The Seattle Westlake Park Street Urchins: The Seattle Police on Scene at Westlake Park

Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Seattle Police on Scene at Westlake Park

The Seattle Police department appears to maintain a nearly constant vigil at Westlake Park. These patrol cars are parked at the northeast corner of Westlake Park, on Pine Street, between 4th Avenue and 5th Avenue. This photograph is an east facing view, away from Westlake Park. The Westlake Center mall is to the left, across the street, and out of the photographic frame.

Although the police department makes some arrests, the department appears to have developed a policy of containment rather than expulsion, with the apparent belief that keeping the street urchins in one place where they can be monitored easily, is a more expeditious approach and trying to force them to take their activities elsewhere. However, when the Seattle Police observe a crime in progress, they do make arrests. Many of the people they arrest are charged and successfully prosecuted.

Westlake Park Street Urchins

Seattle's Westlake Park has been overrun by street urchins who menace, threaten, and harass, people walking by the area. Some of them cross the line into criminal menacing, in violation of Seattle Municipal Code, and Washington State statute. One of these miscreants went even further, and actually attacked one of the people taking the photographs that appear here, committing assault and attempted robbery of the photographer's camera in the process. That assailant and would be robber was immediately arrested by SPD officers on the scene. He was jailed, charged, quickly convicted, and sentenced to a jail term.

Another of these miscreants, who goes by the nickname "Trash", is the character pictured in the title bar who is "flipping the bird". He has also committed criminal menacing against of the photographers who has gather pictures for use here. Other members of their group have behaved similarly, including one named Zennger Tiras, and another who appears in some of the photographs here wearing a "Sanchez" football jersey.

These miscreants have become an infestation at Westlake Park, making this public space all but unusable by the rest of Seattle's citizens. The Seattle Police seem to largely tolerate them. The police only appear to arrest any them or see them criminally charged when one of them commits an overt criminal act directly within their presence.

The sort of scourge theses miscreants represents, is a part of the major problems Seattle has with its downtown core. The use of the term - street urchins - to describe them is precisely accurate, at the same time that it is superbly descriptive. On this site, there is plenty of information about them, photographic evidence of their activities, and reflections on the problems they create.