(Image: SPD)
In 2021, there have been around 134 break-ins and burglaries reported across the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct every month. That’s about one burglary per day better than 2020 as pandemic shuttered businesses and fewer people out and about resulted in a hard to fathom 60% year over year spike in break-ins.
But compared to 2015, 2021’s East Precinct burglaries are up about 43% when controlled for population growth. Compared to a decade ago? 84%.
Auto theft, another property crime category that plagues big city existence, also matches the pattern from SPD’s own reporting system — with reports down in 2021 compared to 2020, up from 2015 and 2010.
It’s against this seesaw pattern that the city’s voters find themselves pondering some of the key questions from months of Black Lives Matter protests and efforts to transition traditional public safety spending from police departments to new community, addiction, and mental health-based approaches in the form of its November General Election ballot. “What if Seattle had an abolitionist City Attorney?,” indeed.
If crime statistics have anything to do with it, across the East Precinct the messages are mixed. Crime on Capitol Hill is down in 2021. And also up.
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There will probably never be a moment when we get to say, “It’s over. We made it!” But a Saturday Hilloween weekend night with people crowding Broadway and Pike/Pine and filling Capitol Hill vaccination-required bars and restaurants felt like one of the moments along the way.
