Just before 11 p.m. on Oct. 10, James Imonti, owner of The Matador on Market Street, engaged in a verbal altercation with an individual at the bar and was stabbed in the back.

After the 911 call was placed, it took police 25 minutes to arrive at The Matador, Imonti said.

"I was standing outside thinking, "Where is everybody?" he said.

Imonti is starting to network with other bar and restaurant owners who have noticed an increase in crime in recent months to petition the Seattle Police Department and Seattle City Council for more patrols and better response times in Ballard.

Just in recent weeks, a server was mugged, the Wells Fargo down the street was robbed and a patron was removed from The Matador for using cocaine in the bathroom, Imonti said.

"This is stuff that would be deterred with a little bit of (police) presence in the neighborhood," he said.

Susan Ward is a partner at BalMar, which has been open on Market Street for four years. She said she has noticed more unwanted activities in the neighborhood in the past six months to a year than ever before.

The police were called to deal with a fight that broke out at the BalMar earlier in the year, Ward said.

"Before this fall, we had never had anything like that," she said.

Ward said she doesn't really see a police presence in Ballard, and one needs to be seen because of the high concentration of bars and restaurants in the area.

Imonti said he has heard similar stories about 30-minute police response times from other nightlife workers in Ballard.

He said an employee at King's Hardware on Ballard Avenue told him it took 45 minutes for the police to arrive after a call about an individual being assaulted outside the bar.

Ward said it took police 40 minutes to arrive in response to the fight at the BalMar this fall.

Sgt. Dianne Newsom of the North Precinct Community Police Team said response times for police are going to be longer during Friday and Saturday nights because of the volume of calls they receive.

"I know they have a hard job," Imonti said. "I don't expect an armed guard at the corner."

But, it is a hard situation because people want to protect their businesses, but sometimes they don't feel safe confronting an individual themselves, he said. In that situation, they need to be able to count on the police, but they can't right now, he said.

"The worst thing for me is I have servers walking around at two in the morning," Imonti said. "I don't feel comfortable with them walking to their cars at night."

He said a few patrols around the neighborhood to deter crime and speed up response times would change that.

Dan Murphy, owner of the Loft on Ballard Avenue, said safety has been a concern for the bar since it opened two years ago.

He said he has started developing in-house systems to increase the safety of the staff.

Everyone goes to their cars in pairs, and every new hire is given pepper spray, he said.

"I want everybody in every community to feel safe," Newsom said. "But, it is their own perception. Seattle is really relatively safe."

Imonti and representatives from Shelter Lounge on Leary Avenue and La Carta de Oaxaca on Ballard Avenue and the Loft made their case to Seattle City Council member Tim Burgess at the Dec. 9 Ballard District Council meeting.

Burgess said the 25 minute response time after Imonti was stabbed was unacceptable.

He said the city is continuing to fund the hiring of additional police in the 2010 budget. The city is still trying to reach the number of police necessary to fully implement the community policing plan, he said.

Newsom said everybody wants more police, but the Seattle Police Department can only hire as many as approved by the city council.

She also said it would be a bad idea to hire additional police too quickly and sacrifice the quality of the officers.

Though she supports an increased police presence in Ballard to help response times, Ward said it may be a situation where the nightlife community needs to be careful what they wish for.

"We don't necessarily want police parading through our bar every hour," she said.

Imonti is continuing to reach out to bar and restaurant owners in the neighborhood. He wants to compile their stories and get them in front of councilmembers and the chief of police, anyone who can create change, he said.