A Solution Would Be Nice

That guy's a crack-pot. Read "The City" by Joel Kotkin. Not the best book in the world, he loses his thesis in the second third of the book, but he brings it back 'round.

There is no way it'll rival Third World Country's crime rates. Their crime rates are almost biblical. It stems from a high disparity between incomes and the city being able to offer fundamental services (clean water, garbage disposal, less than 5 people to a room).

Obviously, anyone who could imagine within the foreseeable future that a developed world city would deteriorate to Third World status (where more than 65% of a city's population live either in squatter or slum conditions due mostly to population increases of over 400% within three generations and stagnant economies) is juvenile.

But yeah, it is getting worse out there. We need beat cops.

So the bridge and tunnel crowd spending their money in Belltown is the reason for the graffitti, car break ins and shady back alley shit going down at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon? Please.

While yuppies may account for a lot of fist fights on Friday nights its disingenuous to pretend the steady crime in Belltown stems from two drinking binges a week. It isn’t racial, it’s poor people of every stripe getting away with what they can and the police will be the first people to tell you they wish they had more resources. We aren’t surprised by Belltown’s crime, we’re just ready for a more aggressive approach.

"Outsiders" is the oldest cliche in the world when it comes to laying blame for crime. In any case, who cares where the perpetrators are from? This stuff is happening, and not just in Belltown. How many bashings have we read about recently on Capitol Hill? How many shootings in the Central District or outside nightclubs in Pioneer Square? How many car prowls and home burglaries that don't even get reported because we know the police can't/won't do anything?

The column didn't focus on one event in Belltown, and to attack the columnist is disingenuous and misses the point. (On the other hand, the implication that things are worse here than in Detroit is ridiculous.)

@9 & John @ 6 - It's not just outsiders, it's also the people who live there and the reasons they ostensibly live there for. Drug dealers sell drugs where a market exists--if one exists in a theoretically "nice" part of town, then perhaps it's not just poor people selling to poor people.

Look, here's the problem: The statistics just plain don't seem to back up the idea that the city is facing a crime wave, and certainly not one of Johannesburgian proportions as John suggests could happen. If we look at Belltown, what do we see? A lot of bars, a lot of drinking, people moving there for the scene, people visiting for the scene, plus an influx of street people begging and various levels of drug dealing, from the street corner crack dealer to the guy selling coke in the back of a club. All of this is happening, and I don't dispute that. What I dispute is the perception that there's a crime wave of epic proportions, because that only exists in the minds of people who conflate drunk driving, sidewalk fist-fights, and abnormally aggressive behavior, with the crime associated with homeless street people, crackheads, and prostitution.

In other words, if you look at Belltown, things seem bad because it's turned into a crucible of all the negative influences affecting urban life. However, any reasonable person should be aware that there's not an easy solution to the problem of homelessness and poverty. So long as Belltown remains the scene it is, those elements are going to move towards it for the same reasons as now, just as they hit Pike/Pine and Pioneer Square. If Belltown loses the scene, the problems with self-mitigate. Do I want that to happen? No. But short of that they're not going away.

That said, if we accept that at least part of this is perception rather than reality (no one has yet demonstrate the crime stats are wrong, have they?), then it is fair to say that perhaps some of the responsibility should be upon the bars, restaurants, and clubs, to prevent fights, over-serving, accidents, and yes, drug dealing from inside. Think of it as the broken-windows approach: with fewer escalations overall, the odd extreme act of violence will start to seem more isolated, and people can actually figure out how to address those issues. But as long as the police have to keep spending so much time policing the well-off people the papers invariably describe as the "victims," they're never going to be dedicated to catching the crack dealers. They're too busy issuing DUIs, and whose fault is that?