No touching brown bear
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raspberryteacup

SPD is using its fancy new blog to tout the collar of a 'prolific' tagger allegedly responsible for graffiti on "multiple buildings, including several car dealerships, and several businesses in the areas of 700 East Pike, 700 East Pine and 900 East Pike street."

Report sez the 20-year-old suspect was out to mark the recent death of Bay Area graffiti legend Kerse BTM and was caught in the act early Sunday morning. Hopefully they don't try to nail the kid for all the Kerse-work they find out there on the streets because this gentleman has company.

Will give SPD a call to see what else I can find out.

UPDATE: SPD confirmed that the suspected tagger is being charged with a felony level count of malicious mischief. From my understanding, if there was less than $1,500 damage, maximum sentence would be around 5 years. You can read more about the charge on the Avvo legal site. Also, no specific location of where he was apprehended.

Kerse tag on 10th Ave<...

The suspect arrested in the Kerse tribute tagging in Pike/Pine is a 20-year-old man named Long Hoang Le, Seattle Police Department confirms. He was booked early Sunday morning and released Monday night as the investigation of "malicious mischief" continues. Thanks to help from Scott at Central District News and Tracy over at the West Seattle Blog in tracking down the info.

According to Capitol Hill Triangle, the Obama Mural on E John St has been restored.  Let's hope the taggers show a little respect this time around. 

Speaking of tagging, there was some talk a while back about possibly asking neighborhood stores to restrict the same of spray paint.  Another way that may be easier to help control the persistence of tagging is to be aware of what's going on in the neighborhood.  Keep an eye out, report taggers to the police, install lights near popular tagging places, and keeping our neighborhood clean.  A study, echoing the "broken windows" theory, has shown that the present of graffiti (not art, but plain graffiti) tends to raise the persistence of littering and theft.

The case against Long Hoang Le, the 20-year-old man we named as the suspect in the Kerse tribute tagging in Pike/Pine last month, is now with the King County Prosecutors office, spokesperson Dan Donohoe confirmed for us this week. But it's still not clear if Le will be hit with the felony-level malicious mischief charge authorities initially were considering for the incident. From Donohoe: "There has been no decision regarding charges. The case is still under review."

A 911 dispatch came down the wire earlier tonight regarding an assault with weapons in the neighborhood. The callout was designated '7 per rule' which typically means life threatening injuries. The location was the main Group Health building so I set out expecting to find a bad scene. But when I arrived there no ambulances, no police cars, no press (except for me and, I think, the guy in the black Land Rover who circled the hospital 8 or 9 times). My first thought was a typo in the 911 dispatch. But I called the SPD's media update line just to be sure. Turns out, they already had their report on the incident.

According to SPD, the shooting didn't happen here. The 911 call was made from Group Health when, around 6:25p, a black male in his 20s showed up at the entrance to the emergency room with two gunshot wounds to the leg. SPD says there are no known incidents involving a shooting on Capitol Hill or anywhere in Seattle at this time and that the victim is not being "very forthcoming" with information. The investigation,...

In Google StreetView. Any idea what they are "discussing"?

Can't embed here (wish I could!), so you'll have to click:
cop and dude "discussing"

Update from jseattle: We have a solution to allow anybody to embed that we're ready to roll out any day now. In meantime, I can do it for you. Here's your Street View find from 12th Ave E. Looks like a meter maid is doing some lecturing!

Here's yesterday's Capitol Hill run-down of East Precinct action. The 10:39a disturbance is the incident that closed Cal Anderson yesterday. The fraud item at 6:13p is notable -- there's a bit of that going around the city these days. Connected?

Central District News East Precinct Scanner Report - Capitol Hill - 10/9/2008 - Full Report

10:39AM - 1000 E. Denny Way - Disturbance - The county is trying to evict a man from his apartment, but he's refusing to come out.

1:38PM - 500 Broadway - Assault - Man assaulted by someone he let stay with him. Suspect is a black male, 43, going by the name of a very large US city

2:10PM - 300 Broadway E - Robbery - Man says he was robbed a knife point. Suspects last seen running northbound. Two hispanic males, late 20s, one in a brown leather jacket, green/brown striped shirt.

6:13PM - 2000 Federal Ave E - Fraud - Police are searching a home in this block as part of a fraud investigation. This is a fancy, executive-laden street, so it would...

I'm going to start featuring a summary of Capitol Hill items from the Central District News team's daily police scanner reports. They'll be a day late (and a dollar short) but you can keep track of what CDN is following as it happens by going to their site. We have a link to the CDN report at the top of every page -- just look for the cheekily-labeled Bad News Map link. Here on CHS, you'll get a next-day summary of Hill-located criminal activity and reports.

