At the Wallingford Community Council meeting a couple of weeks ago, community police officer Lawrence Jackson stressed that 911 was the number to call for all crimes. House break-ins, car prowls, disturbances in the park, any crime — call 911. Until that meeting, we thought 911 was just for emergencies, but we learned that it’s also the way that the Seattle Police Department tracks crimes citywide and apportions resources.
Kara and Jon at Not a Number alerted us to a story on their blog today, which reminded us of that valuable information from Office Jackson:
Vigilance and quick police response nab grafittier
While sitting in Wallingford Pizza House about 10:30PM last night, we noticed a stealthy figure climbing on the roof across the street. The figure had a can of spray paint and proceeded to graffitti the wall on the roof above Starbucks. We called 911 as we watched to report graffitti in progress. The figure climbed back off the roof walked away. About 2 minutes later the police showed up and began to patrol the area. They returned about 15 minutes later with a suspect, who they apprehended with a backpack with spray paint in it.
We encourage everyone to be vigilant for this sort of thing, and when it happens call 911. The 911 operators are trained on how to route non-emergency calls, so don’t worry about tieing up resources. Plus this is where the city collects data on how to assign Police resources throughout the city. So when you see something call!
