capitol hill’s imaginary edginess
After last night’s thoroughly fun Fiery Furnaces show, Matt thanked us all profusely for staying out so late on a school night and wished us a safe trip home. This seemed kind of hilarious since it was a little before one and we were in Capitol Hill. But maybe he’d gotten word of all of the crime in our neighborhood and had a point. After all, this year’s not been so good in terms of mass killings and gun-brandishing youth being shot on streetcorners.
It seems that my overconfidence in the safety of the neighborhood was not simply a case of blissful ignorance. At least not according to K and/or J at capitolhillseattle.blogspot.com. They dug up some crime numbers, put together a big spreadsheet, and ran the numbers. By their calculations, the overall number of crimes in the neighborhood hasn’t changed much since last year. Even if you don’t live in [Ed: on?] Capitol Hill, their tallies are worth a look — they’ve mapped the city’s census tracks and highlighted both “most improved” as well as nascent crime outbreak zones.
On the other hand, Neumos’ census tract 75 ranks in the top 10 by raw totals for all crimes combined — 60% of those were categorized as theft. Ranks pretty much same as last year so no big change (we mapped areas of greatest change) but there’s still a lot of crime. It’s just not getting worse — unlike Madrona! I’ll let somebody with more ability and time on their hands figure out per capita cut of things.