The problem with crime log reporting is it makes the world look like a war zone and it definitely features humans at their worst. After all, you don't hear a lot of nice things like "Man scratched puppy behind the ears" on the scanner. We have a jokey little solution to that with our CHS Good News Map but it doesn't really counterbalance the feeling that you need to be armed and locked inside to survive. Hopefully the next-day summary format will give us all time to digest what is happening and not freak out about it too badly. Of course, when big things come...

Not much north of Madison from yesterday's CDN East Precinct Police Scanner report. Careful bikers.

Central District News East Precinct Scanner Report - Capitol Hill - 10/13/2008 - Full Report

5:27PM - 1419 12th Ave - Accident - Car vs bike accident.

Received this e-mail about a Wednesday night mugging from a Hill neighbor who forwarded it from a neighborhood safety group she is part of. For context, robbery on the Hill is down so far this year according to Seattle Police Department statistics, but we're seeing plenty of reports like these, often targeting electronics like iPhones.

Last night R and I were driving home from a show when a guy flagged us down in the street. He'd was out for a jog around Aloha and 11th when a group of about seven teenagers mugged him and ran off with his iPod. He needed someone to call 911 for him. So here are some thoughts for you:

* First: Don't go for a walk or a jog alone at night with your headphones on. Alas, you're an easy, easy, obvious target. On a related note: You should probably keep that iPhone of yours in your pocket when you're strolling around at night. Don't go texting and walking at the same time. You may as well hang a sign around your neck that says: Mug Me!

* Second: This guy said he saw the group of...

Around 4:30pm on October 7th my black and white dog wearing a pink bandanna, Dita, was hit my a dark colored SUV. The SUV was traveling East toward Cal Anderson Park and struck Dita near the intersection of Denny and Belmont. Please e-mail me: carlos@agillian.com if you have any information concerning the accident.

Thank You.

We won't have stats from East Precinct for months but, trust us, we're seeing a lot of car break-ins in the police reports for Capitol Hill. What we do have are anecdotes like this from neighbor Phobia in the CHS Classifieds:

I am trying to help my friend who was a victim of auto crime. Her car got broken into last night, Nov. 13, at the corner of Union and 11th. She lost her Coach tote bag with some important documents and a hard drive inside. All she wants are the things that have very little value to anyone. If you are out there, please take the cash and the bag but please send all other things back to her. I know it's really rare that a criminal would read a neighborhood blog, but I don't have other ideas. Thank you

The chances are very slim that Phobia's friend will get her stuff back but the incident can do some good. You can take a lesson from this and make sure you remove anything and everything of value -- and, really, everything -- from your car.

While we don't have the stats, we do have a powerful new tool we're continuing to build on at our partner site SeattleCrime.com.

Here's a map of the last 30-days of reported car prowls in the Capitol Hill area.

Click for latest map

Locations are approximate -- we only get block locations from SPD -- but you can see the Hill hot spots. And, of course, for every prowl reported, there are probably three that somebody didn't bother to call in.

So, time to clean up your car. Here's a comment from neighbor Lolalaptop to inspire:

Rash of car break ins in my neighborhood

I am sorry to hear that your friend lost her valuables.

My car was broken into a few weeks ago, 13th and Mercer, and thankfully nothing of value was taken, but the interior had been thoroughly torn apart in what was probably a quick, expert manner. I posted a note about it in my building, and learned that the same had happened up and down the block to many, many cars.

Yes, there were visible bags (of paper to recycle, nothing of value!) in my car that may have led them to bother breaking into my car.

Lesson learned: my car is now fastidiously empty and will remain so. People are desperate and while you can't stop them from breaking into your car, you can lessen the probability that they'll bother with your car by keeping it visibly empty.

UPDATE:
The $1 value came from the report but might have been just a filler amount for the officer completing the report. I've asked SPD for clarification. Regardless, one buck doesn't make any sense for an entire ounce so revising the headline. Does the new amount change your thoughts on the incident?

UPDATE:
Here's some additional info and a good note for future crime report perusal from SPD spokesperson Mark Jamieson:

On the new reporting system it is important to read the narrative in its entirety.  The total amount of marijuana was 27.2 grams, which, as you can imagine is way more than $1.00.  Here is the explanation for the why $1.00 was entered:

All property entered on a property report must have a value.  Either enter the estimated value, $1.00 for UNKNOWN value, or $2.00 for NO value.

