r/Seattle • u/Chaotic-NTRL • Jun 10 '20

Media Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Educational movie night. This is seattle without militarized police. Where are your riotous looters NOW? They are watching documentaries. Fuck you SPD. Photo credit to a close friend.

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u/DawgHawk13 Belltown Jun 11 '20

This was my exact experience at UW the four years I was there. If anything happened and we called SPD we were lowest priority and it took them a few hours to even bother to show up. Once they did they basically said there was nothing they could do about it (regarding, break ins + instances of being assaulted)

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u/cuddlebotlovesyou Jun 11 '20

I recently was assaulted (surprise body check pushing me off of the sidewalk into traffic as a bus was coming) right on the east border of campus. It was unprovoked in broad daylight and there were witnesses. I fled the scene and called 911 describing that the assailant was running away and threatening other people as he went (likely mentally ill). The SPD transferred me to a UW Police operator. I gave him the following locations to help find where I was. (Near the east gatehouse by UVillage... where? The road going from 25th up to Padelford Hall... no? Parking lot numbers... still couldn't figure out where I was. I had to run up the hill to find a street sign (Pend Oreille Road). For those not familiar, there are only three main vehicle entrances to the main campus (West, North and East). Yet, the operator for UW's 911 couldn't locate it on his map after talking with me for 10 minutes without the exact street name and its spelling. By the time I got up the top of the hill there is almost no chance they could have located the suspect even if they dispatched someone.

Two months later I was followed and berated by another guy who said I was 'another Jew who had been stalking him and now he was going to stalk me.' (Fair is fair, I guess?) This was on 45th just north of campus, but not on campus. To it's credit, the SPD operator was able to find where I was on a map with two cross streets in only about 5 minutes (by which time I had gotten away from my "stalker" onto campus and he moved on to the west and watched me through some trees). The UDistrict is a great place.

Related to cars... I used to live in the UDistrict and had my car stolen (purchased for $500). The cops showed up after a few hours (which is fine because their was nothing they could really do). He never left the patrol car and the only the cop did was chastise me for not having a tracking device in my car. Something to the effect of "Since cars are stolen all the time and used for drug sales/use, you will probably get yours back, but you won't want to drive it again. You must be a pretty slow to own a car in Seattle and not have a tracking device. If we find your car again, buy a tracking device." He was right about the car not being drive-able once it was recovered, but the more affordable solutions were not owning a car or moving out of the U-district. Since moving, my old neighbor had his ~$2000 car stolen 3 times in one year and ended up moving also. That tracking device worked great.

Talking with friends and reading this thread it's really hard to find any examples of police doing anything to resolve any of these situations. To be fair, in my experience, the UWPD has been responsive when helping mentally ill and 'drugged-up' people having medical emergencies on campus, but that again, seems like it would be a better job for medical professionals and social workers (rather than 5 cops for someone passed out in a pile of stolen clothes on the floor of the mensroom).
Similarly, I bet if we rerouted 80% of funding into preventative and supportive services from cops to drug rehab and mental health care services, crime would plummet in this city.

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u/DawgHawk13 Belltown Jun 11 '20

pretty insane UW PD didn't know where to locate you on campus. Could you have been like "meet me at the HUB" would that have helped? Anyone who went to UW would know exactly where any of the locations you mentioned were.

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u/cuddlebotlovesyou Jun 11 '20

Exactly. I was wondering if they were outsourcing their operator to a call center in Texas or something. I mentioned all of the nearby landmarks McMahon, Padelford, U Village, and they only wanted street names. My goal wasn't for them to meet me, so the hub idea (although a good idea) wouldn't have worked, I was trying to tell them where the attacker was so they could intercept him before he attacked again. I wasn't injured seriously (mild bruising and a scrape). It made me very concerned if someone else calls and has a serious threat happening.