Tag Archives: stats

Car prowl reports are down (actually) in Seattle — but not on Capitol Hill

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2022 totals projected based on reports through May

One of multiple cars busted into in a prowl spree last week around E Pike (Image: CHS)

Want a Seattle crime problem to solve, city leaders? Crack down on car prowls on Capitol Hill. Seattle Police statistics show that reports of car break-ins have actually dropped about 20% in the city over the past five years — but there has been not letup across the East Precinct covering the Hill and the Central District.

Around Capitol Hill, they are coming in bunches in 2022. Of the around 120 reported every month in the East Precinct, many now involve rounds of mutli-car smash and grabs. A recent spree involved 11 cars parked overnight last week on a block around Temple De Hirsch Sinai.

“They were probably looking for cash; at least in our case there was nothing visible on the car seats,” the CHS reader who alerted us to the spree writes. “The thieves rummaged through the dashboard and all they seem to have taken is some stray coins.”

A previous spree area was hit twice near Miller Community Center with a night of smash and grabs in late June in the same area of another night of busted car glass a few months earlier. Continue reading →

Redfin says 30% want to live ‘somewhere else’ because of protests

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In a new study, Seattle-based real estate service Redfin really gets to the heart of the matter of the summer’s Capitol Hill occupied protest zone — condo prices:

“Seattle’s condo market has really struggled in general during the pandemic, but the units that are closest to the CHOP have typically been selling even more slowly than other condos in Capitol Hill,” said local Redfin real estate agent Forrest Moody.

“I had one listing that was a block away from the CHOP and across the street from a Ferrari dealership that had its windows smashed,” Moody goes on to say. “The condo actually sold within five days, but that’s likely because we listed it for $25,000 less than we had planned to back in February.” Continue reading →

Where, when, and why Capitol Hill calls 911

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We’re #2!

Residents and businesses around Broadway and Pike/Pine have produced the second highest number of 911 calls so far in 2018 but a huge bulk of the calls on Capitol Hill and across the city involve traffic issues and disturbances involving noise or fighting, according to a newly available dataset from the Seattle Police Department.

SPD’s new online dashboard tracking the number of 911 calls it receives comes after years of complaints that the department’s focus on completed crime reports obscured the true levels of crime and safety issues in Seattle neighborhoods: Continue reading →

Why isn’t Capitol Hill more afraid of crime?

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The 33,000 or so residents and countless more visitors on Capitol Hill have experienced a reported violent crime like homicides, rape, robbery, and assault every day on average in 2018.

In Ballard, the rate of violent crime has been about half of busy Capitol Hill’s pace.

But residents of Capitol Hill and its East Precinct neighbors — First Hill, Montlake, the Central District, Madison Park, and the nearby — express less fear than their northern neighbors who this year topped the charts with their anxiety about Seattle crime. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill crime trends dip but more assaults, more burglaries

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The Seattle Police Department has released its reports on 2017 crime showing “a continued overall downward trend in crime in Seattle.” CHS took a look behind the numbers and found a similar overall direction for Capitol Hill and across the neighborhood’s East Precinct where you were much more likely to be punched, even more likely to be burgled, but less likely to be robbed or have your car stolen in 2017.

Overall, crime in the city dropped 1% in 2017 — the much more numerous property crimes fell 2% year over year while crimes vs. people jumped 7% thanks (or no thanks) to a 13% rise in assaults. Seattle was also a deadlier city in 2017 with a jump in homicides from 18 to 27. Continue reading →

SPD ‘micro community’ policing survey shows ‘strong level of trust’

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On Capitol Hill, the main issues are mental illness, car prowls, and graffiti. The biggest crime issue people had to complain about on First Hill is littering and illegal dumping. Meanwhile in the Central District, people are worried about getting shot, car prowls… and, well, getting shot. This from the results of a Seattle University-run survey on behalf of the Seattle Police Department as part of its ongoing “micro community” policing plan.

Limited results from the survey and a new micro community policing site were announced Thursday:

MCPP are the result of grassroots efforts, with direct collaboration from residents, business leaders, stakeholders, and police officers on the beat. Under the MCPP, community residents work in partnership with their local precinct captain and Community Policing Team to identify problems, analyze existing quality of life and crime data, and design individualized plans to reduce and prevent crime.