Since it was unknown what the exact value was, the officer chose to enter $1.00 for UNKNOWN.  The value could be anywhere $270.00 on (since marijuana prices currently run anywhere from $10 to $20 a gram, depending on location, quality, demand, etc.) Hope that explains it for you.

Original Report:
Last week, we shared a look inside a small-time drug arrest in the neighborhood: A $10 heroin bust in Cal Anderson Park

This week, in the interest of diversity and in celebration of this weekend's Seattle Hempfest 2009, we bring you another tale of the Seattle Police Department's war on drugs: A  $1 (to $270 depending on quality) marijuana bust in Dick's parking lot

KOMO reports a woman was robbed at knife point and cut on the wrist:

A woman sustained cuts to her wrist when she was robbed at knifepoint in the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood early Wednesday morning.

Police said a 20-year-old woman was robbed at 10th Avenue East and East Highland Drive just after 2 a.m.

UPDATE 8:07 AM:
CHS found this eyewitness account posted to Facebook:

... after getting halfway down the stairs, then running back inside for my cell phone, I made it outside and saw a woman bent over at the corner, holding her arm out and crying. I ran down the block and got there just as a few other guys came up. One dude had almost witnessed the attack and had ran inside to grab something to put over the gash in the woman's wrist. He ended up grabbing a grey pair of underwear. At least they came from a freshly laundered pile of clothes. I used it to hold the bloody cell phone she handed me, so I could call her friends. One after another, her friends weren't there.

She wasn't going to die from that cut, but there was blood spattered all over, a knife laying a few feet away and the cut wasn't helping her keep her composure any. Overall I think she was handling herself pretty damn well.

The police pulled up almost right after I got there. Nice dude. Calm. Not the hyped up, yelling type.

Poor girl had almost made it home when the guy following her had attacked. She held onto her purse as long as possible, because it had her green card and other necessary documents. She was from Britain and was supposed to fly back on Monday for a wedding.

UPDATE 8:17 AM:
Here's the report from the Seattle Police Department. We'll talk with them to see if we can get any more information and updates later this morning.

On 7/8/09, at approximately 2:18 a.m., an officer was driving northbound on 10 Av E., when he was flagged down by the victim. The victim was screaming and pointing at the suspect who was running east on E. Highland Dr. The officer followed the suspect and engaged in a foot pursuit. According to the victim, the suspect confronted her and demanded her property at 10 Av E. and E. Hightland Dr. The suspect pulled a knife and cut the victim’s purse straps. A struggle ensued and the victim fell to the ground at which point the suspect cut her once on the wrist. When the suspect saw the police car, he fled on foot. A K-9 unit attempted a track but did not locate the suspect. All of the victim’s property was located and returned to her. The victim sustained a minor cut to her right wrist and slight bruising to her head. She was treated on scene by Seattle Fire Personnel and transported to an area hospital as a precaution. The suspect is described as a black male, 6′ tall, short hair, wearing a white T-shirt and dark pants.

Two accounts on CHS of a police chase near 10th Ave early this morning.

First, from Dejilg Ko:

My neighbor was awaked by helicopters overhead for 1/2 hour, police cruising down our street (10th Ave E, near Brix) multiple times (no siren), and she's sure she saw a cop with a police dog walk down the street. She was scared and called the police, they would only tell her that they were chasing a robber. Anyone else have any info?

The other from aurorafix:

Hia, So I woke up at 3am this morning(July 8th) to some helicopter/large planes practically dive bombing my apartment for like 20 minutes. It got to the point where I thought they might be trying to land on Broadway or Volunteer park.... I'm on Broadway & Aloha. I looked on the news and couldn't find any escaped convicts/ crazy traffic reports or similar explanations for the wierdness.

Does anyone know what the deal was? Or did they hear it too?

CHS received this warning tonight in an e-mail forwarded to us from the Madrona Moms mailing list:

just want to give a heads up, one of my friends was mugged at Pine between 23 and 24th just two nights ago. copys say it's been a string of muggings in the area. a group of teenage boys and one girl hide in the bushes and then knock down the victim.

We'll see what we can find out about the report of a 'string of muggings'  -- did find this incident at the end of September in which a pizza delivery employee was robbed near the location of this report.

It's hard to tell who is taking the most political advantage of the controversy that has bubbled out of City Attorney Tom Carr's relationship with Pike/Pine club owners.

But if the East Precinct wants to tackle a problem with Capitol Hill assaults, its officers had better look beyond the convenient target of Pike/Pine.

