Results tagged “spd”

A few hotheads (and fists) connected over yesterday's accident in Ballard, involving a car hitting a pedestrian crossing the street at 8th Avenue NW and NW 49th Street. MyBallard has a few eyewitness reports saying the scuffle happened when the driver's keys were snatched as he tried to flee before the police showed. Another said it was a brawl between the victim and the driver. So far we know the police have detained the driver (and his innocent dog), but once the SPD gets around to updating their fancy new toy blotter, we can hopefully get a play-by-play of who exactly was throwing the punches.

This week (August 2-8) is the Federal Highway Administration's "Stop on Red Week." No, they mean seriously, full stop, it's the law! West Seattle Blog alerted us to the Seattle Police Department's participation in "Stop on Red Week"--it's designed to provide a firm reminder to red-light runners and coasters, urging drivers to actually stop at a red light (right turns included), and to also promote the SPD's partnership with American Traffic Solutions, who created the city's new fancy-schmancy photo-enforcement cameras. We'll finally see all 30 red light safety cameras in action, issuing $124 tickets at new(er) locations throughout the city by the summer's end.

JOHN WATERS FANS : Central Cinema is showing one of our favorite '80s movies, Cry-Baby, and there's never a bad excuse to watch this film. Especially right now, in an air-conditioned theatre with stone oven pizza, and beer to wash it down. Ricki Lake? Hatchet Face? That single slow-moving tear drop? It doesn't get much better than that.

This morning's story about Wallingford car prowls going unpoliced isn't the first time we've heard the Seattle blogosphere making noise about lack of SPD follow-up for smaller crimes. West Seattle has car prowlers, so does the U District and Central District. In contrast, SPD says car prowls on Capitol Hill are down 50 percent.

Chalk one up for the SPD narcotics unit and Belltown's spandex-clad bike teams this weekend, as they brought down a large and highly organized Honduran drug dealing ring that had been corralling the crack-cocaine market in the neighborhood. Known to hide the packaged drugs in their mouths--gross--the small army of Honduran drug dealers had been pushing out the Belltown "regulars," and commanding the street corners since January 2009 (apparently they began in Queen Anne, clearly not their scene). Typically, we tend to bitch about Belltown, but for good reason, the crazy bums, the lack of police presence, naaaasty garbage dumpsters and oh yes, drug trafficking. So, it's relief to see serious action being taken. Current score: 30 dealers arrested, 22 left to go.

The other day we spotted this Segway-on-steroids trike on Broadway, which a parking enforcement officer was tooling around on, and our blood pressure shot up a few points. It turns out to be something called a T3 Motion, which is a competitor to the Segway, and besides its Robocop styling, it comes with a siren.

• Giganticasscity has photos and reflections on a rectangular brown house in the Central that may or may not be doing a great job of fitting into the neighborhood.
• Orphan Road is discussing the possibility of distance-based Metro fares ($0.10 for 4 blocks sounds pretty good!).
• White Center Now has a juicy account of yesterday's turn of events, involving public intoxication and the Seattle Police Department.

In the latest flare-up of violence on the streets of Seattle, three men were shot by a gunman from an alleyway in Pioneer Square at 2:30 a.m. today. Two of the men are in critical condition at Harborview, and the third has been released with minor injuries. While the details are nowhere near clear about the gunman's motivation, the SPD seems fairly certain the flare-up was not random and citizens should not--repeat, should not--be concerned about getting shot from an alleyway unless they're involved in something sketchy. (Is there ever a perfectly legitimate, compelling reason to be hanging out on a corner in Pioneer Square at 2:30 in the morning, we wonder? In the rain, no less?)

There's a noisy debate going on in the comments on both Slog and KOMO regarding the cops and lethal versus non-lethal actions.

On the first Wednesday of every month at high noon, our home is rattled by a screaming bullhorn miles away telling us that if Mount Rainier should ever blow, these same disembodied voices will totally have us covered. It is part of the County's elaborate "Lahar Warning System." In addition to a network of louder-than-Metallica audiotronics, the County also has page after page online addressing the symptoms, effects and remedies to all things lahar. For a lahar. A once-in-10,000-year event.

Last night there was a drive-by shooting in Pioneer Square (at James and 2nd Ave.) in what appears to be another outbreak of gang violence. No one appeared to be hurt, as it was 3 a.m. on the snowiest day of the year and the streets were all but deserted; the only two witnesses are saying the car might have been a VW Passat, which is not very gangsta. We're just saying. Four businesses were hit and the ever-competent SPD gang unit is investigating. As a commenter on the P-I article points out, it's kind of ironic that the mayor starts talking about banning guns from public places while gang violence simultaneously intensifies. Then the commenter starts talking about citizen deputies and vigilantism, thereby losing our initial support. That's not the kind of civilian involvement we need here.

When SPD reports came out earlier this month with the news that major crime in Seattle has gone down by some 11%, the Southeast Seattle Crime Prevention Council was skeptical. They crunched the numbers on their own neighborhood themselves, and found some startling results: assaults, homicides, and non-residential burglaries have all increased by huge numbers. Though even the police chief went on record this week to speak on Seattle's deepening gang violence problems, the police department is refuting the SSCPC's numbers, saying they aren't taking all the factors into account (precinct boundary changes and incidence of "actual crime" versus dispatch calls).

You know what sucks worse (physically, though perhaps not spiritually) than having to sit at a desk on a Friday afternoon and watch the carpet pill up? Getting trapped in a cement avalanche at work and needing the fire department to come dig you out. That's why we feel for this guy. He's okay now, but Seattlest's office faces the major street down which all the ambulances and cop cars raced on their way to this incident and we counted no fewer than four patrol cars and two ambulances scream past us in the last couple hours. That's a big fat hairy deal.

