- Armed robbery behind SCCC: Police were called to the scene of a gunpoint robbery early Friday morning on Capitol Hill in which two suspects armed with a revolver made off with the victims’ phones, cash and a backpack. The hold-up joins a recent spate of street robberies around the Hill including this gunpoint robbery at E Pike and 16th Ave and this stabbing in Pike/Pine.
Armed Robbery on Harvard Avenue, Suspects At Large
Police responded to a report of an armed street robbery early this morning in the 1600 Block of Harvard Avenue.According to the two vicitms, they were walking northbound on Harvard Avenue around 3:00 AM this morning when they were approached by three unknown black males. One of the suspects pulled out a revolver and pointed it at the victims. The suspects took two i-phones, cash and a backpack from the two victims. The suspects then fled on foot through the Seattle Central Community College campus. The victims walked to QFC and called 911.
Police responded and conducted an area check, however, the suspects were not located. The three suspects are all described as black male, early twenties, 5’6″-5’8″, thin build, corn rows. Clothing descriptions were not provided. Anyone with information on this crime is asked to contact police.
- Attempted purse snatch: Earlier Friday morning, an extremely distraught victim called 911 to report an attempted robbery from a parking lot near R Place. Police talked with the intoxicated female victim and learned that a black male and black female described only as “very thin” had tried to steal her purse before leaving the area eastbound on E Pike. An immediate search for the suspects was not successful. Police drove the distraught victim home.
I’ve lived on the Hill for over 10 years now and am planning to move some place safer in the city. There are many elements of Capitol Hill I love, but there’s just too much crap and riff-raff infiltrating the neighborhood. Capitol Hill has never been the perfectly safe, but it really seems to have gotten worse (or maybe the reporting’s just better) lately. It’s about time that this 40-something moved on to a mellower area in the city. Montlake or Queen Anne beckon….
Keep in mind that most of these crimes happen at 3 am, to people who have been at bars and clubs until closing time. 99% of the people who live here aren’t predators, and the dense population serves to make Capitol Hill safer, in general. I’m also in my 40s but am not in a hurry to move to the quietude of Montlake. And CH’s rapidly increasing rents seem more hazardous to me than late-night muggers!
Sorry but the maps of where crimes are being committed are all online and they indicate the opposite. The less dense neighborhoods are safer. I think most people who live on the Hill are well aware they are making a slight trade off on safety for convenience and centrality. Anyone who doesn’t realize that I would say has their head in the sand.
CHS reported on this earlier this year — certain crimes are indeed up dramatically in certain areas. Of course, you can always aggregate the data in such a way that the trend disappears….
I had a ghetto thug try to snatch my phone out of my hand at 6pm in the middle of a crowded street. These crimes don’t just occur in the middle of the night to drunk people.
I don’t blame you at all Courtney, for feeling this way. Other places are much safer…and Montlake is actually a really nice neighborhood. But it’s sad to hear that some people want to move off Capitol Hill for this reason, as there are many good things about our neighborhood.
Why don’t these people have Find My iPhone and passcode locks on their phones? Makes it far easier to deal with things like this.
Your suggestions might assist in recovering your phone after it has been stolen but they won’t keep you from getting roughed up and possibly thrown to the pavement if you are using your phone while walking down the street.
I’m still confused as to whether the new message about Capitol Hill is “It is increasingly dangerous” or it is “increasingly popular”.
Is the new development and increasing cost to live here directly related to it’s crime rate or should we be looking at these separately?
Is the crime rate increasing or do we just have much better and more extensive reporting of it? If we didn’t read about it and didn’t see it, would we feel safer?
Also, how much does the proliferation of iPhones have to do with any increase in muggings?
I think iPhones, and other digital devices people have constantly inserted into their ears, are a major cause of increased muggings. There must be a black market in these things, so the perps just sell them to a fence to get cash.
Yet more crime by urban thugs. I’m sick of hearing about it!!
That area behind SCCC, on Harvard, seems like a particularly dangerous place…there was a murder there not long ago, and as I remember several other incidents. Avoid it, especially late at night.
Some random thoughts on this post and the comments. Yes, some of the attacks are late at night on drunk people (isolated prey in a vulnerable state) but there have also been attacks during the daylight like up near the Miller Community Center, Cal Anderson, etc. I think many of the thugs do not live here, and are partly coming because more rich people are moving into the area–rich people have nicer things to steal than people who have less money and since this is a walkable area the rich people are not always in their cars. It is making it more unpleasant, but there are things you can do. Be aware of your surroundings. Do not walk with headphones on. Don’t flash expensive gadgetry around, and if possible do not walk late at night or alone on back streets.
So much for this being a walkable neighborhood, at least after dark.
When I was a young rat on the hill there were always beat cops walking broadway, with the bike cop craze of the 90’s this essential function of the pd has seemed to vanished. Where is Spd in all of this? Why are there no beat cops walking broadway, cal Anderson, Harvard, pike and pine? I can’t walk a block in NYC int he popular areas without running into a cop, Seattle? They’re nowhere to be seen.
One of the candidates for mayor did a talk I was at, she said the per capita police force in Seattle is the lowest of any major us city. We are seeing these effects: The Belltown open drug market. Harvard after dark, cal Anderson, beat downs at lunch in westlake, holdups by the catfish. Toss in a weak mayor, weak police chief, and the DOJ hanging out with the SPD and we have ourselves a serious public safety issue on our hands.
Well said. Agreed.
Pioneer Square was once the popular and fashionable place to live. Look at it now. Belltown then became the next up and coming place to be. Look at that now. I wonder how long Capitol Hill has until it becomes so crime-ridden that people move on to yet another and safer destination?
“An immediate search for the suspects was not successful.”
Is it ever? Given the frequency of these armed robberies and their concentration in south Capitol Hill, you’d think more of these clowns would get caught, if only by accident.
they said black 3 times… totally racist.
but seriously though the hill is/has been constantly changing, i remember like a decade ago there was that group that used to patrol the hill with those funny little hats on. i used to laugh but maybe having some volunteer presence of “street angels” would be just the thing thats needed especially throughout the warmer summer months.
to the petty-crime thugs i say… enough… BACK to Renton/Kent with you! i liked it better when they were too deathly afraid of gay neighborhoods to ever venture up to broadway often, and i say that as a peace loving straight black male.
I mean really, seriously, giving descriptions is a racist event? I have certainly seen, read, and heard it ALL now.
Really? I read that first sentence as being a sarcastic reference to the number of times an innocuous comment or open description is met with cries of “OMGRACISM”.
I could be wrong, though.
[…] in an early morning Tuesday, July 9th hold-up near 11th and John. The robbery joins a spate of gun-point robberies in the area in recent […]
[…] in an early morning Tuesday, July 9th hold-up near 11th and John. The robbery joins a spate of gun-point robberies in the area in recent […]