Don’t enjoy this news too much, Pioneer Square. Third Man Video recently completed its move from 1st Ave to E. Pine. This morning, the new Capitol Hill business received an ugly welcome to the neighborhood: an early morning break-in that left owner Shane Benson more sleepy and annoyed than anything.
Benson tells CHS that sometime around 5 AM this morning, one of his new neighbors saw a man walking down the street with Third Man’s cash drawer. The glass front door to the video store had been busted with a rock. By the time cops arrived, the man could not be found. The neighbor said the man with the cash drawer appeared to be a homeless person.
Benson said the cash drawer was empty so the burglar didn’t make off with much. Third Man’s door that the burglar busted is double-sided safety glass, Benson said. Cops told him to add a metal gate. He also said the cops told him break-ins are a big problem on Pine.
They’re a big problem across all of the Hill right now. SPD data showed a 9% rise in break-ins both commercial and residential through September 2009, the latest statistics available from the department. And September’s year-over-year numbers were really bad. Compared to September 2008, September 2009 saw a more than 24% jump in Hill burglaries. We might have to start a new advertiser feature here on the site: Third Man as well as Po Dog and Healeo are all CHS sponsors who have suffered recent break-ins.
Benson said this isn’t the first time his business has been busted into — it happened once in Pioneer Square, too.
UPDATE 10:10 AM:
Don’t know if either of these involved more than broken glass, but two more reports this morning of broken business front doors on the Hill:
- @blueholly reports catering operation Mangetout on 19th Ave E has a broken glass door this morning.
- @JennyH8 reportst a broken door and a police officer at the scene on 15th Ave E’s 22 Doors.
There was a bearded homeless man hanging out for the past two days by the door area of Kurrent.
Saw him on my way home from the gym on Wednesday night, and yesterday afternoon on my way home from work. I wonder if that was the man who did it?
I don’t think its the guy you mentioned, he is a older white guy who seems pretty harmless who likes to watch TV through the Kurrent windows, we see him most every day. The person in question the cops mentioned was a African American.
“They’re a big problem across all of the Hill right now. SPD data showed a 9% rise in break-ins both commercial and residential through September 2009…”
and yet this quote from the epcpc meeting contradicts that:
“East Precinct Commander Capt. Jim Dermody was on hand to answer many of these Capitol Hill concerns and the Central District issues.
He told CHS that his Precinct hasn’t yet identified a significant increase in street robberies and is not currently planning an increase in patrols on the Hill.”
sorry i couldn’t make the meeting but some there are serious questions that need to be raised about what the east precinct has identified and reality.
Not that I don’t think there needs to be more reporting on this but Dermody was just being precise. Street robbery is somebody walking up to a person in public and taking money or property. Burglary is breaking in.
Stats show that robberies across the Hill were actually down around 11.8% (thru September). One problem with these robbery numbers is smaller totals make for easier swings in change. Statistically, robberies are pretty much the same as 2008.
We’ll look more at stats when we get full year totals but one of the things I remember seeing in the trends is a rise in street robberies on certain beats as the year progressed. There has definitely been more since the last few months of 09. Don’t know how the totals will stack up vs. 2008 until the data is released.
I’d like to see the “per-capita” rise in burglaries. Haven’t commerical and residential populations alone increased on the hill since 2008?
It looks like we (Cap Hill) are getting a dose of what my friends in Belltown have been complaining about for years. I really feel like we have lost our way as a city when it comes to this issue. We have confused compassion for homelessness and for drug/alcohol addiction with lax policing. We hire far-left police chiefs who are more interested in social programing than in basic policing. We focus on citizen review boards and issolated stories of police misconduct and allow that to handcuff our officers on the beat.
Why can’t we have it both ways? Why can’t we have progressive programs that provide food and housing and treatment for people – but also crack down on those who harrass our citizens, sell drugs on our sidewalks, and smash our storefronts?
A friend who works at a non-profit downtown tells me that the “non-criminal homeless” are often the victims of these same people. He says nothing will change until this crime starts spilling into Seattle’s cherished neighborhoods. Well, I plead guilty to not getting worked up about this until now. Now it is in my back yard. And now I want to know what the hell we are doing about this…