We’re #2!
Residents and businesses around Broadway and Pike/Pine have produced the second highest number of 911 calls so far in 2018 but a huge bulk of the calls on Capitol Hill and across the city involve traffic issues and disturbances involving noise or fighting, according to a newly available dataset from the Seattle Police Department.
SPD’s new online dashboard tracking the number of 911 calls it receives comes after years of complaints that the department’s focus on completed crime reports obscured the true levels of crime and safety issues in Seattle neighborhoods:
The Seattle Police Department has launched a new data portal, allowing Seattle residents to view monthly updates on officer response times, proactive patrols, public nuisance complaints, and data on 911 calls from around the city.
The Calls for Service Dashboard differs from the department’s Crime Dashboard in that it displays calls for service—reports to 911—rather than confirmed incidents documented in a report.
By providing data on the hundreds of thousands of calls SPD receives every year, as well as police response times, and neighborhood concerns, the public will have a clearer picture of how the department allocates resources, and how members of your community are utilizing the 911 system.
We’ve created a new CHS 911 Dashboard where you can review the reporting along with the CHS Crime Dashboard showing SPD’s responses.
Included in the new reporting are citywide stats measuring SPD’s response time to the highest priority calls — Priority 1, very fast — and the lesser priorities — everything else, not so fast:
We looked at East Precinct response time stats here in 2016.
The newly available 911 call reporting is illuminating and involves thousands of calls — some 49,387 through August so far this year in the East Precinct alone, or, 204 per day.
Foremost, a huge volume of calls are made every day to 911 reporting issues around streets and traffic, property checks, as well as noise. This grid shows the most common call types so far in 2018 across the East Precinct covering the areas east of I-5 including Capitol Hill, First Hill, the Central District, and Madison Park. As you can see, traffic and property checks make up huge chunks of the call volume:
2018 East Precinct Call Categories
Filtering out the most common call types presents a more useful look at specific East Precinct neighborhood issues. Around central Capitol Hill (Broadway, Pike/Pine, etc.), most calls are about possible prowlers, general help for issues on the street or in public spaces like parks like somebody passed out on the corner (“assist the public”), or lower level thefts including car prowls, bike theft, auto theft, and shoplifting.
The dashboard also tracks annual and monthly 911 call trends. August, the latest month in the dataset, recorded a call volume in East Precinct 6% higher than 2017. Overall, calls are also up 6% so far this year compared to the same period last year.
The dashboard also shows what days of the week and hours of the day — and night — generate the most calls. Here’s the East Precinct total view for 2018. Early Saturday and Sunday mornings are busy times at the 911 call center above 12th and Pine:
Filtering out the most common call types shows that the less mundane and mostly more serious calls are more focused during daylight hours… and Fridays.
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Amusing that traffic calls seem to be highest count received, and yet SPD seems to do absolutely zero traffic enforcement.
Do they track how many calls that they DON’T respond to? We don’t even bother calling them anymore! They don’t show up!
Whats the deal on the 911 “Sex” emergencies?
Some is sex related awfulness like exposure. A lot (most?) is category that covers “lewd” acts like peeing in public :(