Tag Archives: garfield

‘Supporting safety, not discipline’ — Seattle School Board considers returning campus cop to Garfield High School

Posted on by
8

(Image: Garfield High School)

After a summer of community discussions, the families and students of Garfield High School are hoping to make their voices heard this week as the Seattle School Board considers a proposal to post a uniformed and armed Seattle Police Department officer every school day at the 23rd Ave campus.

Officials are hoping revisions made to the proposed School Engagement Officer pilot program based on community feedback will help make sure the program addresses concerns over school-specific training for the officers and better guidance that ensures the officers are placed “supporting safety, not discipline.”

The board is set to vote on the pilot program after public testimony Wednesday night.

“In the potential pilot program, a School Engagement Officer (SEO) is a Seattle Police Department officer assigned to schools. The role is focused on safety, not discipline,” Principal Tarance Hart wrote in a message to families, saying that the potential Garfield officer would “maintain a visible presence on campus, build positive relationships with students, staff, and families, assist with emergency preparedness and school safety procedures,” and “serve as a liaison with local law enforcement when outside issues affect the school.” Continue reading →

Another issue to listen to the Garfield kids about: ‘one lunch’

Posted on by
40

(Image: @ezells_chicken/@

Students at Garfield High School have more on their minds than the potential restoration of a campus cop program.

They’re thinking about lunch and the daily midday rush of gathering with your besties for 30 minutes of downtime and brain fuel.

Monday, Garfield kids will be part of a district-wide protest of a decision this school year that has ripped some of that friend time apart. It’s about more than running across the street to the infamously busy lunch line at Ezell’s.

“Seattle Public Schools sent an e-mail to families about the new two lunch schedule,” an update from the @onelunchsps social media account about the planned Monday lunchtime protest reads. “It ignores everything students have been saying.” Continue reading →

Seattle City Council considers ‘protected data’ in plan to expand ‘Real Time Crime Center’ cameras to Pike/Pine and the Central District

Posted on by
5

The Seattle City Council’s public safety committee could vote Tuesday morning on legislation expanding the Seattle Police Department’s surveillance camera pilot program to include Capitol Hill and the Central District. The expansion could also bring changes that will allow SPD to use select Seattle Department of Transportation traffic cameras in the program.

CHS reported here on the proposed legislation to expand the SPD “Real Time Crime Center” surveillance camera system to include the Capitol Hill nightlife core around E Pike and Cal Anderson Park and a major swath of the Central District from E Cherry to Jackson it says it necessary to prevent gun violence near Garfield High School. Continue reading →

Here is where Seattle mayor and police want new ‘Real Time Crime Center’ cameras on Capitol Hill and in the Central District

Posted on by
49

The mayor’s office has revealed details of its proposed expansion of the Seattle Police “Real Time Crime Center” surveillance camera system to include the Capitol Hill nightlife core and a major swath of the Central District from E Cherry to Jackson it says it necessary to prevent gun violence near Garfield High School.

Maps and details of the proposed expansions were presented last week to the Seattle City Council’s public safety committee as the mayor’s office hands off legislation to expand the existing Real Time Crime Center camera pilot currently operating along Aurora Ave, 3rd Ave, and in the International District.

“Analysts are supporting ongoing investigations by pushing video and incident data directly to
patrol units and detectives,” a city council analysis of the proposal reads. “Analysts can also provide live updates and still images of suspects, a capability SPD says helps support its ‘precision policing’ model.” Continue reading →

Mayor proposes adding SPD surveillance cameras around Pike/Pine, Garfield High School

Posted on by
15

Harrell last week in Seattle’s Real Time Crime Center (Image: City of Seattle)

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is proposing legislation that would bring Seattle Police Department surveillance cameras to Capitol Hill’s Pike/Pine nightlife district.

CHS first reported on the plan in December as Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess included the proposal during a public safety meeting with the neighborhood’s business community sparked by ongoing challenges around street crime and drug use around the Broadway-Pike/Pine core and Cal Anderson Park.

Last week in a press conference to tout the success of SPD’s Real Time Crime Center, Harrell’s office said the mayor backs an expansion of a pilot program that already has cameras along Aurora Ave, 3rd Ave, and in the International District to include areas around Cal Anderson and Pike/Pine.

The mayor’s office is also backing expansion of the 24×7 surveillance program to include the area around Garfield High School where the city and the district are spending thousands on security upgrades and community services to counter deadly gun violence that has marred the campus.

Garfield is also being considered for a pilot program beginning this fall that would pay for a Seattle Police School Engagement Officer on the campus.

The Harrell administration says it recently proposed legislation to the Seattle City Council that would expand “the geographic areas where City CCTV cameras can be installed, including public streets and sidewalks around Garfield and Nova High Schools, the Capitol Hill Nightlife District, and the SODO Stadium Area,” according to a statement from City Hall.

“The legislation also authorizes the RTCC to view and record SDOT traffic cameras at select intersections and along major arterial roads in the city,” the mayor’s office adds. Continue reading →

Ground is finally broken on the $9.5M Garfield Super Block bringing together a new promenade, art, and history in the Central District

Posted on by
Reply

Robert Stephens Jr., second from left, joined in the ceremonial groundbreaking last week

With a planned $9.5 million in city, state, and National Parks funding, Seattle officials and community leaders celebrated the groundbreaking of the Garfield Super Block, hoped to reimagine the area around Garfield High School and the community center to create a Legacy and Promise Promenade with a .34-mile loop path and new community spaces including a new play area and parkour park, new sports courts, and a central plaza.

