(Image: SPD)

Just over a month into the job, Mayor Bruce Harrell is scheduled to appear at a press conference Friday morning where he will “lay out public safety strategies” for the city amid ongoing concerns about public safety and property crime.

UPDATE 11:30 AM: In the morning session, Harrell said he wants to balance a stronger response to public safety with efforts to provide help and services while the city’s police force is taking a “hot spot” approach to tamping down crime concerns in the city but declined to identify specific locations at this point.

“If you want to know, just read the blogs,” Harrell said, adding he doesn’t “want to start naming intersections or naming areas.”

One focus area has been 12th and Jackson where Harrell and SPD Chief Adrian Diaz said increased policing effort has also included community response and references to social services and diversion programs — in addition to arrests.

Harrell said the approach has included consulting with defense lawyers about determining how to approach the “hot spots” and focusing on policing that will best address the crisis. Harrell said that means focusing on specific areas and often on specific individuals.

“We want to make valid, lawful arrests when appropriate. We want to get people treatment, when appropriate,” Harrell said.

Chief Diaz and Harrell repeated calls for more officers saying the administration “inherited a depleted and demoralized police department” and is down to policing levels not seen since the 1990s.

Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell also spoke, saying the administration’s focus has included “inventorying” the resources City Hall has available and “right sizing how we direct people in our system” while Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington emphasized that the administration sees its solutions for homelessness and public safety as “not one in same.”

UPDATE x2: Councilmember Lisa Herbold, chair of the council’s public safety committee, said Friday she applauded the mayor’s “multilayered approach” to crime. “With fewer sworn officers, we need comprehensive approaches that blend both traditional public safety and innovative community safety approaches,” Herbold said. The committee head reiterated that the council has funded the Seattle Police Department’s plan to hire 125 additional police officers and expand the Community Service Officer Program while also expanding the LEAD program and also providing funding for training 911 dispatchers “to integrate alternatives into 911 response.”

Original report: The media event follows a week of interviews and appearances by the city’s new mayor in response to criticism his administration is not acting quickly enough to live up to pledges to address concerns around street crime, crimes against businesses, and public safety. Media reports have also focused on encampments and homelessness in the city’s core neighborhoods.

“I understand these are intolerable conditions that they’re being asked to operate their businesses in,” Harrell said in a TV news interview this week.

Friday’s media conference will also include interim Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz and Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins “to provide an update on the state of public safety in the City of Seattle.”

Harrell won the office on promises he would do more to address crime concerns while also leading efforts to change policing in Seattle.  Harrell, who grew up in the Central District and is of Black and Asian descent, served as the chair of the committee on public safety during his time on the Seattle City Council. He has said he would push for a “reimagining” of SPD that would eradicate bad officers from the force and change who is responding in cases where armed police aren’t necessary.

Harrell also said parks and streets should be cleared of encampments with increased outreach effort from workers to provide shelter and services.

On Capitol Hill, a continuing wave of business crimes include an ongoing surge in burglaries that appears to be fueled by the pandemic conditions. There were about three reported burglaries per day in 2019 at homes and businesses across the East Precinct. Late in 2021, the number rose closer to five — and will likely climb higher when December and January’s totals come in. With many businesses temporarily shuttered, reduced hours of operation, and fewer people out and about on the street in 2020, reported East Precinct burglaries leapt 61% and maintained a similar rate as 2021 began before dropping and tumbling — briefly — back to pre-pandemic levels when things opened up more fully during the summer. The latest data available from the city show totals through November when COVID cases again began to climb along with business staffing issues.

CHS looked at 2021 crime totals for the Capitol Hill area here. According to SPD’s statistics, reported property crimes remained steady across the East Precinct in 2021. Total reported property crime here has remained stable since 2015 — but increased around 34% since 2010 when measured against the area’s population increase.

Garnering less media attention is a continued surge in gun violence across Seattle and King County that has shootings at a ten-year high in the city. According to an annual report from the King County Prosecutor’s office, while shots fired incidents recorded were up about 26%, 88 people died in shootings across the county in 2021, a 64% increase over recent averages. The shootings and deaths disproportionately impact people of color and particularly young Black men, the prosecutor’s office said.

The violence has been particularly painful in the Central District, Harrell’s home turf. CHS reported here on Michael Darden, the 36-year-old shot and killed last month in his 24th and Union apartment after an argument involving the mother of Darden’s son and her current boyfriend turned violent.

2021 also ended with gun violence around 23rd and Union with a man shot in the chest being rushed to Harborview from the intersection on New Year’s Eve.

The gun violence and safety issues have bled onto the CD’s Garfield High School campus where a shootout and gun incidents have brought calls to do more to ensure student safety and to find stronger community-based options to help address the issues behind the violence.

Harrell, meanwhile, must also weigh how much to focus his strategies on the Seattle Police Department as distrust over the department has only increased after continued deadly police shootings with little or no consequences and further revelations like the Proud Boy radio ruse from CHOP.

HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.