State of the City? Short a Hundred Police Officers

MvB, it actually does make my point, if you think about it slightly. Why won't the cops follow up on it? Because they're understaffed and don't have time to follow up on it. Seems pretty simple to me.

Agreed with Courtney above, South Seattle has very long responses bordering on becoming useless. We have wide spread drug use in cars and alleys, street prostitution and a recent rash of daylight home burglaries. When we had a city councilman at one of our neighborhood meetings recently, it was a consensus that south (CD/ID/Beacon Hill/Rainier Valley and beyond) was very understaffed.

Happy for you folk up in the North, really I am.

Taking the stranger thread into consideration...maybe there is some wave of random and violent crime sweeping the city that I've been lucky enough to avoid. Haven't seen it, personally, but apparently it exists. Most of the anecdotes related in that thread seem like they're nightlife-related and the usual response to that kind of thing is more cops standing on the corners and not necessarily more cops following up on random attacks, as mvb indicated above.

And maybe there's a point behind Nickels' Nightlife Ordinance stuff? That's obviously where he's leading us here.

Yes, but Andrew, that story doesn't make your point. There were cops around, and they were non-responsive. Hiring 10% more of them doesn't indicate that would create 10% more responsiveness, especially if what we're talking about is the highly visible beat cop (vs. more detectives for actual crime solving).

Having actually spoken more than once with a few officers in the East Precinct, and living in the non-Cap-Hill part of said precinct (the CD), I can attest that we still need more cops there. Elsewhere in Seattle? Maybe not. But around my neighborhood they literally only come readily if you call 911 and say someone has been shot--otherwise they're already too understaffed and spread thin.

Things are different south of the cut, people.

"WHY ARE ADDITIONAL COPS A PRIORITY?"

Are you serious?

"they informed me that an incident report would be filed but not to expect much" This, after the person assaulted GAVE THEM the license plate number of the assaulter.

http://www.thestranger.com/blog/2007/03/letter_of_the_day_13

Well, the increase in assault for my neighborhood was 377.0, which, combined with stuff I've seen and yesterday's post on the stranger ("Letter of the Day" I think), that's a little worrisome.

However, I don't think hiring more cops is going to do the trick. I see cops all the damn time. All the problems I've heard in this city are that they simply don't respond. A friend of mine in the UDistrict had a man trying to break into her house one night for over an hour, threatening to kill her (a boyfriend of some girl in her apartment building). She called the cops 5 times, and they never came. That, my friends, is bullshit.