NPI poll finds that most likely Seattle City Council #3 voters feel safe in their community

To hear right wing media tell it, res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods in the heart of pro­gres­sive Seat­tle are crime-infest­ed night­mares that are unsafe to be in. But the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s lat­est local poll, which field­ed last week, has found that more than three in five like­ly vot­ers in Seat­tle Dis­trict #3, which includes Capi­tol Hill, report that they feel safe in their neigh­bor­hood community.

Respon­dents were giv­en the abil­i­ty to rate their feel­ing of safe­ty, or lack there­of, on a scale of zero to ten, with zero equat­ing to feel­ing not safe at all and ten equiv­a­lent to feel­ing very safe. 64% of our respon­dents picked 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 on the scale. 14% picked 5, and 22% picked 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4.

We think this is a com­pelling bit of data that emphat­i­cal­ly con­tra­dicts the pub­lic safe­ty nar­ra­tive that right wing Repub­li­cans have been try­ing to ped­dle about Seat­tle in recent years. They speak of Capi­tol Hill as a nexus of left wing law­less­ness. The real­i­ty is that we face pub­lic safe­ty chal­lenges in big cities and small towns alike, but neigh­bor­hoods like Capi­tol Hill are rea­son­ably safe places — and there’s no bet­ter judge of that than the peo­ple who live and vote there.

Here’s the exact text of the ques­tion we asked and the responses:

QUESTION: On a scale of 0 to 10, please rate how safe you feel in your Seat­tle neigh­bor­hood com­mu­ni­ty, with 0 being the least safe and 10 the most safe.

ANSWERS:

• Feel safe: 64% 
  • 10 (feel very safe): 6%
  • 9: 12%
  • 8: 22%
  • 7: 17%
  • 6: 7%
• Nei­ther safe nor unsafe | 5: 14%
• Feel unsafe: 22% 
  • 4: 5%
  • 3: 5%
  • 2: 6%
  • 1: 3%
  • 0 (feel not safe at all): 3%

A plu­ral­i­ty of respon­dents (22%) select­ed a rat­ing of 8 out of 10.

Anoth­er 12% select­ed a rat­ing of 9 out 10 and anoth­er 17% select­ed a rat­ing of 7 out of 10. Com­bined with the 6% who rat­ed their safe­ty at 10 out of 10 and the 7% who said 6 out of 10, that’s a total of 64%.

We asked those respon­dents who indi­cat­ed they feel safe what the city is doing, if any­thing, that is help­ing them to feel safe. About half the poll sam­ple accept­ed the invi­ta­tion to pro­vide com­men­tary. Let’s con­sid­er a selec­tion of respons­es from like­ly vot­ers in Dis­trict #3, includ­ing sev­er­al who reside on Capi­tol Hill or First Hill.

Again, the fol­low-up ques­tion was:

QUESTION: You indi­cat­ed you feel safe in your Seat­tle neigh­bor­hood com­mu­ni­ty. What, if any­thing, is the city gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly doing that’s help­ing you to feel safe?

“First respon­ders seem to be pri­or­i­tiz­ing help­ing peo­ple caus­ing their own cri­sis issues from sub­stance abuse and men­tal ill­ness caused by homelessness/malnutrition (I vol­un­teer help­ing with the lat­ter),” said a male respon­dent between the ages of fifty to sixty-four.

“Not the gov­ern­men­t’s doing, I just have a strong com­mu­ni­ty in this neigh­bor­hood. The gov­ern­ment could find a way to pick trash up off the streets, cre­ate more ser­vices for house­less folks, main­tain com­mu­ni­ty spaces like the BLM gar­den in Cal Ander­son, and paint more cross­walks in heav­i­ly traf­ficked areas,” said a female respon­dent between the ages of eigh­teen to thirty-four.

“I feel some­what safe in my neigh­bor­hood because there is a high den­si­ty of peo­ple, fair­ly good urban design that dep­re­cat­ed cars, [thus mak­ing it safer for] bikes and peo­ple, and thriv­ing busi­ness­es that keep eyes on the street,” said a male respon­dent between the ages of eigh­teen to thirty-four.

“Seat­tle police and fire are doing their best despite being under attack and under­staffed. Most­ly it’s my neigh­bors that make me feel safe because they are awe­some,” said a female respon­dent between the ages of fifty to sixty-four.

“Traf­fic calm­ing efforts. More neigh­bor­hood cen­tered home­less ser­vices for local response. Fund­ing to sup­port small busi­ness­es [deal­ing] with prop­er­ty crimes,” said non­bi­na­ry respon­dent between the ages eigh­teen to thirty-four.

“There is a con­sis­tent, vis­i­ble police pres­ence in my neigh­bor­hood, and there have been efforts to lim­it vagrancy and crim­i­nal activ­i­ty in local parks and streets,” said a male respon­dent between the ages of thir­ty-five and forty-nine.

“I do not approve of the sweeps. I feel safe because there is con­stant foot traf­fic and I am not afraid of peo­ple who don’t have homes,” said a female respon­dent between the ages of eigh­teen to thirty-four.

Many of the com­ments felt to our team like rejoin­ders to the videos put out by right wing agi­ta­tors such as The Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute’s Jonathan Choe, which have been repur­posed for ridicu­lous seg­ments on Fox, such as this non­sense from The Five. An increas­ing num­ber of Seat­tleites do appear to be aware of the ongo­ing effort to cyn­i­cal­ly paint the Emer­ald City in a bad light through the upload­ing and pub­li­ca­tion of clips depict­ing the liv­ing arrange­ments of unhoused people.

We saw more opti­mism than pes­simism across the respons­es. There’s an appre­ci­a­tion that May­or Bruce Har­rell and the Seat­tle City Coun­cil are try­ing to imple­ment bet­ter poli­cies and turn the page on the Durkan era.

A lot of vot­ers say they draw com­fort and strength from their neigh­bors and are look­ing for­ward to wit­ness­ing a trans­for­ma­tion of polic­ing in Seattle.

As anoth­er one of our respon­dents put it: “I believe a big ele­ment of Seat­tle’s safe­ty is just cul­tur­al. I am, how­ev­er, hap­py that the City final­ly launched its CARE ini­tia­tive to respond more appro­pri­ate­ly to per­sons in crises, and I hope marks the begin­ning of a more care­tak­ing approach to polic­ing vs. a glad­i­a­to­r­i­al one.”