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Monday, June 6, 2011

Crime / City 25 Officers Reassigned to Foot and Bike Patrol This Summer to Promote Nightlife Safety

Posted by Cienna Madrid on Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 5:07 PM

Chief Diaz rocking some sweet shades.

Riding on the success of last year's nightlife summer nightlife patrol—which added 20 Seattle police officers to crowd-heavy areas of downtown until on weekend nights—today Mayor Mike McGinn and Police Chief John Diaz announced that the summer safety plan would be expanded upon and relaunched, starting this weekend.

"It's about increasing police officer visibility and making people feel safe," said McGinn. "And it's cost effective—we're putting more officers on the street without costing the city money."

What McGinn means is, the plan won't take cherry-pick patrol officers from their scheduled neighborhood beats (or bring more officers in to work overtime). Instead, SPD will redeploy up to 25 officers from the department's anti-crime, traffic, and SWAT units to foot and bike patrols in crowded parts of Seattle. The officers will be out on the streets until 4:00 a.m.

Diaz said the nightlife safety plan not only reduced instances of crime last year, it helped quell the public's fear of crime. "Last year we saw a reduction in shootings," Diaz said. "A few times, officers were at a scene and were able to stop people with guns in hand."

SPD
Nightlife Safety Zones—click to enlarge

Whereas last summer's plan primarily focused on club-centric areas in Belltown, downtown, and Pioneer Square, this year officers will be deployed to 11 active nightlife areas that were highlighted by community councils (and see a high frequency of police response calls). However, SPD Assistant Chief Mike Sanford was quick to stress that officers will be deployed outside of these areas on an as-needed basis. "It's about where the people are—that's where we'll go," he said.

The safety plan will be in effect through September.

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Comments (16) RSS

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Great, more fascists in the streets oppressing communities of color!

Posted by Free Mumia! on June 6, 2011 at 5:18 PM

Until when on weekend nights?

Posted by emor on June 6, 2011 at 5:19 PM

Interesting map. Apparently, there is no Night Life to speak of in Ballard or Fremont.

More seriously, when did the residents of Belltown get to vote on being a "Designated Night Life Zone"?.

Doesn't rezoning require public input?

Posted by Zander on June 6, 2011 at 5:27 PM

What @3 said.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on June 6, 2011 at 5:35 PM

AKA....lets make a few more bucks by arresting people for being drunk in public when they do the responsible thing and walk home.

Posted by svensken on June 6, 2011 at 5:46 PM

"SPD will redeploy up to 25 officers from the department's anti-crime, traffic, and SWAT units to foot and bike patrols in crowded parts of Seattle."

Anyone else see the mixing of SWAT and Traffic Cops to combat downtown crime, a bad idea?

Also, dont traffic cops get paid less that a street cop or SWAT, simply because their daily job is less hazardous? Vast majority of them work during the day time (city parking is free after 8pm)? A move from day to swing and partial graveyard shift will yield a small bump in pay. If theyre working in hazardous area (drugs, thugs, drunks, etc) they will probably get paid more money to handle the crazies. I dont think the mayor is being 100% truthful in that this wont cost the tax payer extra.

Or is this one of those "It wont cost us a dime extra, because we already hired a dozen new traffic cops last month to handle the new parking rates as well as car boot enforcement changes".

Posted by Kinison

on June 6, 2011 at 5:58 PM

man, you're so cynical, Kinison.

You make me look un-cynical. And that's hard to do.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on June 6, 2011 at 6:12 PM

@8
FYI: Traffic cops ≠ meter maids (And parking is free after 6pm in Seattle too, btw)

Point is to take them from sitting in their cars, eating donuts & waiting for you to run a red light, and get them walking the streets & interacting with folks instead.

You know... like human beings do.

Posted by Timrrr on June 6, 2011 at 6:20 PM

Oh... and the meter maids work until 11:30pm in high traffic nightlife zones too, btw.

(Just park in a LOAD/UNLOAD zone on Capital Hill at 9pm on a Friday night if you need a practical, $57 lesson on that one!)

Posted by Timrrr on June 6, 2011 at 6:24 PM

All humans move to the Designated Nightlife Zones between 8:14 pm and 1:24 am.

Please do not loiter...stay within the Zone parameter.

Violators will be exterminated.

Exterminated.

That is all.

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on June 6, 2011 at 9:11 PM

Given the relative lack of military extraction operations required in the city, why don't we reassign all of the SWAT members year-round?

Posted by madcap on June 6, 2011 at 9:53 PM

Cops walking around and on bikes is a good idea in an urban environment. I'm all for it, especially if we get to take the SWAT team away from their tank and machine gun polishing and make them get out on the street and see what the rest of the people in this town actually look like up close.
Can we just ask that they harass some of the daytime drunks too?

Posted by SPG on June 6, 2011 at 10:19 PM

@11, Seriously. Take all those guys and put them to work tracking down burglars and car prowlers. If the cops really need to go bust into somebody's house, they can use the handguns and bullet proof vests they all have on every day. Stop being such pussies hiding behind machine guns when some dude doesn't answer the door because his TV is too loud.

Posted by SPG on June 6, 2011 at 10:23 PM

Wonderful. Cops will be taken off checking out real crime and assigned to making sure young drunks don't fight with each other more than they already do.

Posted by sarah68 on June 6, 2011 at 11:29 PM

Highschool dropout get "hired" to write for you guys?

Posted by Da on June 7, 2011 at 8:34 AM