Aftermath of a recent break-in at the Hillcrest Market
With reporting by Hannah Saunders
Despite a rise in concern over property crime in the city to end the year, Seattle Police statistics show that either people aren’t reporting the crimes, or a return to more normal patterns and increased emphasis on organized retail theft have put a dent in surging shoplifting and burglary totals in the city and across Capitol Hill and the Central District.
Still, around 100 break-ins are reported every month in the East Precinct, most targeting commercial buildings. And the individual anecdotes are frustrating. A week before Thanksgiving, the manager of Capitol Hill’s Hillcrest Market posted pictures to the CHS Facebook Group showing the aftermath of a break-in that targeted the Summit Ave grocery for thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes. It was the third time in a month the shop had either been ripped off or broken into.
The burglary is now part of a wave of concern for Seattle small businesses as 2022 ends with increased attention on break-ins thanks to a flurry of reporting around particularly sensational burglaries in which the perpetrators smashed a stolen van into the storefronts of two Central District businesses including King’s Deli at Cherry and MLK.
Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, a resident of the area, escalated the concern over the burglaries. “Plywood and GoFundMes are not a crime-fighting strategy,” Westneat writes. “During the pandemic they were necessary; they were do-it-yourselfer acts of resilience. Now they are pervasive signs of something else: a city that can’t get its act together.”
But while the City of Seattle has, indeed, launched a repair fund to help small businesses with busted glass, there are signs that fewer shops, cafes, restaurants, and bars will need it. According to SPD stats, reported burglaries have dropped in 2022 from the pandemic highs both across Seattle and Capitol Hill in the Central District. In October, the most recent full month of report data available, they were down a whopping 52% in the East Precinct. For the full year, East Precinct burglary reports have dropped 22%.
Seattle Burglary Report Trend
East Precinct Burglary Report Trend
Shoplifting has also decreased — though it remains above 2020 levels, a year in which totals were suppressed by pandemic restrictions and closures. Compared to 2021, reports of shoplifting are down in both the East Precinct and across the city. An emphasis on organized retail theft has also apparently helped.
Seattle Shoplifting Report Trend
East Precinct Shoplifting Report Trend
Earlier this year, CHS reported on the ongoing spike in break-ins that surged during the pandemic when many businesses were shuttered and fewer people were on the street. Statistics also showed a major change in how the city was being policed. For 2021, the department reported a 27% drop in officer-generated responses like, for example, when an officer driving by discovers a smashed window at a business.
This month, Capt. Eric Sano, SPD commander of the East Precinct, told a group of business representatives in a community crime meeting that he continues to hope for more officers in closer contact with the neighborhood.
“I would love to have bicycle officers out there again, who can ride by and say hello to the business owners, hello to the residents,” Sano said at the GSBA-hosted forum. “Those are the things that I want to get back to, is the whole idea of community oriented policing.”
Sano also encouraged attendees to continue reporting even smaller crimes like vandalism so the department can better understand data and trends.
Councilmember Sara Nelson, chair of the city council’s economic development committee and a member of the public safety committee, also attended the forum and said she was pleased pleased to see a new police officer incentive program partially protected in the ongoing 2023 budget debate as SPD will be allowed to use part of the $1.4 million of unspent funds in its existing budget for the recruitment and retention of officers.
The attention on burglaries, break-ins, and ripoffs at Seattle’s small businesses, meanwhile, comes as the Seattle City Council is set this week to finalize the city’s 2023 budget complete with preservation of some social and equity spending as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office has pushed to roll back reforms and fund SPD at past levels.
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The form is time consuming and clunky and the police department does not have the resources to answer the non-emergency line or respond in a meaningful way, so I would suspect the data reflect under-reporting and hopelessness rather than a drop in crime.
Did CM Sawant attend this Capitol Hill/ GSBA community meeting? Wouldn’t this have been a terrific opportunity for her to share the trauma of dealing with the high crime of people leaving bagged poop on her lawn?
People tell the cops as a matter of procedure, not because they expect any results. For years and years as police budgets have grown, shrunk, policies changed… one thing remains the same: cops don’t prevent crime and they don’t remedy the effects. They document it.
I wish I had some kind of good recommendation to fix this but there are too many overlapping messed up systems in justice, policy, and policing. It’s not just Seattle either. And it’s gonna get worse before it gets better – think the 12th & Jackson debacle but with someone rich instead of a couple small businesses. Suddenly those stats are gonna look a lot different!
Activists keep saying police do not prevent crime but it’s just not true. Even NPR can tell you that. (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when-you-add-more-police-to-a-city-what-happens)
From the article
While they find serious crimes fall after the average city expands its police force, the economists find that arrests for serious crimes also fall. The simultaneous reduction of both serious crime and arrests for serious crime suggests it’s not arrests that are driving the reduction. Instead, it suggests merely having more police officers around drives it. These findings are consistent with other research that finds concentrating police in “hotspot” crime areas appears to be an effective way to reduce crime.
The number one deterrent to crime is the fear of getting caught so if there is an expanded presence of public safety officials, crime is going to go down. Public safety and improving structural societal issues don’t have to be mutually exclusive items. We need to stop making the perfect the enemy of the good.
My building’s management refuses to submit a police report for thefts or break-ins because it looks like we aren’t a secure or well run building. Management also won’t inform residents when theft or a break-in occurs. Their stance is that the resident should be responsible in reporting a theft or break-in. ..It makes it hard to know if your delivered package was looted from the lobby break-in or it if was just mis-delivered.
We suffered yet another commercial break in last week, with small businesses whose offices were burglarized. That is the second time in six months. Previous to 2020 we suffered no break ins. Now they are constant, despite efforts to increase security and harden building entrances. This is happening to businesses and offices all over the city.
The data only shows reports and doesn’t reflect what is happening. Our neighborhood is repeatedly hit and not reported. Some people have expressed that they also don’t report it to their insurance anymore because their rates were getting so high or a threat of cancellation so they just deal with it on their own and building manager’s and businesses are afraid of the same thing. Not to mention it’s getting more dangerous on the streets due to lack of patrols and ticketing. People follow the rules due to the threat of punishment. I believe the best solution is community policing where the police know the people in their areas and the people know them and relationships are built. To do that you have to have a good sized force.
Our Capitol Hill office was robbed a few months ago. Got them on film from many different angles. Reported to police and was impressed by the depth of their disinterest. Not sure there is anyone in Seattle who could have cared less!
“A week before Thanksgiving, the manager of Capitol Hill’s Hillcrest Market posted pictures to the CHS Facebook Group showing the aftermath of a break-in that targeted the Summit Ave grocery for thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes. It was the third time in a month the shop had either been ripped off or broken into.”
This would give credibility to Starbuck’s claim they closed their store in that area because of crime and security concerns, instead of “union busting” as the activists claim.
Also worth mentioning the ongoing and current issues the Goodwill (a block up and over) has with robberies, assaults on employees, and trash fires in the loading zone. As well as noted incidents at the Crystal Laundry (now closed) and City Market.. and the Summit Slope Park. All these areas around the Starbucks have had issues with crime that have been posted on CHS and the FB group. …but for sure it was 100% union busting that caused the closure and not all the other headaches that happen in the area.
Starbucks is closing its unionized stores against the wishes of the people who actually work there and accept the risks involved, while keeping open non-union stores in more dangerous areas. (Yes, Virginia, there are parts of Seattle more dangerous than Capitol Hill.) Without Starbucks showing us the numbers we can’t be sure, but it looks like union busting to me.