(This is in response to Seattle City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck's guest column "Do You Feel Safe in Your Neighborhood," which appeared Jan. 3.)
No, Mr. Steinbreuck, I do not feel safe in my neighborhood.
First, thank you for the council's hard work in dealing with our city's public-safety issues - it is recognized as difficult and necessary work, and deeply appreciated.
Since you asked in the North Seattle Herald[-Outlook] about neighborhood safety: No, I do not feel safe in my neighborhood. As the block-watch captain on [North] 89th Street in Greenwood, my wife and I heard "firecrackers" at the end of our block and learned hours later that an anti-crime team officer, Troy Swanson, was shot and another man lay dead. Again, more crime on Aurora Avenue [North], which, as a family with young children, makes us feel especially vulnerable.
Drugs and prostitution have traveled along Aurora Avenue for 20 years, 30 years - and more. Archived news accounts of prostitution stings go back to the mid-1980s; neighborhood accounts go back further.
After all this time, I would say that the crime problems on Aurora Avenue are not just a police problem but a city, county and state problem.
Aurora hasn't changed much, and its reputation is deserved, but the neighborhoods that border it are changing. Look at the blocks off of Aurora Avenue and see remodeled houses, new townhomes and neighborhood groups like the Greenwood Aurora Involved Neighbors (GAIN), who represent the families living in these neighborhoods.
The city's first-ever five-year plan to improve public safety has to include Aurora Avenue as a main topic. You cannot talk about crime in North Seattle and not talk about the Aurora Avenue corridor.
When I started asking people in 2005 what they might do to change Aurora Avenue all I saw as response was a shrug. No one person could offer ideas; instead, I heard people say "Aurora Avenue will always have prostitution" or "They will always come back."
In this time I have been collecting ideas, and I would like to offer them. Of course, I do not have the long view the city does, so these are offered as pieces to a solution.
NCI PROGRAM AND THE DOC
Officer Swanson was shot by a Department of Corrections (DOC) release, and as the [Seattle] P-I noted, [it was] the fourth incident by a DOC release in recent months. I would suggest expanding from one to three NCI (Neighborhood Corrections Initiative) units to Aurora Avenue. Three Seattle police officers, three DOC officers and three vans - they are targeted and economical. (Supporters include the Downtown Seattle Association Board of Trustees and the Metropolitan Improvement District Advisory Council).
You might also consider investigating any arrangements and voucher programs the DOC has with motels along Aurora Avenue, as well as the arrangement motels have regarding sex offenders. Newer state community protection laws state that the area around private and public schools is 880 feet (previously 220 feet - an area so small it only covered the opposite side of the street).
MOTEL INSPECTIONS
Unlike liquor-license laws, where the state can withhold a license for offenses, there are no Transient Accommodations ordinances the city attorney can use as leverage - there is no real way to suspend this license for serious offenses.
Tukwila has a working ordinance for revoking a Transient Accommodations license. In North Seattle, only two real threats came in the last several years to motel licenses, and they were from neighborhoods.
After one neighborhood called in so many 911 calls on one motel (the police hours equaled one full-time officer for the year), the owner sold instead of getting sued by a small-claims class action (any number of neighbors can sue for $4,000 each).
What are the cheap motels on Aurora Avenue like? Another motel, it was discovered, had a motel inspector (one of three for the state) cite the motel a year before for repairs, including walls softened by molds, faulty radiators, piled-up garbage, an abandoned vehicle. The owner of the motel was allowed one to two months to make the repairs. He checked off the list himself and faxed the form back to the state. The inspector's office marked this off as complete.
The repairs were, in fact, not made, and when the motel inspector was asked to revisit this motel by the neighborhood, the owner was re-cited and given more time to make repairs - even after the false repair report.
This same motel, which accepts sex offenders, is also the last exit for the poor. From police incident No. 292112, a woman evicted from low-income housing was on her last night at the motel and made a 911 call. She wanted to keep her children but didn't want to stay on the streets with them so instead called police to get her kids taken to Child Protective Services. The police went over alternatives with her.
This would be the same motel that Robert P. Sullivan exited and was chased down by Officer Swanson and his partner.
