From Rainier Beach Community Organizer Yalonda Gill Masundire:
Last month at our May community meeting, we asked “What can be done to address the ongoing home burglaries in our area?”
Neighbors shared their stories, aired their frustrations, voiced their concerns and questioned the current efforts by Seattle Police Department (SPD). We then heard from guest speaker, Lt. James Koutsky from the South Police Precinct on what we could do, and what SPD is doing to combat the issue.
At our next community meeting, come and hear updates from SPD on the heightened efforts since our last meeting, and hear SPD’s plan of action to partner with the community to help curb the violence and to send a “no tolerance for crime” message throughout Southeast Seattle.
Please invite your Block Watch Groups and inform your neighbors of this important meeting this Thur., June 25 at 7pm at Rainier Beach Presbyterian Church (9656 Waters Ave. S.).
Agenda Items:
- Community Updates & Announcements
- Burglary Arrests & SPD Updates
- Planning Efforts for Candidates’ Forum
Who to know, where to eat & what to do in one of America’s most diverse zip codes!
{ 10 comments }
There is a cancer in South Seattle.
That cancer is crime.
……..and it is up to us to solve the problems as a community………the Mayor and the city council is distracted in other activities.
How do common citizens affect the actions of criminals?
1) organize to identify and catch suspects
2) other methods exist, but #1 is the primary way…
Why hasn’t this happened already?
My two cents… we have a lot of people in S. Seattle who don’t aspire to much when it comes to community improvement. They collect their regular handouts from the “system” and when that ends, they take their handouts via force. Instead of heading to Medina or Queen Anne, they save gas and time by simply breaking into their neighbor’s homes. Why change what works?
This is the “belly” of the crime problem, IMO. Summed up –
1) spiritual poverty (equating material poverty with spiritual poverty)
2) the “system” doesn’t ask these people to give back anything; they have zero sense of what it means to take care of a community
3) neighbors that don’t know how to organize and defend their property or themselves (too many easy targets enables the crime)
4) a sense that the “system” will save us from this situation; “the govt is here to help”
For awhile, there was a spree of car break-ins at the Rainier Beach library and I believe at other nearby libraries too. It seemed like windows were being smashed and articles stolen from cars every day. I believe this problem could have been addressed by having a police stake-out in the parking lot. As far as I know (someone please correct me if I am wrong), this was not done. A sign was put up in the parking lot warning patrons that the crime was occurring in the parking lot–not the kind of thing that makes one feel at ease when they walk into the library from their car. You realize your car may be broken into by the time you return! I noticed that one patron who had his window broken out was still driving around with plastic over the broken area months later. And the sign is still in the parking lot, months later. These kinds of crimes can greatly invconenience people, not to mention raise their insurance rates, and some victims are even more inconvenienced because they even have less resources for fixing their windows.
So my point is, the next time a rash of window breakings occur, why not just stake out the parking lot on the second or third day of breakins since we all know what the pattern is–the crimminals will be back for more easy pickings?
Does anyone else have input on this problem?
The Enforcement Droid 209 (ED-209) from Omni Consumer Products is the cutting edge of law enforcement.
Why stake out the library when they are not going to arrest/book the suspect anyway?
Given the SPD undercover activity in Columbia City, this seems like a no brainer!
“Why stake out the library when they are not going to book the suspect anyway?” Get it?!
Maybe phone book the suspect
Book him, catalog him, and file him away. Broken windows should be relegated to library PC operating systems, not parking lot autos.
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