Greenwood neighborhood meeting
Last night I went to my first-ever neighborhood meeting—I live in Greenwood. This meeting was held by the Greenwood Aurora Involved Neighbors to address crime in the neighborhood, which, according to GAIN, has been steadily rising for the past couple years. The meeting was packed—there weren’t enough chairs for everybody. City council members, police, a county prosecutor, and some guy who represents the mayor (I should probably know his name by now) were there to listen and provide feedback to the neighbors’ complaints. And, my god, the stories I heard!
A woman who lives one block away from my house spoke of finding used condoms at her doorstep—she said her door is shielded from the street, so it seems prostitutes have been taking their customers there. I heard stories of used syringes in flower beds (I won't be walking to my mailbox barefoot anymore); more used condoms; crack pipes on the ground; stolen mail; brutal beatings; intimidation; stolen cars; broken-down doors; burglarized homes; drug-dealers telling residents, "if you don't like it, move”; crack houses; old ladies being mugged in front of Fred Meyer; broken windows; robberies; mean and unhelpful 911 operators; a 12-year-old girl being asked by a man if she wanted to make a quick $20. Ugh. This is just in a 20-block section of this city. I heard stories about how Greenwood was supposed to be up-and-coming a few years ago, so people moved in and invested in the neighborhood, and now it's slowly being taken over by criminals—and its residents are pissed.
Personally, I haven't seen a whole lot to cause extreme alarm, but I've only been there for a few months. The neighborhood, especially the strip of Greenwood Avenue we live by, is just shady enough to make me a little uncomfortable—I don't want to go walk around it at night by myself. I've seen plenty of what looks like drug deals, a lot of suspicious "waiting around.” The most exciting thing I've seen is a police car screech into reverse and back up past my house really fast. The cop jumped out of his car and was joined by cops from two other police cars, and they grabbed a man running from the park and threw him to the ground.
I moved to Greenwood in July from San Francisco—excited about living in a house, as opposed to another tiny apartment. My boyfriend and I didn't know until after we moved in, however, that Aurora Avenue—two blocks from our house—is the major drug and prostitution corridor in Seattle. We noticed that Greenwood seemed a little shady and rundown—and then we saw the signs posted at every intersection on Aurora warning that drug and prostitution are not to be tolerated there (in theory). We wondered what the hell we had gotten ourselves into.
I was pleased that almost everyone who spoke at the meeting didn't have that NIMBY attitude—they wanted the offenders off the street and getting help so they wouldn't just come back and commit more crimes in our neighborhood or anybody else's. The police and council members seemed to agree. It boiled down to this: the SPD North Precinct doesn't have enough police. And the city doesn't have the money to give it more (though 25 new police officers are slowly going to be added to the SPD within the next year). So, Greenwood residents are supposed to get together and do some of the policing ourselves—which apparently worked in Fremont (some Greenwood residents said that effort just pushed the criminals up into our neighborhood).
After coming from a city that has seemingly impenetrable homes with locked gates in front of locked front doors and bars over windows, I suddenly feel very vulnerable in my 100-year-old house.