SEATTLE — Seattle police are launching a new community policing initiative in Magnuson Park and its surrounding areas, dedicating three officers full-time to patrol the area.
The department says the plan is for officers to become fully ingrained in the communities they patrol to better understand their issues and, hopefully, to stop problems before they occur.
“Smaller beat ownership, neighborhood accountability,” said Seattle police chief Shon Barnes.
Large gatherings at the park over the years have led to disorderly conduct in the past. It’s also been an area used for street takeovers and by car prowlers.
“It’s not always about the highest-crime area,” said Barnes. “We have a lot of areas, depending on the time and season, that may change. But one of the reasons we chose this particular location is that it’s our second-biggest park. It has homes here as well.”
The officers, including officer Nathan Morehouse, will spend much of their time patrolling on foot and by bike.
“In a lot of ways, this is an adaptation of the beat cop way of doing policing, where you know everybody in your community,” Morehouse said. “You know their situations in a lot of ways. You can hopefully have an effect on them before anything happens.”
Morehouse, one of the three officers assigned to the initiative, began the process of becoming a police officer at 53.
“As far as I know at the time, I was the oldest person that went through the Washington Basic Law Enforcement Academy in 2017,” he said.
Previously, he worked as a patrol officer for the department along the Aurora corridor.
The department piloted this program for 90 days last year in the North Precinct. According to the chief, during that pilot, officers reduced crime “by double digits.”
KIRO 7 asked for specifics on what led to that drop.
“Community interaction, that’s number one,” Barnes said. “Obviously, proactivity is number two. Taking people and bad actors off the street is number three, and then making sure that we’re looking at, how can we solve problems?”
Barnes also pointed to solving problems with environmental designs, too, like looking at how to better lock gates, improve signage, and educate visitors about rules.
Barnes said he would like to expand the program into other areas if staffing at the department can be improved.