Continue reading →

Industry analyst says Seattle’s rent spike is real but part of a less alarming longterm trend

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20150612SeattleOverallRentTrendByBRDepending on how you slice it, rental data on Capitol Hill can tell a few different stories. Real estate analyst Mike Scott, one of the most cited sources on rent trends in the region, says a recent spike in Seattle rent is only a small part of a less alarming trend.

Dupre+Scott Apartment Advisors says their dataset shows rents in Seattle went up around 2.3% a year on average since 2000 while owner/investor costs like property taxes and utility expenses rose at higher rates. Rent increases also ebbed and flowed during that time, especially during the Great Recession.

“Rents are impacted by a lot of things, like the economy and how much competition there is from new supply, to name just two,” Scott wrote in his most recent weekly column.

Still, rents are undeniably on the rise. Average rents in Seattle rose 8.3% last year, according to Dupre+Scott data. Scott says that spike can largely be accounted for by the opening of new units with better amenities. But even when new units are taken out of the equation, average rents still rose 7.5% over the past year. Continue reading →

Weekend mugging swarm has August shaping up as Capitol Hill’s most rob-biest month… ever

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On a per capita basis, your odds for getting mugged on Capitol Hill probably peaked in the mid-90s but after a small swarm of street robberies around the Hill this weekend, August 2014 appears to be shaping up as the worst month in recent years for robbery in the East Precinct beats covering Capitol Hill.

Screen Shot 2014-08-25 at 1.20.47 PM

This weekend pushed the month over the top with a roster of reports coming in:

  • 8/22 2:52 AM: Two males reportedly hit victim near Broadway Market QFC. Medics were declined. Victim lived nearby.
  • 8/23 1:32 AM: Victim found on sidewalk near Broadway/Pike, suspect last seen fleeing on the Harvard Market stairs. Suspects described only as “group of black males in their 20s.”
  • 8/23 1:55 AM: Report of fist fight at 11/Union turned out to be street robbery. Suspects ran northbound on 11th Ave described as three black males, all wearing beanies and shorts. Two adult male victims suffered head lacerations in the scuffle.
  • 8/23 3 AM: Suspect reportedly stole something from a female victim’s purse. She fell chasing the thief near 13th/Olive St. Her male counterpart told police he thought suspects fled to Cal Anderson. The perpetrator was described only as a “short, white male.”
  • 8/24 10:21 PM: E Pine near Harvard. Caller reported 10 people attempted a strong arm robbery, trying to take wallet out of victim’s hand and threatened him with knife but didn’t show. The group was described only as black males and female teens. The group was last seen leaving the area on Harvard.

Continue reading →

Broadway bikeway getting 500+ daily weekday rides thanks to commuters and warm(er) weather cyclists

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(Image: CHS)

For the first time since the Broadway bikeway partially opened in October, we’re getting a look at ridership data on Capitol Hill’s signature protected bike lanes. CHS recently obtained Seattle Department of Transportation’s Broadway counter data including hourly bike trip totals from January to May taken from a sensor located between Pike and Union.

Perhaps most interesting is the number of daily rides: In May, there was an average of 409 trips a day on the bikeway, including northbound and southbound rides. By the end of that month, weekday totals were easily approaching 600 rides. Weekday averages have climbed steadily since January, with a slight dip in February likely due to some hectic reroutes during construction of the Capitol Hill Station underground concourse:

Here are the Broadway bikeway weekday averages by month:

  • January: 270
  • February: 231
  • March: 276
  • April: 313
  • May: 464

The single most active day in the first five months of 2014 was May 14th, with 598 trips. Continue reading →

Safety from hate crime gave Seattle edge* over SF in ‘gay friendly’ ranks

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As 2014 Pride gets underway around Capitol Hill, mainstream media has been reporting on a list of the nation’s “Most LGBT-Friendly Cities.”

The data-driven approach based on three key metrics gives Seattle the nod over San Francisco. But not everybody has noticed why the numbers shake out the way they do.

While Seattle and SF are virtually the same city when it comes to the percentage of households with same-sex partners and “LGBT-friendly laws and opportunities,” Seattle’s per capita rate of reported “sexual orientation-related hate crimes” is much, much lower than San Francisco’s.

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Recent anti-gay violence could be a sign of change, however. The Seattle Times adds an asterisk to the rankings, reporting the much-cited study used old data for its list. Using updated numbers from the FBI, the Times says, shows the per 100,000 citizen rate jumped to 3.0 for Seattle in 2012. Unofficially, the Times says the city posted a similar number in 2013. Meanwhile, police haven’t ruled out a possible hate crime motive in last week’s murder of two men in the Central District.