Story and photos by Karen Berge
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

More than 50 people gathered Thursday night at the High Point Neighborhood Center for a community-safety forum, billed as a follow-up to the emotionally-charged meeting on April 29th, which followed the stabbing of a woman there on April 23rd. This 2-hour meeting began and ended with some short updates and announcements, but the primary focus was to brainstorm solutions for bringing the community together to move ahead.

Jennifer Cobb and Andrew Mead, from the High Point Neighborhood Association (HPNA), started by describing their mission, “to foster community safety” and the objective for this meeting, to keep it “focused on solutions, focused on what we can do going forward.”

Willard Brown from Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), spoke for several minutes; he remarked “the most important thing is to work together on this” and said that SHA “is committed to bringing resources together.”One tangible change that residents will notice is that they have been “working with SPD to increase the police presence in our community.”

He emphasized that it will be a challenge after June 22nd when the school year ends. They plan “to activate the teen center and the basketball court” and schedule all-day programming at Commons Park. He said he was “hopeful that we can get people to focus on the questions posted around the room; that will lead us to some solutions”.

SHA’s Bill Drummond provided an update on the people involved in the recent incidents, “the victim of the stabbing has been offered a different new home in High Point; but, she’s not sure if she will stay yet.” As reported here last week, he said that the man charged in the attack is still undergoing a 90-day evaluation at a state hospital, to determine if he’s mentally competent to stand trial.

Drummond also spoke about the other incident that happened near HPNC hours before the April 29th meeting. Two boys were arrested, ages 13 and 14; “they’ve now been released and are at home.” He said that the only new information in that case is that someone outside the High Point community had also been involved. Drummond mentioned that he and Southwest Precinct Community Police Team Officer Kevin McDaniel, who wasn’t able to attend the meeting, have set up ongoing meetings with some of the boys in the community to address the issues that can lead to these types of incidents.

Miranda Taylor, Neighborhood Association board member, encouraged volunteers to sign up to walk or bicycle through the neighborhood as part of the new Peace and Safety Team. The effort is designed to provide more of an obvious adult presence during the after-school hours, to discourage youth from smoking or getting into trouble, and also to promote discussion and build community.

Much of Thursday night’s meeting was spent in small-group discussion. Three questions had been posted on the walls, asking about ways to improve the community further, ideas for getting more people involved, and “what ideas will you get involved in?”.

There was a lot of thoughtful discussion during this portion of the meeting. The groups came away with new ideas, but some additional concerns were raised as well.

Two departures were announced at tonight’s meeting. Pastor Va’a Leiataua was recognized for his 12 years of service to the High Point community.

(From left, Bill Drummond, Jeannette Fournier, Pastor Leiataua, Willard Brown)
HPNA presented him with a plaque; after he left the meeting, he was also given cards and flowers.Genevieve Aguilar, High Point Community Builder, was acknowledged for her contributions over the past 2 years.

There were numerous other announcements at the meeting. The most immediate is that they are seeking nominations for trustees; the deadline is today (more details on the HPNA website). Their June calendar has recently been published and coincidentally has quite a few events listed that will give the neighborhood an opportunity to come together – starting tonight, with the monthly HP Neighborhood Night at 6 pm at HPNC.