As
violent crime continues in the Central District, the
Seattle Times this morning wrote on an interesting new method of stopping criminal activity around
23rd & Union: giving the Seattle Police Department a
micro-office near the intersection to take care of business while keeping an eye on the community.
It would be a place where Seattle police officers assigned to the Central Area could write reports, use restrooms and take breaks instead of trekking back to the East Precinct on Capitol Hill. [...] The building's owner may be willing to provide the space rent free for the next six to nine months, though the department will have to cover utilities, Greeley said. The department just needs to sign a lease, but must wait for the owner to return from vacation, he said.
Finally! People thinking with their
brains instead of their
hearts. This sounds like a good solution to us at SCB, and a long-overdue one at that. While folks in the rest of the city seems to be targeting police officers for their
supposedly over-aggressive tactics, we're now witnessing the
complete opposite in the Central District. A strange turn of events, especially because many of the criticisms against police officers reported in alternative weeklies like
The Stranger report on unfair treatment of African Americans (who at this point still make up a good portion of the C.D., and who we'd suspect are largely instrumental in bringing this new "cop stop" to fruition).
But the media's cynicism appears to be absent around 23rd & Union, a community fed up with criminality who are doing
all they can to encourage a greater police presence. The end result will benefit all parties: the
Central District will likely see 23rd & Union return to a pleasant intersection, the
criminals who threaten our community will be apprehended or drop under the radar to keep a low profile, and the
SPD will develop closer ties with individuals and businesses in the community. A
win/win/win situation.
The question now is:
where will this push the drug dealers, loiterers and thugs? As we
noted on Wednesday, these people only congregate at 23rd & Union because after the Chocolate City Club's closure they were no longer welcome traversing their old haunts near 21st & Madison. Our suspicion is that this activity will not go away...instead, as
gentrification continues, it will move further and further into the C.D. and the South End. The "cop stop" is a temporary solution, and a great one at that. But it would be naive to expect that it will end violent crime completely.