PROSTITUTION
Sixteen-year-olds in prostitution does not make a victimless crime, yet it is called a victimless crime. Prostitution on Aurora Avenue is visible at 8 a.m., 3 p.m., as well as night time; drugs are often involved.
In a public meeting held in Greenwood, one vice detective held out a printout of the arrests and suspensions of one prostitute over the years, and, unfolded, it stretched from one wall to the other - the result of years of suspensions by the municipal courts.
The SPD vice department consists of four detectives; it seems that Seattle has given up on prostitution as a crime and allowed Aurora Avenue to suffer because of it. Aurora Avenue has the nickname of "The Track" for prostitutes going up one side and down the other side of Aurora.
Some accountability from the elected municipal court is necessary but does not exist. In the last three municipal court elections over the last 12 years, totaling 28 elections for candidates, there were two challengers. One was Darrell Johnson.
Before the 2006 election I called him (a prosecutor in Brier) to find out if he was going to run again, and his answer was a firm "No way!"
And this from Mark D. Fefer, [of] Seattle Weekly (November 2006): "These little district courts are like fiefdoms," says a public defender who didn't want to be named. "There are no independent observers that sit there and watch [the judges]. Attorneys don't want to complain - they don't want to screw themselves or their clients." And that may be one reason judges go unchallenged at election time. "It's kind of a burning-bridges process," says Tackitt, who ran unsuccessfully against Judge C. Kimi Kondo in 1998 and now calls it "a dumb, dumb thing to do."
NO TRESPASS, COUNTY CODE AND BUSES
Seattle's semi-successful No Trespass program, [which] allows officers to trespass problem individuals off of a property at risk of arrest if found back on the property, does not apply to the only bus route (358) on Aurora Avenue. King County law specifically limits trespassing to Metro police.
It is a known fact (and a videotaped fact) that these bus stops are used as stops for prostitution and drug dealing, in particular [North] 85th, 90th, 130th and 135th [streets]. The memo of understanding between the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and King County Metro Police gives jurisdiction over the bus stop to Metro at its "drip line." Even though the Metro police have a suspension pow-er over problem individuals at bus stops and on buses, the SPD is not allowed by King County to use either the trespass or suspension powers - even when a SPD police officer is working a watch for Metro in a Metro police vehicle and paid by Metro.
The SPD officer cannot suspend or trespass an individual but must call in a Metro officer. There are 1,280 SPD officers in Seattle and 45 Metro officers that cover all King County.
OUR CIVIC DUTY
Community groups, businesses and the police are working together. GAIN events keep a neighborhood presence on the streets and reclaim the neighborhood by building stronger community right along and including Aurora Avenue.
Here, we do our civic duty by joining together and building relationships with police, local businesses and other community groups.
Aurora Avenue, in this area, has a real nightlife with new pubs the Kangaroo & Kiwi, Duck Island, St. Andrews and Uber. These are neighborhood bars and restaurants that the locals support. Weekend nights, they are packed - and the more local people on Aurora the better. Businesses are trying to establish in this part of Greenwood - clearly Aurora Avenue is not just an "auto street."
North Precinct Capt. [Mike] Wash-burn has shared information that, for the first time, the area around Aurora Avenue, between North 75th to 95th [streets] - which has bounced around the top 10 narcotics areas in the city - has dropped out of the top 10 areas for narcotics as a result of community actions (2005 N4 was No. 3 after the downtown Pine/Pike areas).
Officer Swanson and his partner did their duty patrolling Aurora Avenue; the police are clearly committed. I want to think that Officer Swanson's bravery in protecting the neighborhood will have some meaning and not register in people's minds as another typical "event" on Aurora Avenue. Otherwise, why bother risking the lives of these officers on Aurora Avenue at all if the real risk of becoming a casualty is always present without any real plan for success?
None of this work turning the Aurora Avenue reputation for crime is easy nor necessarily lasting - its reputation has been around a long time, after all. But this is an opportunity for the city to become a stronger partner in our area and act to help us remake the reputation of Aurora Avenue.
I would ask the City Council, [the] Mayor's Office, King County and state to now take a committed interest in Aurora Avenue - no one can now shrug their shoulders and say there are no ideas for changing Aurora Avenue.
Dan Pavlovic is the captain of the 89th Street block watch in Greenwood.
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