We look at the East Precinct trends every month when the latest batch of crime data is released by SPD. The last drop gave us totals for 2009 through July. By the way, last month, the July totals were available midway through the month. SPD's hasn't yet added August totals as we reach the final week of this month.

We told you then that Hill crime totals were climbing. The takeaway? A surge in theft was helping to drive Capitol Hill's 2009 numbers to uncomfortably high levels. While citywide numbers -- especially violent crime -- looked bad, Pike/Pine's data for July were especially bad.

These fever lines below show the trends for the four East Precinct beats that cover Capitol Hill. You can see problem sector C2's ugly theft-driven uptick.

Here's what the trends look like if we look only at theft totals. You can see C2's Pike/Pine one-month spike but also E2's Seattle University area's extraordinarily high, sustained theft totals.

Hopefully somebody is planning a crackdown on Seattle U. area thievery. While they're at it, they might get distracted by Pike/Pine also having a one-month spike in July assaults.

They had better also take a look at solving northern Capitol Hill's C1 assault problem. Can't really see it looking at the fever lines but C1's assaults, in total, through the first seven months of 2009 should be of bigger concern than the short-term trends in Pike/Pine.

Here are two tables with year-to-date totals for the two categories compared to the same period in 2008:

North Capitol Hill has an assault problem -- 45 assaults through July in 2009, 33 in the same period in 2008. That's a 36.4% increase. Even with a relatively small sample, that's a jump that warrants concern. Meanwhile, you can see that theft has surged across the precinct's Capitol Hill beats so far in 2009. The area that's seen the smallest jump in theft on the Hill? Pike/Pine. Go figure.

UPDATE 2:12 PM:
The woman attacked in an alley near 17th and Howell around 3:30 AM had given her assailant a ride to the location, Seattle Police Department spokesperson Sean Whitcomb tells CHS. The 24-year-old woman suffered minor injuries in the assault. Whitcomb said it does not appear the man was armed. Whitcomb said the suspect managed to elude the subsequent helicopter and K-9 unit search. The suspect is described as a black male in his 20s, approximately 5' 8" and wearing a black sweatshirt, blue jeans and a black beanie at the time of the assault.

UPDATE 1:25 PM:
CHS just talked with area resident Nathan Williams who e-mailed us this explanation for the helicopter search. We'll follow up with SPD to see what else we can learn. Here's Nathan's mail:

I was awakened this morning at 3:30am or so by a woman screaming "help" (alley between 17th, 18th, denny, and howell). I dressed quickly and found her sitting on the ground. She had been beaten pretty badly and said a man had tried to rape and kill her. I asked her if the man was still around, but she said he had driven off. She had already called the police by this point and soon an ambulance came down Denny which I flagged down.

They started treating her and I went back inside. Soon after cops started arriving and searched the area pretty exhaustively (at least 6 cops, a dog) and the helicopter started circling around that time. I'm guessing it was a police helicopter looking for her assailant, though if he actually drove off I can't imagine it would have done much good. They roped off the area around her car with police tape but it was gone (as was the car) by the time I was up again at 8am.

The woman was in rough shape but none of her injuries seemed life-threatening. I hope she's doing alright.

bits of police tape morning after mystery
helicopter circling in middle of night 2009-08-27
Originally uploaded by pmocek

Here's the picture of the alley where SPD was investigating that Phil links to in the comments on this post.

Original Report:
Back on the CHS mystery helicopter beat. A flurry of reports of a late-night copter buzzing the Hill early this A.M. Looking into the why of it. Know anything? chs@capitolhillseattle.com

any idea why there was a helicopter hovering over my bedroom (16th & e olive st) last night at 3:52am? it was terrifying. i thought we might be under attack, but i guess not. i didn't see anything in the incident log, either. eventually, it circled a little until about 4:03am, when it left the area. i never heard any sirens (thank goodness) so i guess they didn't find the person/people for whom they were searching...

 

just curious (and sleepy.)

thanks,

alison

Thanks for the tip, neighbor Alison. Here are a few more Hill reports of the buzz:

• x03: Awake thanks to the Capitol Hill stealth helicopter special 4am edition. Internet proves useless in helping me get back to sleep...
• RobLaGatta: Anyone know what's up with this helicopter hovering like 20 feet above Capitol Hill with no lights on at 4 in the morning? Weak.

We'll check in with SPD and other powers that be to see what we can find out. A man was shot and killed around this time in the Mt. Baker area -- a subsequent search by helicopter could be an explanation.

