(Image: CHS)

Last year, the focus was a plan for surveillance cameras in Pike/Pine, a new East Precinct headquarters for CARE Department crisis responders, and a new Capitol Hill community safety coordinator. Those all came to pass.

Monday night, the focus for the next big steps in neighborhood safety was centered on growth of the CARE Department to take on more work responding to crisis calls across Capitol Hill, the East Precinct, and Seattle.

Meanwhile, a Seattle Police Department leadership change at the East Precinct and new strategies to address safety for nightlife crowds on Capitol Hill are also making a difference, officials said.

Calling it “inexcusable” for a city not to grow her department faster, CARE Chief Amy Barden told the crowd at Monday night’s Capitol Hill Community Safety Social sponsored by the GSBA chamber of commerce her department of dispatchers and crisis first responders will grow in numbers in 2026 — and responsibility.

‘SOLO DISPATCH’
Under the new contract with the police union, Seattle can begin “solo dispatch” of the new crisis responders, meaning Barden’s teams can be sent to appropriate 911 calls without a Seattle Police Department officer to accompany them.

Barden said callers will also be able to request the crisis responders — “I need a welfare check” — as the city’s emergency dispatch team she also manages can determine which department to send.

The new SPD contract also has lifted the cap on CARE hiring and opened the door for Barden to grow her team to its budgeted capacity, growing to 96 responders in the department’s first 18 months, Barden said.

(Image: CIty of Seattle)

With the new support for CARE and new resources like Pioneer Square’s STAR Center shelter and ORCA Center overdose recovery and walk-in opioid treatment facility and the planned 2027 opening of the Crisis Care Center at Broadway and Union, the CARE chief told the crowd at the event held at Capitol Hill’s Stoup Brewing that the city’s leadership heading into 2026 — even with changes at the top at both the county and at Seattle City Hall with Mayor Bruce Harrell’s defeat by challenger Katie Wilson — is lined up to produce real change in Seattle.

“I’m very hopeful that we have leadership that we are going to change this stuff,” Barden said.

BROADWAY CRISIS CARE CENTER
Monday’s session from the GSBA was moderated by Colleen Echohawk, the newly named CEO of affordable developer Community Roots Housing. Community Roots is developing the new eight-story apartment building under construction at Broadway and Pine as part of the Constellation Center affordable housing, youth education, skills training, and employment academy project in partnership with YouthCare.

In addition to representatives from the mayor’s office and SPD, Lisa Daugaard, the legal defense and civil rights expert from the Purpose. Dignity. Action. organization weighed in on some of the night’s topics and audience questions including calls for a dedicated “24/7 safety team” to handle social and behavioral issues around the facility to be added to the public safety resources being planned around the coming Broadway Crisis Care Center. She said the center’s plan also needs more resources and funding dedicated to “post-release shelter.”

The forum also created ground for leaders like Daugaard and Barden to share common ground. Daugaard at one point made an impassioned pitch for the audience to push for “fixing the civil commitment” system over traditional policing and incarceration. Barden agreed saying there is no way to “to arrest our way out of this.”

The night was also flavored by the November election. Citywide City Councilmember-elect Dionne Foster was in the audience fresh off victory in her campaign battle with current Council President Sara Nelson. Broadway business owner and council candidate Rachael Savage was also in the crowd fresh off defeat in hers. Barden also revealed she has been part of transition teams including advising King County Executive-elect Girmay Zahilay.

GSBA representatives said they hope to hold the larger, in-person safety forums quarterly in 2026 while continuing the group’s regular monthly conference calls on Capitol Hill public safety issues.

Monday night’s meeting followed the organization’s 2024 session a year ago that was unusually illuminating of initiatives that would come to pass in 2025. Last year’s session included revelations from Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess that have since taken shape in the neighborhood including approval of new Seattle Police Department surveillance cameras in Pike/Pine, a new East Precinct headquarters for CARE Department crisis responders working in the area, and a new Capitol Hill “community safety coordinator” now part of GSBA.

NIGHTLIFE SAFETY AND THE ‘ON LOAN’ BIKE SQUAD
Like in 2024 when the forum followed deadly gun violence in Pike/Pine, Monday night’s session came as two recent deadly shootings within a few weeks and a few blocks of each other in the core of Broadway and Pike/Pine have remained unsolved.

