By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Even with one marquee guest (City Attorney Ann Davison) canceling, last night’s Alki Community Council meeting was information-laden.

One headline: The ACC is organizing its first community celebration, with the help of a city grant. Set your calendar for 5-8 pm Thursday, June 20, when music, food, and fun will fill Alki Playfield. ACC vice president Lindsay Pearsall is organizing the event: “The idea is to bring the whole community together … to find opportunities to connect and celebrate.” It’ll also synergize with the quest for public feedback on plans for the playground between the past-and-future Alki Elementary site and the playfield. This will replace the ACC’s usual third-Thursday meeting.

Another headline: Parks still hasn’t formally announced the closing times for Alki beach-fire rings and the rest of the beach park, though ACC president Charlotte Starck received an email from Parks official Markeith Blackshire a week ago saying the superintendent had decided to keep the closure at 10:30 pm, same as the past few years, and same as what Parks said during last November’s meeting covering a variety of West Seattle topics. But this was all before the early-Wednesday gunfire on both ends of the greater Alki area – Beach Drive and Harbor Avenue – so things could change.

With summer-like weather bringing crowds last weekend, the beach park was a major topic. Pearsall said she had seen two newly graduated Park Rangers at the beach over the weekend; Starck said she had noticed more police presence.

One SPD rep was at the meeting. Asked if he had any more information on the Tuesday gunfire incidents, Southwest Precinct Officer German Barreto said the two were definitely related and that the one person injured, at the Harbor Avenue scene, apparently had been targeted after a “road-rage” incident. One attendee asked Barreto for stats on drunk-driving and reckless-driving arrests/citations, but he eventually explained they didn’t have the staffing to focus on that; Barreto said two categories of crimes were up in the Alki area – aggravated assaults and vehicle thefts. How are vehicles usually stolen? an attendee asked. Various ways, Barreto replied, but the ignition tampering done to Kias and Hyundais, as circulated on social media, was one known method.

Regarding police staffing, another guest, CARE Department Chief Amy Smith – whose department, as we’ve reported before, includes the 911 call center and a team of crisis responders – had something to say. Her dispatchers can confirm the painfully tight staffing: “I might have six officers and 10 ‘priority 1’ calls – it’s horrible for my dispatchers – we’re watching the screen … we are working hard to recruit – but we’ve been recruiting the wrong kind of officers – community relations-focused rather than (the skillset that is currently needed).” Smith confessed she’s “very defensive of (the police) department.” She was accompanied by Davonte Belle, a CARE manager who is also a former 911 supervisor, and he said they do send officers out to those calls when they can, as well as broadcasting over the air to “be on the lookout” for a dangerous driver. (We can confirm hearing those dispatches multiple times many nights.)

Chief Smith added that “police are scared … there are three oversight bodies … officers are not able to protect us the way they should be.” She says she joins high-ranking SPD officials in roll calls “daily” and they find themselves expressing reassurance and appreciation, saying that’s vital: 14 months into the job (she is still awaiting the mayor sending her appointment to the council for confirmation) “I haven’t heard anyone dispute what I’m saying,” adding that what the city currently has “is the system we designed … but now we have to fix it.”

Will lower-priority matters ever be consistently enforced? one attendee wondered. If there’s enough staffing, Smith said, but in the meantime, she implored, call 911, not the non-emergency number. Anything people can do to help with the situation, otherwise? asked another attendee. Smith’s response: “Right now every elected official at every level of government understands the urgency” though she did add that expressions of appreciation – maybe even “thank-you signs” make a difference in police morale.

Shortly thereafter, Smith got the chance to present a primer on the CARE Department. Right now the most common “priority 1” call is overdose; she said the city is working on “sensible policy,” and it’s urgently needed because “we lost 1,400 people in King County last year … we (should be) treating this like the emergency it is …Public safety and public health are the same thing – you can’t have one without the other.” This year is likely to be as bad as last year but they’re at least hoping the death rate has “leveled” thanks to the availability of Narcan.

Smith recapped the CARE Department’s history, starting with the 911 center getting moved out of SPD back in the “defund days: “It was the right thing to make an independent 911 but it wasn’t done the right way” so she spent a lot of time rebuilding relationships after her arrival. Then, she suggested what became the new CARE Team, addressing “person down” calls. It launched last fall; this year she’s hopeful the team will grow to 24, but she stressed, that’s not a number ordered from outside, it’s the maximum she thought was possible in the next wave, and she’d rather make strides in the big picture of responses before growing beyond that. Also in progress, she said, new protocols for priorities.

She’s proud of the CARE Team’s accomplishments so far – “We’ve been to almost 500 calls and police have never been needed for backup.” When the team’s size grows, she promised, it’ll be available for West Seattle calls too (right now, the six-person team focuses on downtown).

How much could this reduce the need for police response? asked an attendee. Of 900,000 911 calls a year, Smith estimated, about 100,000 are “social work.” That’s not what police want to be doing, she said: “Fundamentally the CARE Team is a diversion team.” Belle stressed that the idea isn’t to grow CARE and shrink SPD, though – they want both to grow from current numbers. CARE is merely intended to “take away some of the burden on (SPD).”

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION HUB: With a June 1 preparedness-practice event coming up, ACC board member and past president Tony Fragada explained the hubs (go here if you have missed our many past reports) and how more community participation is vital and welcome. Hub volunteers from around the peninsula will join forces at Hope Lutheran in The Junction for the June 1 exercise, 1-3 pm. Find out more here. (At that point, Belle noted that CARE has a backup center in Spokane in case disaster throws it out of service in Seattle.)

BEACH DISORDER DISCUSSION: Before the meeting wrapped up, there was more discussion of issues from noise to dangerous driving to trash. Fragada said he’d like to see the rental electric scooters out of service in the late night and early morning because they’re noisy. Neighborhood activist Steve Pumphrey said his group has talked to various city leaders about related issues and has come up with a wish list including more speed humps, speed-activated cameras. changes to the Don Armeni Boat Ramp entrance/exit, and changing the Duwamish Head angle parking just north/west of there to parallel parking, to remove gathering places for driver groups. (He had said earlier in the meeting that Southwest Precinct police cordoned off the angle-parking area last weekend, and that helped tremendously.) Also noted, a tremendous amount of trash from the crowds who visited during the summer-like weather; Starck is pursuing that issue with Parks, urging the department to respond to the need by increasing cleanups, as well as adding portable toilets to reduce the strain on the beach’s relatively few permanent facilities.

SPEAKING OF CROWDS: Before the meeting wrapped up, there was a reminder that the Alki Art Fair is happening again this summer too, July 19-21 (find out more here).

(Other big Alki events this spring/summer will include this Sunday’s West Seattle 5K, the July 6 Seafair Pirates Landing, and Alki Beach Pride on August 31.)