This is Capitol Hill…

And the Central District.

With a debate brewing with the Seattle Police Officers Guild over citywide crime stats showing a drop across Seattle in the first quarter of 2025, the numbers for the East Precinct covering the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill, First Hill, and the Central District tell a slightly different story.

Crime statistics compiled by SPD show property crimes did not dip here in January, February, and March like they did in other parts of Seattle including a 26% drop in the North Precinct, a 25% drop in the South,
30% in the Southwest.

Downtown’s West Precinct was down 7% — right around the East Precinct’s modest dip.

Meanwhile East Precinct violent crime totals including a leap in reported sexual assaults were up in the first three months of 2025.

There are also trends that are not being talked about. Arrests across the city have leapt above the totals recorded in the same period last year — including a 30% jump in East Precinct arrests so far in 2025.

Below, you can see the monthly totals for the Violent Crime and Property Crime report totals for the East Precinct. Inside the totals, the stubborn violent crime trends are driven by increased numbers of reported sexual assaults with 23 reported in the first three months of the year while there have also been steady totals for the much larger categories like the 134 cases of aggravated reported so far this year.

SPD has been responding to criticism over a massive backlog of sexual assault investigations with increased efforts to investigate the crimes and make arrests. Late last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office provided SPD with a $1.5 million grant to “enhance testing” of rape kits to reduce its backlog and pursue cold cases.

East Precinct Property Crime totals in the first quarter of the year, meanwhile, were at or below levels seen in recent years driven especially by a persistent high count of reported theft. Some of the biggest drivers for that category are crimes at the area’s grocery stores where the big chains have responded with increasingly locked down shopping environments. Capitol Hill’s QFCs recently reportedly stepped up efforts to check receipts for shoppers leaving the markets.

The Seattle police union claims the department’s stats are meaningless and says people have stopped reporting crimes. The SPD dispatch data reveals people are calling as much as ever. There were 41,748 “community generated” 911 calls from the East Precinct in 2024 — 60 more than the year before. There have already been more than 11,000 calls in 2025.

Response times for those who call remain an issue. Last year, CHS reported that SPD’s response times for the lowest priority calls hit 1 hour, 43 minutes. But there could be signs of improvement. Early totals show 2025 median response times for the city on pace to drop for the first time since 2020.

The quarterly totals come as Mayor Bruce Harrell, new Chief Shon Barnes and the department are hoping to guide a turnaround in hiring and retention to boost SPD’s ranks with improved morale and higher pay — including a new contract with SPOG. The city said the number of Seattle police officers “fully trained and available for deployment” fell to 930 at the end of July 2024, “among the lowest numbers since at least 1991, the first year the number of ‘inservice’ officers was reported.”

In the East Precinct, SPD has focused on drug issues and street disorder centered around Pike and Broadway and the area around Cal Anderson and Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess’s renewed efforts sparked by neighborhood outcry over an October murder on 11th Ave. Burgess said his office was working on a plan to add the area around Cal Anderson and Pike/Pine identified by SPD as a trouble zone for drug crimes and street disorder to an anti-crime camera system pilot being rolled out in the area around Aurora Ave N, the International District including Little Saigon, and the 3rd Ave corridor downtown. The pilot is creating a new Seattle Police Department surveillance system combining Closed-Circuit Television Camera systems above the city’s streets with “real-time crime center” software.

Other City Hall initiatives including one of its biggest haven’t made much of an impact. CHS reported here on the so far rarely used Capitol Hill Stay Out of Drug Area and the sole recipient of a banishment order for the zone. In the time since our report, the city says there has been a second.

The GSBA is also pushing forward. Its second Thursday meetings continue and it is bringing on a new Capitol Hill Neighborhood Safety Coordinator boosted by $70,000 a year support from the city.  The chamber of commerce organization is also making a push with early discussions around forming a new Pike/Pine Business Improvement Area that would use assessments on area properties to fund neighborhood anti-graffiti programs and clean-up programs along the streets.

Public safety officials are also wary of increased gun violence as the summer months approach.

The 2024/2025 school year at Garfield High School began with new efforts around gun concerns at the 23rd Ave campus and across the city as Seattle officials led by Mayor Bruce Harrell announced a $14.5 million plan focused on intervention, mental health, and increased use of “school-based safety specialist” private security guards following the deadly lunchtime shooting of teen Amarr Murphy-Paine last June in the Garfield campus parking lot.

Gun incidents have continued in the area but so far this spring has been limited to investigations like this March lockdown involving detectives collecting shell casings — not documenting victims.

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