The package outside the E Precinct. (Image: @chris84wa via Twitter)
Seattle Police closed several blocks on Capitol Hill Sunday afternoon while investigating a suspicious package outside the department’s 12th and Pine East Precinct.
Police deployed a robot to investigate what appeared to be a black suitcase on 12th Ave just south of E Pine. Police said streets would be closed periodically in the area as the investigation continued.
UPDATE: A SPD officer picked up the package around 1:45 PM. Police began reopening streets to pedestrians and letting residents back inside buildings.
UPDATE 9/19/2016: SPD tells us that the item turned out to not be dangerous but the man believed responsible for leaving it outside the precinct was taken into custody and is currently being held in King County Jail after being booked on investigation of a “threat to bomb.”
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy speaks with SPD Chief Kathleen O’Toole and Mayor Ed Murray. (Image: Kaylee Osowski)
Seattle Police got the call on Sunday — a 21-year-old woman was on the ground and unresponsive at 9th and Pine. According to police reports she was extremely pale, had a faint heartbeat and did not appear to be breathing. Hypodermic needles laid next to her.
The officers gave her nasal naloxone, a heroin overdose antidote. Four minutes later, the woman was speaking in full sentences with medics and transported to Harborview Medical Center.
It was SPD’s 10th overdose save since it began equipping 60 bike cops with naloxone in March. It also came just ahead of the U.S. Surgeon General’s visit to Seattle to discuss the opioid epidemic.
“We have officers who are taking initiative to do something that’s not necessarily in their job description, but which is part of their overall mission, which is to save and protect lives,” said Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy while visiting SPD’s downtown headquarters. He called the program creative and commended the police department.
According to a July report from the UW Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute, King County saw 132 heroin overdose deaths in 2015. Treatment admissions for heroin peaked, surpassing alcohol for the first time. Opioid abuse now kills more Americans than car accidents, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. It’s difficult to pin down just how many happen on Capitol Hill, but experts say the neighborhood is an overdose hotspot. The arrival of downtown homeless outreach workers to Capitol Hill was prompted in part by the rise of drug users living on the street. Continue reading →
Outside City Market they were grilling hamburgers and hotdogs. Neighbors dragged patio furniture into the street at 21st and Roy to enjoy a potluck dinner. In the Capitol Hill Tool Library alley they were making ice cream with an old school ice cream maker — a device you can check-out and use yourself.
Block parties around Capitol Hill brought neighbors together Tuesday night as part of Seattle’s annual Night Out — a celebration of safe streets and neighborhoods supported by the Seattle Police Department.
CHS was there to capture some of the lawn game and BBQ action. Send us photos from your shindig so we can showoff your block.
A team of federal and local law enforcement agencies arrested nine people Wednesday following an investigation into firearms and narcotics dealing around 23rd and E Union.
According to the FBI’s Seattle division, investigators identified a hierarchy of narcotics distributors operating around 23rd and Union, which led them to a house near Beacon Hill Elementary School. At the house, the task force recovered cocaine, around $22,000 in cash, and an assault rifle.
The operation was a combined effort of the FBI Seattle Safe Streets Task Force, ATF Puget Sound Crime Gun Taskforce, and the Seattle Police Department. The FBI says the investigation is ongoing as law enforcement agencies continue to identify individuals involved.
FBI spokesperson Ayn Dietrich-Williams told CHS those arrested were not necessarily detained at 23rd and Union. “It was all pretty fluid,” she said. The FBI provided the following list of those arrested in the operation: Continue reading →
See something others should know about? Email CHS or call/txt (206) 399-5959. You can view recent CHS Crime coverage here.
Brazen cruiser boost: It was so bizarre, the Seattle Police dispatcher had to ask the officer to repeat it. Early Thursday morning a man locked himself inside a SPD patrol car at 11th and Pine and started driving it away, according to SPD radio traffic. The brazen joy ride, which happened just down the street from the East Precinct station, only lasted a few seconds before the officer caught up with the suspect and took him into custody. SPD tells CHS an investigation is ongoing.
Front door robbery: Seattle Police responded Loretta Pl and Summit Ave E early Thursday morning after a resident there reported being robbed at gunpoint at his front door. No shots were fired and no injuries were reported, according to SPD radio traffic. After the robbery, the victim told police he received several anonymous calls telling him the suspect was at a Motel 6 in SeaTac.
Boylston street robbery: A man called 911 early Wednesday morning after he was robbed at knife point near Boylston and E Union, according to SPD reports. The victim told police through a translator that the suspect fled the scene before officers arrived.
At least eight people have been charged with crimes related to the May Day protest last week that Seattle Police say turned into a “riot” on Capitol Hill. Of the 16 total that were arrested, only four were from Seattle.
Three males and one female, ages ranging from 19-24, were arrested for felony assault, though no charges were filed in the arrests as of Wednesday afternoon. Charges are expected to be filed in at least two of the cases, according to the King County Prosecutor’sOffice, while the other two cases have not yet been referred to prosecutors.
Eight other male suspects all pleaded not guilty to charges in municipal court, mostly for obstruction. No arrests were made this year for property destruction, though several vehicles — including a much-photographed KIRO radio news jeep — were damaged and tagging and broken windows were reported up and down Broadway.
Gary Tonks, 24, pleaded not guilty to an illegal weapons possession charge and is being held on $15,000 bail. Brendan McCormack, 28, pleaded not guilty to reckless endangerment and is being held on $30,000 bail.
UPDATE 4:30 PM: “Idiotic.” That’s how council member Bruce Harrelldescribed to two SPD officials the way officers handled the first May Day arrest that appeared to spark a burst of mayhem on Capitol Hill.
The incident on Broadway, which was captured on video from a TV news helicopter overhead, appears to show an officer on a bicycle ramming the back of a protestor in the anti-capitalist march, then taking the suspect to the ground.
Captain Chris Fowler, who was giving a May Day debriefing to Harrell and the Council’s public safety committee Wednesday, said the arresting officer had probable cause that the man assaulted an officer minutes before the arrest. Still, Harrell questioned the decision to arrest the suspect at that moment.
“If we had intel that one person assaulted an officer, and that person was not fleeing, we could have avoided using all these devices,” Harrell said. The suspect in the video, Adrien Roques, 32, pleaded not guilty to assaulting an officer with a traffic cone.
In a year with two of the most horrendous hate crime incidents in the city’s history, Seattle Police officials provided their annual update on bias crime to the City Council Monday morning.
Assistant Chief Nick Metz told the council that directives at SPD have shifted to “err on the side of caution.”
“If somebody says they believe an action is biased related, we’re going to act on that,” Metz said.
The annual number of reported, investigated bias crimes in the city is relatively low compared to other types of assaults or threats.
In the East Precinct covering Capitol Hill, SPD says there have been 10 incidents investigated in the area with the majority of those happening in Pike/Pine.
CHS has mapped nine of the ten 2014 reports below. A tenth occurred in recent weeks in an incident at R Place that has not yet been widely reported. In that incident, Metz said a “young man” threatened patrons at the club, making “some threats” and “made gestures he had gun.” “Our officers immediately responded and made an arrest,” Metz said. UPDATE: More details on the arrest have been added to the end of this post.
