Tag Archives: data

Zero: King County reports a day with no new COVID-19 deaths

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The county's report for new cases and deaths for Wednesday, May 13th

The county’s report for new cases and deaths for Wednesday, May 13th

King County and Seattle Public Health reported an unusual number in its latest daily update on new COVID-19 cases and deaths: zero.

For the first time since the onset of the outbreak, the county did not record an official COVID-19 related death in its tally Wednesday leaving the death total at 514.

While a day without another death from the virus is undoubtedly good news, the trend of new cases remains on a stubbornly slow downward course. Wednesday’s tally brought 86 new cases in King County — just short of the daily average reported so far in May but also the highest tally recorded in a week. Continue reading →

Check out latest trends on new Capitol Hill Crime Dashboard

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Mark Bridge of the Data-Driven Policing section (Image: SPD)

Mark Bridge of the Data-Driven Policing section (Image: SPD)

The Seattle Police Department has rolled out a new “Crime Dashboard” showing the latest statistics on reports of crimes ranging from homicides to auto theft — you can view the CHS Capitol Hill Crime Dashboard here.

Some of the illuminations may just bum you out — here’s a look at crime across all categories for the area defined as Capitol Hill in the database in 2008 vs. 2015. Overall, crime for Capitol Hill in September of the present was 30% higher than September of 2008, according to the dashboard. Seattle’s population has grown just over 8% in the timeframe.

CAPITOL HILL CRIME 2008 vs. 2015

The dashboard is intended to serve as the public facing component of Seattle’s new data-driven policing:

The Department developed the Crime Data Dashboard, which is the public-facing version of the dashboard that drives the SeaStat process, as part of its ongoing efforts to enhance public trust through transparency and to continue its push to effectively address crime and disorder in the City through its data-driven and community policing approach.

CHS wrote about the SeaStat program and its use in the East Precinct here earlier this year.

The new dashboard service is provided via technology from Seattle-based company Tableau. Some refinements might be in order. One challenge is understanding exactly what area is covered by “Capitol Hill” in the database — there’s also a “North Capitol Hill” in the set.

Meanwhile, Seattle University is conducting a survey of Seattle policing to “solicit feedback on public safety and security concerns.”

Thank you for visiting publicsafetysurvey.org. Through this website, Seattle University is administering the citywide Seattle Public Safety Survey. The purpose of the survey is to solicit feedback on public safety and security concerns from those who live and/or work in Seattle. A report on the survey results will be provided to the Seattle Police Department to assist them with making your neighborhood safer and more secure. The survey is accessible on our homepage from October 15th through November 30th and is available in Amharic, Chinese, English, Korean, Somali, Spanish and Vietnamese. The survey is sponsored by the Community Oriented Policing Services Office, the Seattle Police Foundation, and the Seattle Police Department.

If you’re looking for a more direct route for sharing feedback — or asking about trends you find the new dashboard — the East Precinct Advisory Council meets Thursday night.

Where do East Precinct cops live?

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CHS joined East Precinct for a #chsridealong Friday night. Here are a few of the things we saw

CHS joined East Precinct for a #chsridealong Friday night. Here are a few of the things we saw

Screen Shot 2015-02-10 at 11.23.13 AMLast week, CHS asked, How do we reform the SPD?

One recurring theme in the debate over reforming the city’s — and the nation’s — policing has been the idea that officers should live in the communities they patrol:

Beach and Bradburd both also suggested the city promote — or require — more police officers to live within the city. “When the police are not part of our community, and they come in to police us, it creates this Us and Them kind of situation,” Bradburd said. Beach thinks the city should require some minimum number of cops to live within the city (most of them don’t). The City Council “just passed a priority hire program that focuses on a quota for the number of Seattle residents who have to work on construction projects that are funded by the city,” Beach said. “We should definitely do the same thing for our police force.”

Last year, we pulled together a map showing where SPD officers lived using years-old data from 2011. The result showed that most maintained residences outside the city.

Below, you’ll find a ZIP code map based on a fresher dataset focused only on the 70 or so officers assigned to patrol East Precinct. The takeaways: The officers who patrol Capitol Hill and the Central District also mostly live outside the city — and little has changed since 2011.

UPDATE: A spokesperson for the department says that the most recent counts through different processes at SPD puts the East Precinct patrol officer count at somewhere around 90 to 100. Not all of those officers are on patrol simultaneously, of course, with standard staffing running somewhere around 12 to 15 officers in the field at any one time in the East Precinct. Sometimes more… sometimes less.

UPDATE x2: I wasn’t happy with the original “heat map” style visualization for this. Then I saw that Tableau Public just released an updated version of its service. Here’s a better view thanks to Tableau:

With SPD pushing SeaStat data-driven policing, here’s a look at Capitol Hill 2014 crime trends

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It's no SeaStat. But CHS has pulled together this look at Capitol Hill crime trends

It’s no SeaStat. But CHS has pulled together this look at Capitol Hill crime trends — yup, there’s an uptick. More charts and tables, below (Source: data.seattle.gov SPD dispatch data)

Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 11.59.06 AMFriday, SPD brass will be back on Capitol Hill along with East Precinct commander Capt. Pierre Davis to update the Pike/Pine business community about the status of increased patrols in the area following a late-summer surge in street crime. The noon meeting follows weeks of “emphasis patrols” including deployment of gang units in Pike/Pine. It also caps a week of Seattle Police status updates as Chief Kathleen O’Toole — or Kathy as Mayor Ed Murray called her in a recent press conference — rolled out reports on her first quarter in command of the force and updated City Hall about her department’s new statistical approach to policing.

Monday in front of the Seattle City Council, O’Toole credited SeaStat, a newly purchased system used to map crimes and deploy officers, with putting the kibosh on what the chief said is a rising wave of crime in her new city. But she said community feedback is also driving the department’s decisions.

“We have to respond to community feedback,” she said.

“Although we’ve implemented the SeaStat system that does compile data, we’re also supplementing that with the info we get from the community.”

While we wait for SPD to update its official tallies for the first three quarters of East Precinct crime data, CHS has pulled from data.seattle.gov a dataset based on all reported incidents to compare crime around Capitol Hill through the first three quarters of 2014 vs. the same period in 2013. The good news: The overall total of reported incidents is almost exactly the same. The bad news: Things haven’t improved after 2013’s crime-y gains. Here are the totals for all East Precinct beats covering Capitol Hill.

Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 12.00.25 PM

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