Seattle Police announced today that the department has redrawn patrol-sector boundaries, among other changes – here’s the official announcement. From it, above, that’s the new map of sectors/beats in the Southwest Precinct (West Seattle and South Park); compare it to the old one below:

From the SPD Blotter post that contains the announcement, as linked above:

SPD’s five precincts’ beats will also more closely reflect Seattle’s census tracts, to match officer allocation to the recent growth and shifts in Seattle’s many neighborhoods. Beat realignments are a common practice for law enforcement agencies throughout the country, allowing police departments to account for city growth and population density changes. The last time SPD redrew its boundaries was in 2008. Now, six years later, the department has again taken the opportunity to reevaluate and meet the needs of each of Seattle’s neighborhoods.

We don’t have detailed information on the boundary changes, but on first look, the ones we notice seem to involve the William sector in western WS. Meantime, aside from the maps, we don’t have specifics yet about exactly what that means to you, but we’re asking for more details and will add anything we find out.

P.S. If you didn’t read the full announcement, SPD also is taking Tweets by Beat and crime maps down until next week, to align the automated information with these changes. That means the incident list you see atop our Crime Watch page will be unavailable. It also means your tips are more important now than ever, since the tweets and maps are a key way we try to make sure we haven’t missed anything major – editor@westseattleblog.com or 206-293-6302 any time – thank you.