Burglaries down, police tell West Seattle Crime Prevention Council

First topline from tonight’s West Seattle Crime Prevention Council meeting at the Southwest Precinct: Crime is notably down. If you’ve noticed we’ve had fewer crime reports lately, it’s not that it’s going unreported – it’s just not happening, according to Capt. Steve Paulsen. Last week, only one burglary was reported in all of West Seattle, he said – bringing the total for the month so far to 11, compared to what would usually be 27 to 30 by midmonth. (We crosschecked with the online police reports – indeed, only one listed from last Wednesday through today.) The precinct commander cited “significant recent arrests” – people suspected of burglarizing homes by day and prowling cars by night, arrested thanks to what Capt. Paulsen described as “outstanding detective work” as well as alert citizens and timely reporting by victims. West Seattle is getting a reputation among thieves as a bad place to do business, he suggested – while promptly cautioning that an uptick in theft is likely within the next month as holiday shopping begins. Time-honored advice: be aware of your surroundings; don’t leave purchases visible in your car while you go from store to store. In one unsolved case, Capt. Paulsen said there’s no arrest yet in last night’s Highland Park armed robbery. Meantime, he introduced “three-quarters of (his newly aligned) command staff”:

At right, Lt. Pierre Davis is the new operations lieutenant – second in command for the precinct – the job Capt. Paulsen had before leaving the SW Precinct early this year for a short stint at the West Precinct (where his SWP successor, Lt. Norm James, now works with former SWP commander Capt. Joe Kessler). At left, Lt. Alan Williams is third-watch commander (night shift); that’s the job from which Lt. Ron Smith, center, moved into the second-watch (day shift) role. Lts. Davis and Williams are new to the SWP. He also noted that the Community Police Team now has three officers (as reported here when one of them, Officer Ken Mazzuca, visited the Admiral Neighborhood Association meeting last week). CPT Officer Jonathan Kiehn, also at tonight’s meeting, praised citizens for providing improved info when calling 911 lately – a topic on which he spoke at the last West Seattle Blockwatch Captains Network meeting. In particular, Officer Kiehn said, they’re giving better descriptions of suspects and the direction in which they’re heading.

Special guest at the meeting: Detective Suzanne Moore, who works on abuse/neglect cases, especially those with elderly victims. She shared two hotline numbers that can be used to report suspected cases – if they involve a residential facility, 800-562-6078; if they involve a private caregiver or home, 206-341-7660.

The West Seattle Crime Prevention Council meets the third Tuesday of the month, but they’re skipping December, so January’s the next meeting; keep an eye on www.wscpc.org.

10 Replies to "Burglaries down, police tell West Seattle Crime Prevention Council"

  • sun*e November 17, 2010 (8:22 am)

    “West Seattle is getting a reputation among thieves as a bad place to do business” Glad to read this… I hope it’s true!

  • itsme November 17, 2010 (8:23 am)

    News to me… we’ve been “hit” twice in the last two weeks…the second one was last Friday night.. so were we the “one” last week, or did ours not get recorded?

    • WSB November 17, 2010 (8:42 am)

      Itsme, the one showing for West Seattle in the online police reports system (which covers the whole city) was last Wednesday afternoon on 16th SW. When did you call police? – TR

  • itsme November 17, 2010 (8:56 am)

    Saturday morning. Broken into our contractor’s trailer. Guess this one would technically be a prowler as they seemed to have been scared away. Our first “hit” –also reported — was early Halloween morning (2 a.m. ish) and they got quite a bit of stuff.

    • WSB November 17, 2010 (9:17 am)

      Sorry to hear about the double hit, Itsme. I’ve seen reports of “somebody got in but didn’t take anything” categorized as burglaries but maybe this didn’t make it into the system that way .. the online police-reporting system is not a full catalog of every single type of incident reported to police – but rather is supposed to show all reports in several “major” categories of crime. I should mention the link here – anybody can look into that system (names and full addresses are “redacted”):
      .
      http://www.seattle.gov/spd/records/online.htm
      .
      We haven’t mentioned it here in a while but you can report some crimes online as well:
      http://www.seattle.gov/police/report/default.htm

  • Metal Jesus November 17, 2010 (9:11 am)

    “West Seattle is getting a reputation among thieves as a bad place to do business” – Some credit needs to be given to the WestSeattleBlog! Seriously. If it wasn’t for this blog and its timely posts, I certainly wouldn’t know about the majority of things that occur in West Seattle!

  • onceachef November 17, 2010 (10:59 am)

    Ironically, I just received (this morning) 2 e-mails from neighbors (we have a block watch program) that their cars were broken into in the last 2 days…I guess these burglars didn’t hear that “West Seattle is getting a reputation among thieves as a bad place to do business”!

  • odroku November 17, 2010 (11:13 am)

    What a load.

    We got burgled earlier this year. We learned a neighbor had a description of the suspect and informed the detective of this, they never even followed up with her to get the information. If there’s a recent drop in crime, it’s just a statistical anomaly or the weather. As long as they’re not being seriously pursued, they’ll continue to do what they do.

  • itsme November 17, 2010 (11:48 am)

    Ours left behind fingerprints… no follow-up on those.

  • amused November 18, 2010 (6:53 am)

    The precinct leaders are telling you what you want to hear because you can’t prove or disprove their numbers. Besides, even if the police catch the criminals it is unlikely your city prosecutor or county prosecutor will do any work to support the police.

Sorry, comment time is over.