Erica Barnett over at Publicola did a bit sleuthing this week and found that, despite community concerns about a rise in crime around the light rail stations in South Seattle, SPD data shows that some crime is actually down:

 

Although crime in the South End has been increasing generally, the number of assaults and robberies in the three police precincts encompassing the segment of the light rail line from the Mount Baker station to the Rainier Beach station (map here) has remained essentially stable since light rail opened. Taken together, robberies and assaults declined in the three precincts from a total of 397 between mid-July 2008 and December 2008 to 384 for the same period in 2009—the period between light rail’s opening day and the end of the year.

Digging into the numbers, the number of assaults was basically stable in the three precincts from year to year, increasing by one from 312 to 313 thanks largely to a sharp increase in the northernmost of the three precincts (from 80 to 101), accompanies by decreases in the other two. Robberies, which include street robberies (by far the most common type) as well as a few residential and business robberies, went down from 85 to 73.

You can read the rest of Erica's report here.