Written by We recently received email from Mayor Law, with the following note and the attached memo. The memo provides the results from spending an extra $150,000 (in overtime funding) in 2007 on neighborhood policing, something the council asked to include in the 2007 budget. The police, using this overtime money, delivered strong results from the extra patrols.
Here is Denis’s note:
Dear Councilmembers,
As part of an effort to keep you informed on items you might be interested in knowing, or should be aware of in a timely fashion, I’ll be sending out occasional e-mails if I have something to share. We’ll talk a little about this tomorrow.
I do have an item that Chief Milosevich prepared for you (attached), which provides results of the traffic emphasis the council requested last year that was paid for with $150,000 in the police overtime budget. I’m impressed with the results and welcome your feedback. The Chief agrees that we should continue this effort. This is a classic example of responding to concerns by the public.
In terms of the Highlands effort, I also want to let you know that the Department has worked hard in the area to provide extra service in the sub-area, as requested by Council. The amount of crime occurring in this sub-area was actually much less than originally reported (incorrectly listed at 20% of the city’s crime). A review of the actual stats from Jan. through Nov. of 2006 put the serious crime totals at between 4% to a high of 8% of certain crimes. While this is much lower than we thought, the Department is still placing an emphasis in the area.
Don’t hesitate to call if you have any questions.
See you tomorrow.
Denis
Awesome!
Thanks to the council and the mayor (even the past mayor) for cleaning up our city!
On of the things that got me to vote for Kathy (the first time) was her emphasis on the “broken windows” theory popularized by Rudy Guliani’s cleanup of New York.
If the city could now go after the slum lords, including the Renton Housing Authority – we could clean up this city.
It’s OK to be working class ( I love Renton because of all the cool people here ) but we don’t have to accept crime and slums. Let’s make the lives miserable for the out-of-town slum lords that suck money out of Renton and cause all sorts of problems!
Re: Awesome!
give me some examples of what the Renton Housing Authority has done wrong?
Re: Awesome!
The classic example is our neighbor two doors down – a slum-lord signed up with the RHA to rent out the home to people who refused to work for a living.
For the next three years we had had:
* Four drug busts, and one dead guy. Possible related.
* Two robberies (one of them was when the tennents stole tools from our back yard)
* Parents trying to run over their children
* Sixty nights of sleeplesness due to the domestic yelling and thumping stereos.
* and…. a puppy-mill where they kicked the puppies to make them mean.
Bonus:
A trash dump in the front yard with not one, but TWO kinds of rats!
Watching the King county narc squad kick down the front door *was* good entertainment. I pretty much know all the undercover buyers…
I also learned that there’s a reason that people like old American cars with bench seats… but this is a family website, I won’t elaborate. $5 sure goes far….
We notified the RHA several times – they didn’t care. They didn’t care about the lead paint that was peeling either – we tried every angle to get them to clean their mess up.
Throughout the whole ordeal – the Renton police were always there for us, I’ll always be thankful that they were able to get the stolen items back from them and make sure that perp spent 30 days in jail. They did such a good job, that I felt much safer with them around.
This happened three years ago. Now that I have children – I would *never* put up with this again.
After being pushed to the edge… We finally got it resolved by informing the slum-lord that if *anything* ever happen to my family including another theft- he and his family would pay. Personally. He was making the big money, so it was his problem. He got it resolved in 5 weeks – so I must have made an impression. I was very, oh so very, angry.
///
Enough about me… maybe I just was unlucky.
Look at the highlands and the “Sunset Terrace” – The place has no dignity and is just a cheaper wood version Soviet central planned housing. Good luck getting on your feet if you find yourself living there – the soul crushing chain link fencing is just some barbed wire away from being a ghetto. I mean that in the late 1930’s meaning of a ghetto.
If they put a garage sale sign out – they’d probably good money selling the water-logged couches. At five dollars each, they’s make enough money to buy some paint. Perhaps… a flowering plant if they’re lucky.
Re: Awesome!
I live in that area of the highlands and when they wanted to renovate the area my neighbors didn’t want it done but they also didnt read the public releases of the facts by the city. I love the area and havnt had many problems with crime but i really wish the renovation happened.
at the 1930s definition of ghetto was “a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live” so what do you mean?
Re: Awesome!
]1930s definition of ghetto
I was refering to the fencing more than anything… The German National Socialists erected increasingly nasty barriers around their ghettos.
Most of the credit should go to Chief Milosevich. He is the reason the police department is doing so well. He has gained the trust of the police officers. You will see more in the future. He is a great leader.
Seconded…
And all the cool Renton officers – I’ve met a lot of them and they all seem to want to be in the force for all the right reasons. I haven’t met a thug or a jerk in the bunch – some tough ones to be sure!
Re: Seconded…
I agree- I’ve had to deal with several of them over the last few months (unfortunately for me), and they were all very easy to get along with. It kind of changed my perception of cops for the better.
wow i got called an idiot by saying it was much lower then 20% thanks this site made me feel like an idiot
Randy, did you report the crime rate to be 20%? I don’t remember seeing that, but it seems to be what this dude’s saying.
i think he is just saying that he posted before saying that the crime rate in that area is much lower then people think and people didn’t like the comment due tot the fact that that areas crime rate was a key political issue and many who came to this site didnt want to listen to what anyone said ,including me, if it was something that was the opposite of what Law said.
As Mark Twain says, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
To make the case for declaring blight in the highlands, the previous administration (who you may remember I was not a big fan of) repeatedly said that 20% of the city’s crime was occurring in three percent of the city …the worst part of Renton highlands.
The citizens living in the area said they knew there was crime, but they expressed skepticism that it was as bad as stated, and they objected to the notion that the city should have to take their homes from them to deal with it.
Denis Law, as chair of Public Safety Committee, frequently questioned the source of this statistic, but he promised to reduce crime in the highlands no matter what the numbers might be. In 2007 he said if the numbers were anywhere close to what the administration was reporting, we should be redoubling our efforts to patrol there…there is no reason to let gangs and thieves take over part of our city that still has much owner occupancy, and our cops can get to in two minutes. So we added a lot of police overtime money for extra policing, and it seems like it is helping.
Now, as mayor, he has had an opportunity to thoroughly assess the situation, and he has revised numbers to report.
In fairness the the previous administration, the numbers are always changing, so they may not have been off as far as it seems. And the sample size is relatively small, and crime patterns can shift easily… sometimes burglary sprees can be caused by a single burglar, or small ring, and stats will abruptly change once we catch them and lock them up.
I won’t vouch for the 20% number, since I never saw that data backing it and I was not given enough info by the previous administration. But Denis has promised to get me all the data I want, and I have confidence in the figures he is generating.
Lastly, I want to add that we are seeing some new project proposals for the Highlands, that will be the start of real revitalization. A task force of citizens recommended new zoning in 2006, which we adopted, and we settled the final appeals in 2007. A new citizen task force is working on implementation, and developers are starting to talk about taking out duplexes up to four at a time to build new housing. The only thing which may work against us it the darn economy and housing market, which has been losing steam recently.
Hopefully, we will see some real change in 2008.
Thanks,
Randy
I can’t wait to see real numbers for the transit center
You both were right…
Randy… the way Kathy was declaring “blight” looked more like a land grab – *but* there is blight up there, and a few places down where I live in North Renton.
Tee city should declare selected properties as blight and consider condemning them… not in the wholesale manor Kathy was proposing, but just a few properties a year.
If you could take a loot at police calls to determine what properties are nexuses of crime and go from there…
Mr. Prezident.
H. Klinton vs Obama. How you think who will win elections in Unated States of America?