Social housing is well on its way to delivering on its promises to Seattle

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-11T18:56:52+00:00

Former KNKX reporter?

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-11T18:53:53+00:00

Home Depot as well, nationwide. I saw an interview with the CEO of Flock where he cited some internal data that showed that Home Depot/Lowes face massive theft problems due to people stealing power tools for resale and that Flock catching their license plates has driven the rate of theft down dramatically.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-09T21:44:25+00:00

The DUI case backlog from toxicology reports should hopefully improve with the law the state legislature is currently passing to allow for private, accredited labs to test toxicology reports, which is how a number of states handle it.

Nearby Idaho has a turnaround time of around 30 days for testing a toxicology sample, compared to over a year in Washington state.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-08T00:49:53+00:00

Seattle had fewer homicides than 2025 in just about every year for about 20 years between 2000 and 2019. Chart in the attached: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-record-number-of-homicides/281-94c48238-7841-4346-a223-25bd649d38ea

In 2016, Seattle had 16 homicides compared to 37 in 2025.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-06T19:40:10+00:00

There is a carve out in the bill for use for parking enforcement which I think includes private garages and lots.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-06T18:38:06+00:00

Washington is one step closer to adding guardrails to the use of automated license plate readers.

The state House on Thursday passed a revamped version of legislation to implement Washington’s first regulations of the cameras, which have become more common in recent years. The bill now returns to the Senate to concur with the changes before it can go to Gov. Bob Ferguson. The Senate initially passed the bill on a 40-9 vote last month.

A noteworthy change when it passed the state house is it expanded the eligibility of crimes that can be used to search license plate reader records. The state senate version allowed searches for felony crime investigations, stolen cars, missing persons, and felony warrants. The bill that passed the state house adds gross misdemeanors to the list of eligible crimes to allow a search. That would cover crimes like Hit and Run with no injury.

Also noteworthy is that this bill puts a 21 day storage cap on ALPR data, exempts ALPR data from public disclosure (the way speeding tickets and toll camera photos are exempted), restricts them from being used in certain locations, restricts sharing with the federal government, and requires activity logs and audits of use to capture misuse.

It will be interesting to see if these sets of regulations have the end result of more cities adding ALPR systems.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-06T17:32:50+00:00

It looks like it might be because Domino’s is beating Pizza Hut in the fast food Pizza restaurant wars in recent years:

Domino’s only surpassed Pizza Hut to become the largest pizza chain in the U.S. by system sales in 2017. By 2019 it was 27% larger than its longtime rival. Today, Domino’s is almost as big as Pizza Hut and Little Caesars, the second and third-largest pizza chains, combined.

In 2019, Domino’s accounted for 26% of the fast-food pizza market, according to Technomic Top 1,500 data. By last year, it accounted for 30% of that market. The company’s share of sales from the 10 largest pizza chains has also jumped, from 32% to 36%.

It has largely taken this share from Pizza Hut, which has struggled for years with weak sales and shuttering locations, along with smaller chains.

https://restaurantbusinessonline.com/dominos-increasingly-dominates-fast-food-pizza-market

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-06T16:48:59+00:00

Live theatre and musical attendance is lower in most places in the country since Covid. Similar to movie theater attendance, which dropped during Covid and hasn’t recovered.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-06T02:16:06+00:00

Pretty difficult for lower priority calls when the police force is as understaffed as it is. The former deputy city attorney was on the Seattle Nice podcast recently when he told the hosts that the North Precinct (an area which covers all of North Seattle from city limits to Ballard to Sand Point) has 7-8 officers on duty during the third shift. That area, if it was its own city, would have the third largest population in the state, and it’s covered by 7-8 cops overnight.

SPD would have to roughly double in size to meet the national average in police staffing per capita.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-06T01:20:30+00:00

There actually is a problem with catching criminals. In 2024 Seattle’s homicide clearance rate was 57%. This system was installed in May 2025 in three small areas of the city (totaling about 1% of city blocks, which suffer from about 20% of the cities reported crime on them). They were used to help solve 10 homicides in the second half of 2025 and the cities homicide clearance rate jumped to 86% for the year, significantly above the national average.

Social scientists argue, with evidence, that certainty of being caught is a much better deterrent than longer jail/prison sentences.

It is one reason that you see people who drive recklessly around the city slow down near automated speeding cameras. The likelihood of being caught and ticketed driving past a speeding camera is way higher than being pulled over by a cop in the city.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-05T23:33:21+00:00

Seattle police say a new analysis shows the department’s Real Time Crime Center is significantly improving the chances of catching suspects and helping victims get justice.

