SPD holding ‘Our City, Our Safety’ meeting for East Precinct neighborhoods

Chief Shon Barnes, police officials, and representatives from the East Precinct will be on hand Tuesday night for a community meeting focused on public safety in the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill and the Central District.

The Seattle Police Department promised “Our City, Our Safety” conversations for each precinct as Chief Barnes took over the department last year:

You are invited to influence the Seattle Police Department’s safety approach for your neighborhood during the upcoming “Our City, Our Safety” conversation for the East precinct area. On April 14, 2026, please join us, and our partners from the Department of Neighborhoods to have a frank conversation about safety. Mark your calendar for 6:30-8:00pm at the Miller Community Center (330 19 Ave E) on April 14th, 2026!

The long-planned meeting joins a flurry of forums, round tables, and discussions focused on East Precinct public safety as the city’s core neighborhoods including Capitol Hill and the Central District have seen key reported crime statistics hold stubbornly stable here while falling across other parts of the city. Despite the East Precinct issues, Chief Barnes has said crime is falling under his command with overall incident down 18% and murders dropping from 79 in 2024 to 58 last year.

Tuesday’s forum at 19th Ave E’s Miller Community Center also comes amid mounting pressure on Mayor Katie Wilson over her decision to pause the expansion of SPD’s Real Time Crime Center cameras to Pike/Pine and Broadway on Capitol Hill and around 23rd Ave and Garfield High School in the Central District as her administration has ordered “a privacy and data governance audit” of the entirety of SPD and the city’s surveillance resources.

Other likely topics for Tuesday night’s discussion could include challenges faced by the area’s small parks as Seven Hills Park has been reopened following a mutli-month closure over disorder and encampment and the ongoing process to open a Crisis Care Center at Broadway and Union.

Recent issues across the precinct include ongoing “organized retail theft” operations at grocery stores, extortion threat hoaxes targeting schools, issues around medical declines at the county jail, public safety plans around the effort to expand tiny village shelters in the city, and SPD’s policies around mental health crisis responses after the death of a 41-year-old man who fell from a Capitol Hill building after a day of contact and conflict with SPD earlier this month.

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