District 1 City Councilmember Lisa Herbold shared the facts and her insights plus some links regarding crime statistics in West Seattle and South Park in her letter to constituents:

Recently I met with the Seattle Police Department about concerns regarding crime data for South Park. I’ve heard from South Park residents that crime statistics provided by SPD didn’t accurately reflect their experience.

Given the relatively small size of the neighborhood and number of residents, it seemed that crime statistics by neighborhood might not be the most accurate measurement; the population of neighborhoods in the SW Precinct have a wide range, from the 1150 residents in Pigeon Point, to 4134 in South Park, and 13,609 in the Alaska Junction.

Consequently, I asked SPD to develop per-capita measurements of crime.

The table below shows the results for the first 10 months of 2018 in the SW Precinct, and includes both person and property crime.  South Park’s per capita crime rate for that time period was 94 per 1,000 residents, significantly higher than other neighborhoods, except for South Delridge, another small neighborhood.

SPD also included a measurement for per capita crime by daytime residents.

I also asked SPD to provide data for officer-generated calls for service in South Park. These calls are listed as “on-view” or “proactive” calls, that come from SPD officers on patrol. SPD has increased the amount of patrols in South Park since August, 2016. The number of calls for this 10-month period have increased from 521 in 2015, to 1,073 in 2016, to 1,997 in 2017.

Calls generated from the public have been 2,233 in 2015, 2,037 in 2016, and 2,046 in 2017.

Here’s a link to the SPD presentation, which includes person and property crime data for all SW Precinct neighborhoods  (West Seattle and South Park) from 2015-2017. Thanks to SPD for putting this together; they’ve made great strides the last few years in making crime data more accessible to the public.  SPD’s Crime Dashboard allows you to search crime data by neighborhood, precinct, from 2008 to the present.  Their SeaStat program provides updates every two weeks.

Priorities for each of the Micro Community Policing Plans are available on the SPD website here. Micro Community Policing Plans (MCPP) are designed to address the distinctive needs of each community. You can find your neighborhood MCPP on the map here. MCPP’s are informed by public safety surveys conducted independently by Seattle University. Their two-year evaluation of MCPPs, published in January 2017, is linked here.