23 Replies to "West Seattle Crime Watch: North Admiral search; Seaview car prowl"

• North Admiral Neighbor August 27, 2015 (9:40 am)

  Hamilton View Park has been a trouble spot for much longer than the last few incidents reported on the WS Blog. I appreciate seeing SPD cars and bikes patrolling the area but crime is getting out of control in this city. Our city leaders need to step up, no more changes to streets for bike lanes , please do something to combat the homeless population in our city and the crime. The two problems seem to be very connected.

• cluelessinws August 27, 2015 (9:46 am)

  Amen

• WSEA August 27, 2015 (9:57 am)

  @North Admiral Neighbor – Are you assuming that city leaders spend most of there thinking of bike lanes. Thats a bold comment without any proof. My guess is that there are thousands of issues they discuss daily and bike lanes are a VERY small piece.

  I think we need to get a larger police force and have stricter sentencing. Jail should also be a place for manual labor and not sitting around.

• wsgal August 27, 2015 (9:59 am)

  I heard these teens this morning walking down California, it’s very quiet that early in the morning in north admiral area and they were rowdy, laughing and yelling at each other – their voices echoed down the streets. Didn’t see them though. Then I heard the police siren, figured something was up. Thanks for the update WS blog!

  I walk through Hamilton viewpoint all the time on my way up and down from the beach, and every time I see people openly drinking and smoking and tossing their trash around. This has always been a troublesome area, but it seems to be getting worse. How can we make a difference?

• cluelessinws August 27, 2015 (10:04 am)

  If the buck stops with the Mayor, there has been so many failures with his administration: development run amok, crime, traffic, homelessness, etc. We cannot keep going down this path!

• wsea August 27, 2015 (10:47 am)

  @WSGAL – you and everyone needs to call the non-emergency police line when you see the activty you mentioned. Once the bad elements knows that police are being called all the time they will stop going to that park. Maybe we can also stream classical music like they did at bus stops in california.

• pam August 27, 2015 (12:33 pm)

  Tiffany, Check behind the West Seattle Gymnastic Academy/Mail Building on Lander and California. It seems to be a dumping spot for stolen bags. It’s a long shot, I didn’t walk that way today, but worth a look.

• Peterman August 27, 2015 (12:38 pm)

  The fisherman in me wants to leave a big bag of oregano, maybe a bottle of pills, and an empty wallet in my unlocked car overnight…with a game camera installed somewhere nearby. It would then be cool if there was an online location (WS Blog?) where you could show-off your ‘catch’. Might be kind of fun and, perhaps, a deterrent of some sort. Just a thought.

• k August 27, 2015 (12:48 pm)

  TR – what time this morning?

  • WSB August 27, 2015 (12:57 pm)

    The call still hasn’t shown up on the auto-tweet log so I don’t know specifically – once I have an incident # I hope to check back for more details – but we did get a note from someone asking about police activity at 6:50 am, so sometime before then.

• aa August 27, 2015 (1:01 pm)

  I don’t knot the stats, but I do not believe the homeless population is connected to our crime problems. Yes there are instances , like recently in Magnolia, but generally I believe most homeless people spend their time and energy trying to survive and yes that may include drinking. But the ‘Drinking, smoking, and throwing trash’ that is mentioned, I believe is more likely to be spoiled young adults who have no respect for property. If you see this behavior and you don’t call, why not? How can they stop it if we the citizens don’t do our part by alerting them?

• RT August 27, 2015 (1:09 pm)

  I used to walk through the park frequently, but have been “on alert” often these days and make a detour if I feel the situation/cars/people are sending out bad vibes. Sad truth of one aspect of increasing urban density, etc. . Short of more frequent patrols, surveillance cameras would be OK by me in areas known to experience incidents like this.

• Neighbor August 27, 2015 (1:44 pm)

  Is there any description of this group?

