Last week, Seattle police officers responded to 6,903 incidents across the city. Here are a few of the incidents highlighted on the SPD Blotter over the last week.
Friday the 13th was particularly unlucky for a 31-year-old man, who accidentally shot himself in the groin in the South Park neighborhood. To compound the pain of the man’s calamitous crotch injury, he could also face weapons charges.
Officers arrested a 23-year-old man suspected of firing a shotgun into the front door of a south Seattle home around 1:20 am on April 15. A woman and infant who were inside the home at the time of the shooting were not injured in the incident.
In keeping with Mayor Mike McGinn’s 20/20 A Vision for the Future plan, the Seattle Police Department has begun work to develop legislation to make video—both from patrol car cameras and cameras worn by officers—more accessible to the public.
Detectives are investigating the sexual assault and robbery of a woman in West Seattle on April 15. The woman got off a bus near Delridge Way SW and SW Trenton Street around 10:30 pm on April 15, when a man pulled her into an alley and assaulted her at gunpoint.
Seattle police worked with the Los Angeles Police Department to arrest a sex offender in California after he tried to set up a sexual rendezvous with a teenage girl through an online message board. What the man didn’t realize, was that he was actually emailing with a detective in the Seattle Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Unit.
On Wednesday, the department also unveiled several operations which led police to seize at least 60 guns, including several connected with recent gang violence in the city. During the investigations, SPD worked closely with law enforcement partners in the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to track down and arrest violent offenders and gun traffickers, who potentially face much longer prison sentences under federal prosecution.
Unfortunately, a half-dozen hours after the department held a press conference on the anti-gun violence initiatives, two men—18 and 20 years old—were wounded in a drive-by shooting on Beacon Hill. Gang detectives are investigating the incident.
Mere moments after handing over cash for a used car Wednesday evening, a man found himself at the mercy of two carjackers in the Central District Wednesday afternoon. The man had just pad a woman $1400 in cash for the white 1991 Ford Explorer when he was robbed.
Finally, late Wednesday night, officers arrested a man who tried to rob a cab driver at knifepoint in South Seattle.
On Thursday, SWAT, the Arson/Bomb Squad, Narcotics detectives and patrol officers arrested two brothers at a home in Eastlake, and seized a cache of heavy-duty weapons, including two AR-15 rifles—one of which was equipped with a military-style grenade launcher—and a smoke grenade.
You can find more details about these incidents, as well as other stories from the week, on the SPD Blotter.