come in the form of a message to a person or group. “One of the best things you can do is report (graffiti) – then after you report it, paint it over – when you leave it up, it attracts more.”

Southwest District Coordinator Stan Lock – who works out of the city’s office in The Junction, next to Rocksport – said that Seattle Public Utilities will soon provide paint in this area for graffiti-covering, so that people don’t have to go downtown.

Officer Mazzuca talked again about lighting as a means of crime prevention – light up the outside of your home/business so that anything unusual happening can be seen: “Bad guys don’t like light, they just don’t.”

For those who own businesses or property where suspicious people hang around, he talked about the criminal-trespass program (described on this page at the Seattle Neighborhood Group site): Participants agree to give police blanket permission to go onto their property if someone is seen there who looks like they don’t belong: “If they don’t have a reason to be there, we can fill out a trespass on them saying they are not to return to that property for a year – if they do return, they can be arrested for criminal trespass even if they don’t commit a crime.”

Crime Prevention Coordinator Kinlow discussed the Block Watch program and also his availability for people to make an appointment to have him assess their property and offer prevention tips. And he stressed what we’ve reported police saying again and again – call 911 to report suspicious activity; he also discussed the possibility you might get some pushback from a dispatcher – “But if you feel very strongly about having an officer come out, INSIST on an officer coming out. They may not be able to get one out right away but sometimes they can. … They may make you feel like your call isn’t important but it IS and we want you to have tough skin and call again and again.”

One not-oft-heard reminder: Don’t drive with a purse out in plain view on the passenger seat; there’ve been cases of criminals trying to smash-and-grab from cars stopped at lights.

The home page for SW Precinct Crime Prevention is here.