The troubling danger downtown

The vision of downtown Seattle as a New York neighborhood where people of all classes live together is an enticing one. But it is not going to succeed without more attention to public safety, and to the feeling of safety by people who go downtown.

Despite the recent stories of shootings and stabbings, the police who patrol downtown say it is reasonably safe, and that downtown Seattle has actually become more law-abiding than it was 25 years ago.

Even if this is so, it is not enough.

A generation ago, there was not a movement of people downtown to live there. Now there is. If downtown condos and businesses are to continue and succeed, people have to feel safe on city streets.

Of course, new downtown residents have to make their own adjustments. The areas around Pioneer Square and at First and Pike are the centers of social services for a different class of folk than those who buy condominiums. There is public housing. There are low-income clinics.

Between First and Second on Pike is a needle-exchange program. Nearby is a Department of Corrections office that deals with parolees. These services were there first, are under no obligation to leave. But their charges have to behave themselves.

Office workers complain of groups of youths who hang out on Third Avenue around Pike and Pine and who make racial comments to passers-by. There is a group of older drug dealers who operate an open-air market in cocaine and heroin. There are the mentally deranged who are off their meds, and there is the per-ennial problem of panhandlers, many of whom are not homeless.

Police patrol the area on bicycles, but that is not enough. Often, they are called away to staff a protest or festival. A gap opens in police coverage from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., and there is no extra help on Friday and Saturday nights in summer, when behavior is at its worst.

Downtown needs more cops, and the city needs to support them.

Seattle also needs less tolerance for behavior that may be only a misdemeanor, or not criminal at all, but that disgusts or intimidates the law-abiding.

A mixed-class neighborhood cannot succeed by adopting the standards of the less law-abiding.Property managers, store managers, Metropolitan Improvement District teams and ordinary citizens cannot ignore behavior that sets a tone of danger.