• Chris August 27, 2015 (2:49 pm)

  According to the West Seattle police precinct they would really like you to call 911 anytime you see something criminal such as drinking or smoking in public and tell the operator it’s a nonemergency.
  If the police are available they will cruise by.
  I gotta say it worked great for me and my neighbors by Madison middle school.

• Marty August 27, 2015 (3:01 pm)

  We have at least five motor homes parked on Harbor ave/ Alki ave with people living in them. I don’t even want to think what they do with their sewage. I do know that they rarely move, so be careful if you walk through the nearby bushes!

• One of your neighbors August 27, 2015 (4:22 pm)

  @North Admira Neigh…I take offense to the statement about no more changes for bike lanes. This is how I commute daily around the city. Offer something you use if you want to suggest time/money to give up. I pay taxes too.

• udmiou1 August 27, 2015 (4:36 pm)

  I moved to North Admiral in 2009; I live 1 block from Hamilton viewpoint and I walk in the immediate area EVERY DAY – I do not agree that the homeless population is to blame based on what I have seen and experienced. When you see people taking selfies with hand signals that typically indicate gang relation, I think it’s safe to assume they are choosing to identify themselves as a member of a gang. Between that, the drinking, and utilization of various drugs (I smell it and SEE it), I don’t care if it’s labeled as “gang related” or not – LOCK THE GATES. Why is this such a difficult “first measure” to implement to see if it reduces criminal activity??? Yes, I would rather attempt to prevent additional criminal activity by REMOVING vehicle access to a “viewpoint” – SUE ME. I live in the immediate area, I hear the speeding cars, gunshots, fireworks, and noisy crowds that leave needles, alcohol cans/bottles, and copious amounts of trash, constantly. I get up at 2:00 in the morning when multiple vehicles are totaled 200 feet from my bedroom window due to people speeding southbound up the hill (this has happened twice in 12 months).
  When I see the city spending a significant amount of money to re-engineer and repaint streets for cyclists, traffic and parking studies to re-engineer more streets (how many hundreds of thousands on Admiral Way alone – any guesses?), and we still do not have enough police to patrol a CITY PARK known for repeated criminal activity, I challenge leadership’s ability to prioritize based on BROAD research. Yes, they have tons of data on Admiral Way because they PATROL the crap out of it – what about California? It’s a major north/south bound thoroughfare, yet in almost 7 years, I’ve never seen a device between Atlantic St SW and Admiral to capture the amount of vehicle activity on that corridor. I have contacted the city, sent emails, engaged on media with others in the community, and called police when necessary, to no avail.

  I would love to attend on September 8th at 7:00 pm at the 42nd and Lander Sanctuary, but I have a young child that goes to bed at 7:30 – are there any dial-in options? Video? Any way for people to participate remotely? Given current technology, I would hope someone could at least open a conference line, and better yet have a moderator who can represent those not physically present.

  Instead of tossing insults back and forth to each other, how about you suggest solutions based on your actual experiences in the area – not your generalized opinion or “beliefs”, but what you have personally experienced in this community – otherwise you are just clogging up the comment trail with useless text.

• One Of Your Neighbors August 27, 2015 (6:14 pm)

  @Udmiou fwiw, I understand your frustration with the criminal activity. I would like to point out that as a frequent bike commuter I also face dangers each and every time I’m on the road that I feel shouldn’t be there. How the city should spend its limited resources is indeed a topic of public discourse done best when we can do it calmly without insults. I don’t see any on his thread tho

• Sade August 27, 2015 (9:21 pm)

  We woke up to what seems like a random egging of our car- no other vehicles around us were hit. We’re near 44th and Hinds. My husband thought he heard commotion around 1am (group of people) but didn’t think anything of it.

• WSNativeLuddite August 27, 2015 (10:56 pm)

  Any government,whether local,state, or federal,that cannot protect it’s citizens,& allow them to feel safe, is a fundamentally failed government. These are not petty crimes; there are armed street robberies & gun-play going on in the Admiral district. I have resided here my entire 59 years. I don’t recall hearing of such crimes until the last 5 to 10 years, & now they seem to occur weekly. I no longer feel safe, & I feel I can no longer enjoy “civilized” activities until these lawbreakers are incarcerated. Until that time,I would like the bulk of my tax dollars to go toward re-policing & taking back the streets.

