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New SPD Tweets by Beat will help you figure out what those Capitol Hill sirens were all about

SPD introduced a service Wednesday that could come in handy the next time you hear sirens.

Tweets by Beat is a new system that broadcasts SPD dispatch data via Twitter. Each precinct’s beat has a Twitter feed of its own. For the Capitol Hill area, here are the accounts you might want to consider following — or at least checking out from time to time.

Capitol Hill Area Tweets by Beat


You can look up your beat by address here.

The dispatches are on a one-hour delay:

There are a few caveats: in order to protect crime victims, officers, and the integrity of crime scenes, calls will appear on the Twitter feeds one hour after a dispatcher sends the call to an officer. The feeds also do not include information about domestic violence calls, sexual assaults, and other certain types of crimes.

The city says the new service helps SPD meet elements of the DOJ consent decree.

CHS last posted the overall crime statistics for the beats covering Capitol Hill in this July update.

CHS has been watching the feeds in test mode for a few weeks. For a news gatherer, it’s nice to have an additional element of always-on information for the neighborhood. But the feeds are pretty high traffic for a more relaxed, less stressed out, better rested member of the community like yourself. You might want to just keep the links handy for the next time you hear sirens. Anybody can view the links above — you don’t need to have a Twitter account to access the feed pages.

SPD is also continuing to map the past 48 hours of dispatch information on the city’s My Neighborhood map system. The department tweets important updates via @seattlepd and posts a selection of higher-profile crime reports to the SPD Blotter site. A wider selection of burglary, assault and robbery reports continue to be available for download here after they are redacted and private information is removed.

The new feeds likely render unnecessary some of the information sources we experimented with like @CHScrime. For an archive of SPD dispatches, our 911seattle.com site remains useful — for now.

CHS also broadcasts live crime and 911 information via the @jseattle account as part of the general coverage of Capitol Hill. Please share items of interest you find in the new SPD information sources and feel free to ask questions about what you see. We haven’t seen every type of dispatch that comes SPD’s way — ANIMALS – INJURED, DEAD, DANGEROUS, anyone? — but we’ve seen a lot of them. You can also call or txt (206) 399-5959 or send us mail at [email protected]. We expect the new information to come with some growing pains and maybe a bump in inquiries and reports coming our way. That’s fine with CHS. Just like we told SPD when they were in the planning stages for the Tweets by Beat, we’ll always take more information.

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