View Larger Map

UPDATE 9:47 PM:
Actors! From an eyewitness inside the Carroll Kensington Apartments‎:
"the people upstairs were rehearsing for a play w/ fake guns. Got the swat team called on them. Just about every cop in Seattle"

In late May, police officers swarmed Broadway and briefly detained a man dressed in paramilitary gear for a zombie costume contest.

UPDATE 12:45 AM:
A report of the incident from SPD has been posted here
I've reviewed the scanner archive to try to learn more about what happened. A 911 call came in at 8:31 PM reporting that an unknown man had told the caller someone may be getting robbed at gunpoint. Officers arrived and walked with the caller to the brick Carroll Kensington apartment building where he said he believed the robbery occurred.

Officers observed people looking down from an upper floor window of the building and then shutting the blinds.

Around 8:42 PM an officer reported descriptions of two suspects in the building -- a white male and woman in their 20s, both with unknown handguns....

The man arrested by cops for attempting to break into the Century Ballroom was charged Monday with second degree burglary in what court documents describe as a planned effort to steal from the historic Odd Fellows building.

According to the court documents, an employee of the Ballroom says he encountered Benjamin Vaagen after he had broken into the building through the third floor balcony. The employee saw Vaagen exiting a room where the Century Ballroom's safe is located and called 911 before following Vaagen out of the building.

When cops caught up with Vaagen on the basketball courts in Cal Anderson Park, they say they found four keys on the suspect -- one of them a master with access to all parts of the building. The building's owner, developer Craig Swanson, told police he had noticed missing keys on Tuesday, June 23 and had several locks in the building replaced.

From Vaagen's MySpace page

Video from cameras inside Century Ballroom showed Vaagen using the keys to access rooms inside the business.

Century...

Citywide media continues to add to the speakeasy story with the Seattle PI today posting the court documents filed to enable the Seattle Police Department search warrant served at the illegal casino.King County Prosecutors have distributed public records from the search warrant request the Seattle Police Department made before raiding the speakeasy at Pike and 11th that is now at the center of a federal drug case.  We've posted the PDF files here for you to be able to download the public records. We have also OCR-processed the documents to make them searchable.

The documents lay out more of the observations by Seattle Police and the undercover detective who infiltrated Rick Wilson's circle. While these documents connect Wilson's activities to several people and businesses in the city, it's important to note the affidavit tells only the authorities' side of the story.

One of the odder connections surrounds the early driver for SPD investigating late-night speakeasies in the first place:

In the summer of 2007, the...

Attached to this post is a PDF file of the 'probable cause' document federal prosecutors filed in U.S. District Court against five men they say were involved in a gambling, cocaine and methamphetamine distribution operation with an outlet and speakeasy on Capitol Hill at E. Pike and 11th.

Richard W. Wilson, Marshall Reinsch and three Honduran men, Carlos Zavala-Bustillo, Cesar Canterero-Arteaga and Edwan Fletes, face several counts of weapon and drug charges. According to the document, Wilson allegedly operated the speakeasy "The Yard" in the building at 11th and E. Pike.

Download PDF

All men were charged with violations of drug laws -- you can read more about Title 21, Section 841 here -- while Wilson faces additional gun charges related to carrying a firearm while involved with drug crimes.

New member to the blog here but life time Capitol Hill Resident (born and raised on 15th!). We planted a dwarf Japanese black pine in our front yard on Sunday on Thomas st. between 14th & Malden. It was stolen last night  (Tuesday night) between the hours of 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM. Just wondering if anyone has noticed suspicious activity or a new  4 foot tall beautiful pine tree in their neighborhood today?  We realize there is not much we can do and feel we will need to chain our plants to the house from now on but just wanted to post this to see if anyone may have seen anything...  Still love the hill but feel very disappointed and discouraged today.

While some complain that Starbucks is stealing the look and feel of indie businesses on 15th Ave, one woman recently turned the table on the coffee giant by making off with a few hundred dollars of Starbucks drinks and pastries over a two-month period until she was caught and fired two weeks ago from her job at Safeway. From the East Precinct police files comes this tale of employee theft and Frappuccinos at the corner of 15th and E. John:

On 7-21-09 at 1600, while working uniformed police security for Safeway at E. John St, the store afternoon manager introduced me to [redacted] who is internal security for Safeway. [redacted] told me that... Safeway store manager received a complaint that the suspect (Safeway employee barista in the store Starbucks Kiosk) had been taking pastries and blended drinks routinely at the end of her shift from the Starbucks Kiosk inside Safeway at [E John] and not paying. [redacted] told me he reviewed the in store tapes (entered into evidence) and witnessed that the suspect did...