Public safety officials at Monday night’s meeting including Harrell’s public safety chief Natalie Walton-Anderson and SPD Assistant Chief Robert Brown did not address the deadly October and September shootings of 18-year-old Jaydon Jameson or 26-year-old Robert Fleeks but said new SPD Chief Shon Barnes’s department has deployed new strategies to address public safety in the Capitol Hill core.

Brown touted the East Precinct’s success keeping crowds safe as Halloween fell on a Friday this year and said SPD was able to move extra officers usually deployed in the West Precinct every Friday night onto the Hill to help keep crowds under control.

Brown also claimed a “new tactic” of teaming an officer with a parking enforcement officer paid dividends as “a number” of firearms were recovered after being seen in illegally parked cars. Brown touted parking enforcement as gun violence prevention, saying requiring people to park in legal spots made for a longer walk for anybody returning to their vehicle for a handgun.

While making people take longer walks to get a gun may not breed confidence, other changes at the East Precinct have been noted by residents and business owners. Many in the crowd said they had met a new team of four bike officers “on loan” from SPD’s citywide ranks and deployed for now in the East Precinct to provide a stronger presence on the streets.

SPD officials said Monday the team has been in place for five days and had made nine arrests. More importantly, one official said, the new bike cops made “40 contacts” intervening in crisis situations and talking with people about addiction resources.

“These are the things we want to see from a successful bike squad,” one of the SPD brass at Monday’s meeting said.

There was no word for how long the loaned resources would be deployed in the precinct.

MORE COPS, NEW CAMERAS, AND A NEW LEADER
Brown, who manages patrol staffing across the city’s precincts, said Monday that the turnaround in SPD hiring will begin to pay real dividends in the year ahead as there will finally be more officers he can deploy to cover the city’s round-the-clock shifts. Boosted salaries and generous bonuses have been a core to the change though the department’s overtime policies continue to be an issue, Brown admitted, as officers can choose to make more working overtime at a stadium event over working a standard shift.

Walton-Anderson said the mayor’s office is getting ready to announce the city has hired 150 cops this year — “net 90,” she said. The Harrell representative also said she expects initiatives focusing safety emphasis around Cal Anderson Park will continue but said other questions about mayoral safety priorities were “probably best answered by Wilson administration.”

District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth, heading into her third year on the council and a strong Harrell ally, took part in last year’s forum but was not part of this year’s panel. Alex Altshuler from Hollingsworth’s office addressed Monday night’s audience and said the past year has brought “stronger communications with the East Precinct.”

Hollingsworth has released a five-point plan of “immediate actions” needed to address the ongoing safety issues in the area, including initiatives first sparked a year ago when Breanna Simmons was gunned down on 11th Ave.

SPD has also been preparing for a change of leadership in the East Precinct. CHS reported here on Chief Barnes backing off his first selection for a new precinct leader under backlash over the commander’s record of department violations. Monday night, Brown said SPD leadership has been preparing for the chief’s new pick Capt. Jim Britt to take over East Precinct with interim precinct leadership meeting with community members to gather feeback and document priorities.

Jeff Geoghagan who has been serving as acting captain of the East Precinct, said he has been part of efforts laying groundwork for the precinct to “repair trust” before Britt begins his command. Geoghagan said the top priorities his process identified were improving how East Precinct responds to situations “vacillating between criminal and crisis” and making nightlife safer. The precinct, Geoghagan said, has also made retail theft a priority. “There are a number of landmark businesses here,” the acting captain said.

Geoghagan said Britt is also working to determine “what metrics the community would like to see” as East Precinct puts in new measures around accountability like a precinct dashboard.

Brown told the crowd Capt. Britt is the ideal leader for East Precinct at this time, calling the former SPD Captain of Technology and Innovation the driving force behind the department’s growing Real-Time Crime Center. Saying Britt built the RTCC “from the ground up,” Brown said the new commander’s leadership utilizing the coming $400,000 installation of new cameras around Pike/Pine and the Broadway core another gamechanger for East Precinct crime.

No timeline was shared for when the new cameras will be deployed.

Britt, meanwhile, begins his East Precinct command on Wednesday.

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