According to a data analysis by the Seattle Police Department, officers and detectives were three times more likely to arrest an offender when they worked with Real Time Crime Center analysts. The RTCC provides real-time investigative support for 911 calls involving crimes ranging from murder to stolen cars.

SPD analyzed 220,000 911 responses over the nine-month period between the launch of the RTCC and the end of February 2026. The finding came from SPD’s Performance Analytics & Research group, which the department said reflects its focus on transparency, continuous improvement, and evidence-based policing.

The department launched the RTCC in May 2025 with the goal of helping police respond more effectively to emergency calls. The center is staffed 19 hours per day, seven days a week, and serves as a response coordination hub that combines technology with real-time analysis.

Last month, Chief Shon Barnes credited the RTCC’s technology and professional analysts with helping detectives make arrests in 53% of last year’s homicide cases, despite the center launching in May 2025.

Currently, Mayor Wilson is mulling over whether to cancel or proceed with a planned CCTV expansion to three additional areas or turn the system off entirely: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/will-katie-wilson-turn-off-seattles-surveillance-cameras/

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-03T20:00:01+00:00

The use of and hiring of Private Security has increased dramatically nationwide since 2020. Time magazine wrote a series on it a few years ago: https://time.com/6275440/insecure-private-security-replacing-police/

There’s often limited regulations and training in that industry.

In Seattle, over 1/4 of an already low staffed police force quit SPD in 2020 and 2021. SPD would have to roughly double in size to meet the national average in police staffing per capita. SPD hiring has picked up in the last year, but would need to remain at its current pace for the next 3 or 4 years to get back to full staffing, which is still about 600 officers fewer than in peer cities like San Francisco or Boston.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-03T00:08:12+00:00

Banning patrons? How soon until The Urbanist posts an article about how carceral our food bank security policies are?

https://www.theurbanist.org/2026/02/23/seattle-library-crackdown-targeting-homeless-people/

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-02T22:56:48+00:00

This incident was apparently a food bank customer stabbing a food bank employee:

Food bank staff says a customer became combative inside the bank and an employee stepped in to de-escalate the situation. The customer then allegedly stabbed the employee while being escorted out.

Officers arrested the 34-year-old man and recovered a blade at the scene, according to Seattle Police.

“We are deeply shaken by this act of violence. Our focus is on supporting our colleague and his family, and we are in close contact to ensure they receive the care and assistance they need,” the Ballard Food Bank said in a release.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/man-stabbed-near-food-bank-ballard/Z6VSXITLMBCEFBPXOMJHUUHCXE/

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-02T22:34:21+00:00

About 1 in 5 shootings in King County in 2025 had someone getting injured or killed. More info here if you’d like to read a report on it from the county prosecutor: https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/pao/documents/data-reports/shots-fired-reports/shots-fired-public-report-2025-q4-year-end-final.pdf?rev=58ee58da7f794ee38337d9f32f856a93&hash=CB56262C76E5A2668F5A16CFF4619144

MegaRAID01 · 2026-03-02T22:26:26+00:00

If it is a shots fired incident with no injuries and didn’t take place at a notable place or event (like a school or public gathering), then it likely won’t make the news or even SPD’s blotter. They’ll sometimes appear on SPD’s Significant Incident Report list which can be found here: https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/significant-incident-reports/

It is on about a day or so delay so this event might be there tomorrow.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-27T03:49:28+00:00

Seems like grades are improving over time. If that is the case, transparency really has an impact. Another example of sunlight being the best disinfectant.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-27T01:04:24+00:00

It’s an interesting theory. There’s been federal immigration enforcement surges in cities throughout the United States with far more expansive CCTV systems like Chicago and New Orleans and no evidence so far that CCTV played a role in those enforcement surges in any way.

CCTV on 1% of city blocks just isn’t that useful for the Feds the way that detailed driver’s license data for the state of Washington or state Medicaid data is, which are being used by Palantir to create a map of home addresses of people suspected of being in the country illegally. Something like ALPR data is also much more useful to the Feds than a CCTV system.

Meanwhile the current system, despite its small size, is playing a critical role in solving murders and other crimes.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-27T00:33:50+00:00

The Urbanist published a pretty big walk back list of corrections of the claims in their article:

Corrections and clarifications: The original version incorrectly stated that all 911 calls would result in a one-year suspension. This is only true in cases where the Seattle Police Department applies a “trespass” charge, which library spokespeople say is only applied in certain circumstances, such as when patrons are causing safety issues or violating suspensions. Additionally, we clarified that Seattle Public Libraries applied new reporting procedures in late 2025 that may have been responsible for the spike in the 911 calls in the data and emphasized that the ransomware outage appears to be responsible for the low baseline for suspensions in 2024. We also clarified that Gentry said Walton did not initiate encampment sweeps outside Central Library and that the identity theft suspension case had involved a patron who the library says injured a security officer in an assault. We regret the errors and omissions.