The proposed school closure list has been changed, yet again! The big news is that Rainier Beach High School (previously announced as considered for a merger with Cleveland High School, to the chagrin of almost everyone) is off the closure table. Instead, the plan is to either move Aki Kurose middle school students into the RBHS building or to close down the Center School Program and request that those high-schoolers attend Rainier Beach.

From the Rainier Valley Post: "In less than a week, 75 people have donated more than $3,500 to the children of Rainier Valley neighbor Noemi Lopez, who was stabbed to death by her ex-husband and high-school sweetheart exactly one week ago today."

She's said all along she wasn't drunk that night she was pulled over, but now the court has officially decided to back her up on that claim: Venus Velasquez, former City Council candidate, was declared not guilty of charges of drunken driving today by a local jury. It's too late to do any good in her campaign against Bruce Harrell, but at least she won't be tortured further with a public record smear on her good name.

A 15-year-old student at Franklin High School reported that a fellow student tried to rape her in a school bathroom this week; school officials promptly notified the SPD and expelled the two students who were identified as her attackers, and police are investigating the case. Any rape story chills us down to our bones, especially those involving such young men and women, but in this situation, one detail stood out as well: a bystander said she saw the bathroom door being held closed and heard the word "Stop" from inside, but "didn't think anything of it at the time." Since when is that somehow not noteworthy behavior on school grounds? Ugh. We're grateful to the police and to Franklin officials for taking the appropriate actions on this case.

Seattle 911 asked the SPD if walking home drunk was legal (it is) and got a really good tip in return: through a service called Anna's Ride Home, thirty bars in town can offer free cab vouchers to drunken patrons in need. You just ask for a voucher, and the server fills out a slip with your address and gives it to the cab driver. Eventually, the bar and the Anna Armstrong White Foundation split your bill. Though it would be a bad idea to go out on the town planning to abuse this service to get home, Anna's Ride Home is a fantastic alternative to driving drunk. Even Vern Fonk thinks so. Thanks, SPD, for the helpful reminder as we head into the drinking holiday season!

There are plenty of reasons not to hire an escort you spot in a photo in the back pages of The Seattle Weekly or The Stranger. For one, prostitution (yeah, we know, it's for the "company") is still illegal. For two, STDs STDs STDs! And lastly, as an unlucky 80-something-year-old man learned, they might just steal your money without performing for you. Seattle 911 says a man in his early 80s showed up at the West Seattle Police Precinct to report a theft. The man had found a young lady in the back of the Weekly and paid $250 upfront. Before the duo engaged in the paid-for act, the escort ran to her car to grab a condom. Rather than face the prospect of getting boned by an 80-something-year-old, the escort did not return. Thus the self-incriminating, would-be Casanova reported the theft to the SPD, which we think is just classic.

The Seattle Police Department gave residents of Nickelsville a 20-minute warning at 12:15 p.m. to vacate their encampment or face arrest. As of 12:35 p.m., the homeless residents of Nickelsville were officially considered criminal trespassers and subject to arrest. According to reports, some campers have chosen to follow orders while others have decided to stay and face charges. Sadly, at least those who stay at Nickelsville against orders are more likely to have a roof over their head tonight in jail than those who chose to comply.

Courtesy of Seattle crime blog extraordinaire, Seattle 911, comes an infuriating answer to a reader question about cops and hand-held cell phones. While the rest of us face fines of $124 for driving while operating a hand-held cell phone, the officer writing that ticket and pulling you over just might be using theirs, completely legally. It turns out the recently enacted law does not apply to police officers or ambulance drivers when they are operating emergency vehicles.

Though we don't know his name yet, we do know that an off-duty Seattle Police detective and Police Guild board member shot a Hells Angels biker during this years' Sturgis bike rally. The shooting occurred early Saturday morning at a packed bar during the week-long rally. The officer involved in the shooting identified himself as a member of the Iron Pig motorcycle club. (Funny how, when it's a bunch of cops on motorcycles, it is a "club" and not a gang.) Several people questioned about the shooting have identified themselves as SPD officers on vacation, and one man has been identified as a sergeant who once ran security detail for Norm Rice.

Despite the fact that medical marijuana is legal in the State of Washington and the Seattle Police Department are paid to uphold said laws, the SPD handed over 12 ounces of illegally seized medicinal marijuana to the DEA. The SPD turned the medical marijuana to the DEA at the request of U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan, who asked for it to be destroyed.

The state Supreme Court unanimously overturned a 30 year-old precedent which allowed Washington State Police to arrest an entire car-load of people if the officer even smelled marijuana. Now, if a police officer pulls you over and approaches you because they smell chronic, they have the right to search your car for proof of the drugs. But, they can no longer just arrest you based on a cop's sensitive sniffer. Considering the continued aggression the SPD and WSP have shown towards marijuana users—even to those who have a pot prescription for medicine—this ruling is a bright spot in dark times.

"WTOpolice_1" by Seattlest Flickr Pool contributor ntisocl. Daaang, he got right in there. Thanks!

At an afternoon press conference, the Seattle Police announced they have arrested a man they believe groped an Asian woman in South Seattle on Saturday and who they hope may be behind over two-dozen similar attacks. Darin Boler has been charged with second-degree robbery and fourth-degree assault for Saturday's incident. (The robbery charge is for stealing a would-be-witness' cell phone/camera.) Boler is a registered sex offender and has been previously convicted for raping a child and robbery. He is currently being held on a $500,000 bond. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of the attacks that have terrorized South Seattle residents for over two years.

An armed man was forcibly subdued in the lobby of a downtown hotel this weekend after an alarmed ex-girlfriend alerted staff that the man had a gun and intended to use it. The altercation, which involved as many as four employees, escalated into a full-fledged wrestling match as the suspect became violent and refused to hand the firearm over.