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ANOTHER Belltown shooting!

MatthewMatthew
edited May 2008 in Seattle Culture
Guess what just woke me up at 2:30 in the morning? The sound of gunshots outside my window!! I just heard about 7 gunshots on the street directly below my window, and SPD is crawling all over the place. I hear the police helicopter out right now!

Nothing like the sound of gun fire to get you wired at 2:30 in the morning! Now I can't get back to sleep!

Comments

  • rose-colored-coolaidrose-colored-coolaid
    But on the bright side, Belltown is a really safe neighborhood. Show me a man who doesn't expect to be woken up in the middle of the night by gunfire, and I'll show you a man who has yet to live!
  • bilirubenbiliruben
    The obvious solution would be to extend closing times until 6am.

    Then you could simply dispense with your alarm clock, and wake up to the sweet sounds of the 9mm.

    Seriously, though. I've lived in a lot of cities, and this one's about as safe as they come.
  • MatthewMatthew
    Tell that to the wounded guy this morning on the street screaming for a medic! :)
  • brettrobrettro
    I live on Capitol Hill and between the halfway house sketchys and the drunkards leaving the bars, I get woken up at least 4 times per week. I haven't had to deal with a shooting (yet?), mostly just yelling or the occasional fight. You get used to it though- it's like living next to train tracks or a hospital. It doesn't bother me at all- in fact sometimes these people are pretty amusing to watch.

    IMHO the cops do a great job in this neighborhood and maintain a strong presence without appearing heavy-handed. I have a lot of respect for those guys- especially considering the... 'unique' situations that they have to deal with in belltown/downtown/cap hill.
  • bilirubenbiliruben
    I thought I'd check my feeling of safety in Seattle relative to other biggish cities in the US. Thought since I went to the trouble, I'd share the data:

    Excel spreadsheet with FBI crime data

    Of the 55 cities greater than 300K in population in 2006:

    Seattle ranks:

    17th safest in overall violent crime,
    9th safest for murder
    6th safest for rape
    24th safest for robbery
    22nd safest for assault.

    So you are pretty unlikely to get raped or murdered, but assault and robbery are about average, compared to other decent sized cities.

    I'm guessing these numbers will get worse, both locally and nationally, if the gap between the have and have nots continues to widen and/or we fall into a deep recession.

    For the moment though, there is no place I can think of in Seattle I wouldn't take me family. I can't say that about too many other cities.
  • PeckhammerPeckhammer
    biliruben wrote:
    So you are pretty unlikely to get raped or murdered, but assault and robbery are about average, compared to other decent sized cities.

    Though you may be hit by a stray bullet. A man was shot in the back by an AK-47 in Belltown in June. On monday, a man was hit by four bullets (3 in the butt, 1 in the leg).

    I participated in a bit of conversation about Belltown crime in the blog recently, with one poster claiming he has had zero incidents in 5 years, and me knowing the true fiber of the colon that is downtown. Seattle Times has an article about our lovely downtown that they published today: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... ng01m.html

    It does support the idea that Seattle is safer than average.
  • bilirubenbiliruben
    Yeah, I worked over on Stewart for about 10 years. 3rd and pine has always been bad, though it never stopped me from walking through there. The interesting things to see were always a good balance to the slightly increased danger. I don't know if it's gotten worse.

    Didn't they rename it to something like West End? That should clean things up.
  • nathannathan
    I thought building those luxury apartments would deter crime in Belltown. You know how terrified criminals are of rich folks.

    I guess not:
    http://www.youtube.com/belltowncrime
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