“The community has been fighting for this project for over twenty years,” Robert Stephens, Jr. of the Garfield Super Block Coalition said. “The timeline of Seattle’s Central Area was brilliantly memorialized on the walls of Garfield High School. We wanted to bring that story to life in the art of Garfield Super Block. From the annual MLK march to historic organizing by the Black Panthers, Garfield has and always will be a central convening area for celebration and organizing with the young people of our city.”

The coalition has kept the push for the neighborhood investments alive. They first took shape twenty years ago. As part of the public process to approve building the new Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center, Seattle Public Schools had to be approved for a variance in order to build fewer than the required number of off-street parking stalls. As part of that process, the district was required to provide public benefits as a mitigation. Continue reading →

Garfield High marks one-year anniversary of fatal shooting with walkout, debate over cops on campus

Posted on by
8

Flowers left last June after Amarr Murphy-Paine was shot and killed during a lunchtime altercation in the Garfield parking lot (Image: Converge Media with permission to CHS)

Results from a survey of students about campus safety conducted last fall

Many at Garfield High School won’t be wearing purple and white this Friday as they put on orange shirts for National Gun Violence Awareness Day and hold a remembrance of a fallen friend.

Wednesday night, some will call on the Seattle School Board to support a plan to opening the way for Seattle Police officers to again be assigned to the 23rd Ave campus where gun violence has taken a terrible toll.

Friday’s planned student walkout at the largest public high school serving Capitol Hill and the Central District will include a celebration of life for Amarr Murphy-Paine, the 17-year-old shot and killed while trying to break up a fight in the school’s parking lot a year ago to the day of the planned remembrance. The victim’s father Arron Murphy-Paine is scheduled to speak during Friday’s event. The 17-year-old’s family has sued the district alleging officials were negligent in their security practices at Garfield.

There have been no arrests in the June 2024 case.

The anniversary of Murphy-Paine’s killing comes as Seattle’s public school system is considering rolling back a five-year-old reform that removed uniformed police officers assigned to the city’s campuses. Continue reading →

Garfield High School asking families: Do you want a SPD ‘School Engagement Officer’ on campus?

Posted on by
8

SPD increased its presence outside Garfield following last June’s murder (Image: CHS)

Garfield High School is surveying student families as the district makes plans for the Seattle Police Department to assign a “School Engagement Officer” to the 23rd Ave campus.

“Garfield High School is gathering input from families to understand levels of support or opposition to the possible assignment of a School Engagement Officer (SEO) to our campus,” the survey begins. “An SEO is a uniformed law enforcement officer, similar to a School Resource Officer (SRO). SEOs may be assigned to schools to respond to emergencies, support campus safety, and build relationships with students and staff.”

Earlier this month, CHS reported here on $235 million earmarked in the proposed school levy renewal going to voters this fall for Seattle Public Schools safety investments including the possible return of police officers to Seattle campuses. Continue reading →

Amarr Murphy-Paine family sues over deadly Garfield High School shooting

Posted on by
3

The family of Amarr Murphy-Paine, the 17-year-old shot and killed in the Garfield High parking lot in the final weeks of last school year, is suing the school district alleging officials were negligent in their security practices at the 23rd Ave school.

An attorney for the family told KUOW the suit focuses on the district’s “failure to adequately respond, the failure to have adequate security, the failure to protect students in general, and our clients’ son in particular.”

The June 2024 deadly shooting was a “foreseeable outcome” of the school’s “open campus” policies and “inadequate security measures in a neighborhood with a history of gun violence,” the suit reads. Continue reading →

sMALL Box making spaces for PJ’s Classic Creamery, The ShoreHouse, and more amid changes at 23rd and Cherry

Posted on by
15

Michelle and Danielle Forbes of PJ’s Classic Creamery

(Image: sMALLbox)

By Matt Dowell

Hundreds of apartments now rise above 23rd and Union — 23rd and Cherry is the next Central District intersection lined up for massive change.

On the northwest corner, the inclusively developed, five and a half-story Acer House mixed-use affordable housing project is now under construction after breaking ground this spring.

On the southeast, bids have gone out for contractors for the $8.4 million Garfield Super Block project set to reshape the public space around the Garfield Community Center and Garfield High School with a new promenade, new public art, a renovated park, and new play areas for this core of the Central District.

Change and a smaller kind of growth is already underway on the northeast corner of 23rd and Cherry where an experiment in mixed-use development is underway.

Ron Rubin, long time Seattle real estate developer, has started transforming the twelve single car garages at his 705 24th Ave property into sMALL BOX, an “affordable micro-business incubator space” that he hopes will bring life and walkability to the block. In the last month, the first two businesses have opened: PJ’s Classic Creamery (ice cream-filled bon bons) and The ShoreHouse (shaved ice and coffee). No surprise, in an area flush with schools and kids sports games, the snack stands are early hits.

Rubin came up with the idea for sMALL (like “small mall”) after traveling to places like Bangkok and Amsterdam, where retail centers with hundreds of stores create something that Seattle is missing: neighborhood streets that are “buzzing with pedestrian-friendly walk-up micro-storefronts”. But as he and the new businesses move forward with what he’s calling “phase 2” of the project, the idea will be tested. Rubin will need to find more tenants willing to work in the small spaces which are only 180 square feet a piece. Once established, will the businesses attract the foot traffic that Rubin envisions? Continue reading →