• Thomas M August 28, 2015 (2:37 pm)

  I like the idea of game trail cameras. Especially if they could be bluetoothed to only start recording video when something touches your car.

• bluhorizon August 28, 2015 (7:50 pm)

  wsea – Blockwatch Captains will say you got that right!

  North Admiral Neighbor – police cars or bikes occasionally visiting or being called to the park is not the same as patrolling the park – which is what the neighborhood is asking SPD for. Also, pls see response to aa.

  aa-
  Yep, there IS a small criminal element among PEOPLE who don’t have homes; just as there is in the working class, the elite class, and so on. It happens at no higher rate, and often less, in terms of % of population than any other group. Thank you for noting that daily survival for homeless PEOPLE-finding food, water, clothing, shelter, safety, not to mention an open or accessible restroom -without turning to crime -is the top of the daily agenda for most of those who are so deeply unfortunate and challenged as to not have a home to go home to.

  As for Hamilton Viewpoint and “…the ‘Drinking, smoking, and throwing trash’ …is more likely to be spoiled young adults who have no respect for property”…

  I offer both a little concurrence and some debate about that.

  Hamilton Viewpoint is a great destination for walking (used to be anyway), so we visit there 3-5x week. Our experience supports the view that the more non-discreet drinking, trash throwing and butt-tossing that occurs, is fairly highly correlated with (decidedly not homeless) younger demographics, summer eves, and weekenders. As to whether they are spoiled or not – really don’t know and can’t say.

  HOWEVER, in defense of another large group of young adults, we have also observed an almost equal amount of sober and respectful behavior there within the same age group(s) -as well as significant bad behavior among people much older. The point is, we regularly observe (and try to document) plenty of folks daily of ALL ages and from ALL walks of life at Hamilton dumping trash out of the car, and getting high in (and out of ) their vehicles before work, during lunch, after school, after work, and in between, It’s a constant flow-but most easily observable following the off-work patterns around 9-5-ish worker bees and after school on Fridays.

  In terms of fairness, re: overall comfort and safety issues in public spaces, I encourage full inclusiveness on this issue by including ALL park legalbenders in the parks conversation. In that light, we must include the daily off-leashers, leave-behind lawn depositors, and vandalizers, alongside the partyers and litterers. At Hamilton, the former groups are significant and overwhelmingly older than “young adults”, while the latter group is younger according to SPD. We have not personally observed any of these behaviors by homeless folks at Hamilton.
  A side note: Any time D-word issues are raised, there seems to be a temptation by some to constantly derail the conversation with long tangents about the merits of, or personal likability of certain laws. Keep debating that of course – but pls use appropriate (other) forums to do so. This thread is about adhering to, and getting current laws (like ’em or not) enforced in our neighborhood parks. They were put in place in attempts to create better overall public comfort and safety in order for very diverse populations to be able to share publicly-paid-for, public space. Some may seem unfair or not right. OK, but It’s rather insane for us to ask to have “the law” better enforced here (as many have said here they want and I support also) -and at the same time argue that individuals should be able to cherry pick their own personal legal preferences.

  Meanwhile, I look forward to more comments with solid information about how and where the real dangers at Hamilton are stemming from and how to effectively reclaim our park so that most people who visit feel as safe and comfortable as possible, day or night.

• patricia davis August 29, 2015 (11:18 am)

  I have lived here 40 years. West Seattle IS changing for the worse. Seriously: I rarely see police around Alki or Harbor Avenue. We need active, consistent patrol in West Seattle. We are losing what has made it wonderful to live here. Please make a request (and ask your neighbors to do the same) to get more police here and for them to pay attention to what is going on. Not just drive along.

Sorry, comment time is over.