Neighbor sends in this eyewitness account she received of a mugging in the neighborhood last night. Muggings happen on Capitol Hill and across this city every day but there are fewer than you might think (see the end of this post for more on that). We decided to print this account because, well, this could happen to you so be careful (and always carry a bottle of wine for protection). From the e-mail we received:

… I heard a commotion behind me at the west corner of NE 17th and Harrison right under the street light. A young couple walking to their car from On 15th Video, were being mugged by 5 teenage african american youths maybe 13 – 15 years old. There were 3 girls and 2 boys, most wearing hoodies, some in denim jackets, one girl with [CHS has snipped this part to remove personal description].

2 of them walked up behind the young couple on that corner, asked where the library is and while the couple said “not around here,” 2 kids tried to grab the young woman’s high fashion purse while one of the young men punched that woman’s boyfriend in the face. Luckily the boyfriend had a bottle of wine in his hand and hit one of the kids on the head with it and started screaming at them. That didn’t deter 2 of the kids from shoving the guy’s very petite girlfriend into the sidewalk and both were on top of her, trying to take it again.

At first I thought from half a block away that it was a bunch of kids just in a fight with each other but as my eyes focused and I listened, I could tell it was a mugging. I started yelling “help” but it’s amazing how you can do that outside on this block but no-one can hear you. I called police from where I was standing and luckily, with the guy swinging his wine bottle, the kids took off in all directions and I have no idea how but his girlfriend held onto her purse. The kids split up and ran in different directions – 2 ran past me on 17th towards Republican and the others went the other direction on 17th towards Thomas.

Neighbor who sent us the mail complained about how dark the street is in that area — echoing the thoughts of several residents who spoke at the Shannon Harps safety forum a few months back. But given that this happened at a time when it’s still light at and, it should be noted, directly under a streetlight, doesn’t seem that lighting is the issue here.

What is an issue is the trends for these kinds of crimes around Capitol Hill. Mugging could fall into any combination of robbery, aggravated assault and theft charges — all of these categories of crime were lower in 2007 vs. 2006 according to the SPD’s crime stats. Theft — down 21% vs. 2006 — showed the biggest drop of all and, oddly enough, dropped in each of the 8 census tracts we’re including in the Capitol Hill totals.

It’s such a uniform drop that it’s almost like SPD and city prosecutors changed how they dealt with theft in 2007.

The grid above shows percent change in the three crime categories for Capitol Hill census tracts in 2007 vs. 2006. It’s color coded to show positive change (green) to negative change (red). Areas with small totals but big jumps are marked BIG in dark red — these are areas that changed from zero or one crime in 2006 to several in 2007.

In 2007, Capitol Hill tallied 131 cases of robbery, 136 cases of aggregated assault and 1,185 cases of theft. You can see that tract 76 –the tract where it sounds like the mugging took place — experienced a big increase in cases of aggravated assault, jumping from 6 cases in 2006 to 16 in 2007. Given the variety of charges that can stem from this sort of incident, the aggravated assault increase along with the pockets of increased activity in areas that barely registered in 2006 shows that we had a growing street crime problem in the neighborhood in 2007 — and anecdotal evidence that the problem continues in 2008.