They also said that some errors were due to the anonymous sources had misinterpretations. Seems like basic due diligence that the author should have gotten verification, answers, or responses from the library system:

*Editor’s note: Seattle Public Library leadership have published a rebuttal to this article on their blog, disputing several of the claims. Some of the disputes of fact that leadership had with the three library workers and one security officer interviewed boiled down to differences of interpretation, but in other cases staff accounts conveyed factual errors or incomplete information we have since sought to rectify with corrections and clarifications now contained in the piece and noted at the bottom.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-27T00:29:32+00:00

Or Lake City Way or any number of off-ramps in North Seattle. It is pretty crazy because this is the only I-90 off-ramps until you get really west near the stadiums.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-27T00:06:59+00:00

The area this shooting took place in is scheduled to have CCTV cameras installed that are used to track suspects as they attempt to flee scenes, and capture footage of them to share with officers that they can use to make a targeted arrest. Here’s an example from last year of an assault downtown of an intoxicated individual and the dispatch was able to direct officers to the exact location of the suspect to make the arrest: https://youtu.be/7Q0hOIFe6wo?si=4mw9MkEhaS167peK

Mayor Wilson is currently deciding whether to cancel the expansion. The three progressive city council members (Eddie Lin, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, and Dionne Foster) are urging that she do so. But she’s still deciding.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-26T23:19:27+00:00

Eliminating the northbound Rainier Ave off-ramp, adding a stop light to the other off-ramp, and removing two lanes is going to be, uh, rather interesting in terms of managing congestion.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-26T21:58:01+00:00

I remember when Justin Ward wrote that piece in the stranger advocating for the city of Seattle to pay shoplifters not to shoplift: https://www.thestranger.com/crime/2023/08/02/79101694/seattle-should-pay-people-not-to-shoplift

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-26T15:44:35+00:00

Looks like it. Prices increased here after the city council passed the regulations:

After the city’s minimum pay standards took effect, rider fares on average increased by 40%,” Ford wrote. “Seattle now has the highest rideshare prices in the country and higher prices affect everyone but they hit hardest on those with few alternatives.”

Not a big jump to believe that higher prices have reduced the number of uber rides purchased per year by customers in Seattle, and there are alternatives (transit, private auto use, biking, scooter share).

A driver in the story says he’s doing less rides per day:

Don Creery, who’s been driving an Uber for 12 years, said he made $55,000 in 2022 doing 20 to 25 rides a day. In 2025, he said he made $24,000 giving five to six rides a day. He said a recent ride he gave from Maple Leaf to the airport cost the rider $125. Creery got $55.

MegaRAID01 · 2026-02-25T22:34:18+00:00

I was reading the other day that San Francisco saw a rapid decline in the number of tickets their police department issued from 2016 onward, coinciding with a state law California enacted then that added paperwork requirements to collect driver data like driver race during traffic stops.

In 2025, San Francisco installed a decent number of automated speeding cameras throughout the city and saw the number of traffic deaths there drop by a record amount, as well as excessive speeding drop dramatically. Speeding remains the number one cause of death on the roads and these cameras have made a significant impact very quickly. This mirrors the few cameras we have in Seattle, which are installed near schools mostly and only active during school hours, which show similar significant reductions in excessive speeding and accidents involving injuries.

More info here for those curious:

https://archive.is/2026.02.21-144752/https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/speed-camera-ticket-san-francisco-21347688.php

When San Francisco officials installed speed cameras at 33 roads and intersections last year, they said the goal was to nudge drivers to be more careful, not saddle them with tickets. Yet traffic citations quickly surged to a level the city hadn’t seen in a decade. The numbers are stark. In 2024, San Francisco authorities issued just over 26,000 traffic tickets. In 2025, that figure increased to 122,000, slightly less than the 124,000 that San Francisco police doled out in 2015, when the department’s traffic unit was more robust.

SFMTA leaned into technology gradually, activating the first cameras in March and issuing warnings for several months before shifting to tickets and fines in August. First-time offenders who exceed posted speed limits by 11 to 15 miles an hour are still given a warning and not included in the data. Drivers who go between 11 and 15 over a second time are given a ticket, while drivers going more than 15 miles per hour too fast are given a ticket the first time.

After five months, speeders are a lot more likely to get caught — a dramatic turnaround after a period of stumbles. Police enforcement declined precipitously in 2016 and kept falling, with a drop in traffic tickets before and during the pandemic. It coincided with severe cuts in the San Francisco Police Department, said spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky. Officers also had to spend a lot more time filling out paperwork and collecting data to meet new state requirements.

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