SEATTLE — Following several vandalism incidents at Seattle Police Department’s West Precinct, KIRO 7 News investigated the facility’s overall importance to crime-fighting.
According to Seattle police, vandals targeted the West Precinct five days in a row this week.
>> Woman arrested for property damage at protest outside West Precinct, SPD says
The most recent case happened Friday night when a violent protest showed at the building’s front entrance.
Police said protesters smashed the main window of the entrance and also vandalized a nearby security camera.
“When you deface police properties, you deface public facilities, that’s unreasonable activism and doesn’t get our community where it needs to be,” said Mike Solan, president of the Seattle Police Officer Guild.
Other than being a place where patrol officers are based, the West precinct also houses 911 communications for Seattle, police said.
Given the incidents that have happened at the facility in the last week, KIRO 7 investigated the precinct’s importance to SPD.
We discovered the facility handled more than 126,000 calls of service last year, which accounted for more than a quarter of all police calls within the city of Seattle.
Should the damage continue, Solan said there would be a definite impact on emergency response throughout the city.
“The only thing left if we don’t have those capabilities, is our physical bodies,” he said.
Despite the precinct’s importance to Seattle police, numbers from the department show the facility had the fewest calls of service in 2019 than any other point in the last five years.
Regarding the recent damage at the precinct, police said one person has been arrested and charged with property damage.
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