What Does Public Safety Really Mean? Plus, Community Garden Origin Stories and Goodbye to Spot Saver

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1:04This is CityCast Seattle. I'm Jane Seahoe and here's what Seattle's talking about. Why are Seattle's community gardens called P patches? Is there any way to stop spam real estate solicitations? We'll get it all of that in more, but first public safety is about more than just guns. I'm Brett Hamill, writer, performer and cartoonist, filling in for Jane this week and joining me to discuss is independent journalists behind the newsletter gossip guy Guy Oran. Hey, glad to be here. Nice to have you and of course we've got creative producer Sam J. Leeds with us as well. Hello, hello. First up in City Hall on Thursday last week, council member Maritz Aravera claimed that there were 541 fatal shootings in Seattle in 2024 and that those numbers are trending precipitously upward. The problem, she had confused gun deaths of which there were 32 in 2024 with reported incidents of shots fired, which is where she got the 541 number.

2:04In the wake of high profile incidents like the bite of Seattle shootings in July and the multiple shootings in Belltown following Bumber Shoot last week, it can feel to some like we're locked in an historic epidemic of gun violence, but to the actual statistics bear that out. We saw the letter from the business community to City Hall demanding immediate action on public safety. What is your feel on how things are trending in public safety sensibilities? Yeah, over the last few weeks, I had actually done some digging to the data. So I definitely raised some eyebrow. When I heard Maritz is talking about that because she was definitely very off base on her numbers. What I kind of discovered was that Seattle had about 30 to 40-ish homicides every year, pre-pandemic, and then it spiked between 2020 and 2024. And then last year, it kind of returned back to that baseline. I think it's interesting that we're having this discussion about public safety now, but

3:06it feels like it's a couple of years overdue. If we were having it in 2023 or 2024, it would have made more sense. So we're actually coming down from a peak in gun homicides in the area. And now it's being trumpeted. Of course, some political observers can't help but point out that the difference might be that we have a socialist mayor now. How much do you feel that's feeding into the media narrative? Yeah, I mean, it's really hard not to see a double standard here. Bruce Harrell didn't get attacked as harshly even though it was under his term where these numbers spiked. And it might be fair to ask how much of an impact does any mayor have on these numbers, especially when we consider that guns and the proliferation of guns across the country is a huge driver of all this. This media cycle really started right after the bite of Seattle shooting and it's been now almost a month and a half. And you kind of have a drip drip of like, oh, the chamber does a poll.

4:06Then Bob Kettle hosts this press conference that I was at that invited a bunch of corporate media where he basically announced nothing of substance, but just used it to kind of score political points against the mayor. And now you have these businesses sending a letter and it just seems like they're trying to occupy the news agenda and really put Katie Wilson on the defensive. Now I know she will have her own things to say in the future, but she's been working on a gun violence program and prevention policy that hopefully we'll hear more about soon. But something interesting that was never discussed in this conversation is traffic safety. And this is something she actually talked about when she unveiled this vision zero executive order where she's trying to get the city departments, especially as thought to just like accelerate, you know, it's pedestrian and cyclist safety program. Yeah, so we know that the number of homicides in 2025 and Seattle are pretty similar to

5:11the number of people that were killed in traffic collisions. And so like when you think about sort of what's being prioritized or what's being talked about, I feel like there's a sense that like we just accept that cars are dangerous. Which seems to be the sort of calling card of the show this week, but yeah, that cars are dangerous and that in order to have like cars and traffic in a city, you have to accept a certain number of deaths. But then there's a sense that like gun deaths are unacceptable and need to be dealt with at like a much higher level. And I think, you know, to have a safe city is a city where people are navigating it safely and feel like they can actually be out and participating in public life. Both of those things need to be dealt with, you know, in equal turn. And Brett, I know that in conversations about this, we've talked about the pulling of Seattleites about what they're concerned about around public safety. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure, I think it's important to look at the actual quantitative data. We've got this annual public safety survey that's administered by Seattle U to track public

6:12sentiment on safety and related issues. And for the last couple years, it's been trending away from police capacity and property crime and traffic safety is now, I think, two years running the number one concern of people pulled. Also, in the number two spot now is community capacity. So the community ability to deal with different public safety issues has edged out police capacity and property crime for the number two spot. So there's a very clear mandate that traffic safety is a major concern on everyone's minds. First, it seems a little counterintuitive and surprising. This is a public safety survey and everyone's talking about not wanting to get run over. But of course, sure, it's ubiquitous. We all have to get out on the sidewalks and walk around, whereas gun violence seems like a much more random and startling occurrence. And I will say just anecdotally, like my experience of driving around Seattle is that since the pandemic, I feel like drivers have gotten worse. And I think it's probably a combination of,

7:13cell phone distraction, there being like more screens and cars, and then potentially also COVID related impairments. But it is a really stressful experience to be in a car or walking around on the sidewalk near cars. Like there's just a real like, I have to be on high alert at all times. So in the context of this letter from business leaders about immediately addressing public safety, Katie Wilson has actually been addressing the number one public safety concern. Basically, since she's got in office, and especially with this new vision zero push, which I have already started to see my neighborhood has daylighted intersections right by the school near where I live. There's been extra stop signs put in seemingly overnight. So I'm actually seeing a lot of movement on that front, which is encouraging. Yeah, there's an intersection near where I live that just got daylighting. Yeah. And just from like the journalist perspective, it's interesting seeing colleagues who, never really talk about this issue, apart from a couple of media channels, like the urbanists,

8:16which are really great and solid and always cover it. You barely ever see a systemic analysis. For example, the data itself on pedestrian fatalities is really horrible. Since vision zero was implemented, we've essentially tripled the amount of people who are dying. So about 20 people are dying for pedestrians. You know, disproportionately likely to be homeless or poor, like or working class. Like, are we actually like caring about everyone's lives equally? And I think that's an important question to be had. Even when we're talking about gun violence as well, you know, it tends to be the black and brown victims, especially black and brown youth, who tend to be disproportionately at risk and to be harmed. And they are also the ones who kind of don't get enough resources who are disproportionately likely to be the ones jailed as well, you know. So I think we might need to have a reset. What if we step back and looked at how do we holistically

9:17address all these issues? Like how do we make sure that people are safe? Validly like assessing like where are policy makers moving in the right direction and where are they not? You know, Bruce Harrell basically did almost nothing on traffic safety. When I talk to like traffic safety advocates, they do see this as like a pretty big change with the new Wilson administration. And I think any conversation that kind of neglects or emits that is feels to me kind of biased. It seems like it's a lot easier to make pedestrians safer than it is to prevent a culture of gun violence. So at least let's make some tangible gains on that. It seems to be the Wilson administration's thinking. Let's take a break. And when we come back, why are Seattle's community gardens called P patches? More than 20 years ago, Grand Central Bakery took tomatoes off their menu unless they were

10:24sourced from local farms at peak rightness. That decision turned tomato season into a celebrated annual event marking the return of the Grand Central BLT. And this year, they're sourcing their plum tomatoes that I'm being told a larger than a baseball from deep roots farms and gathering together farm in our Willem at Valley. They pair up these thick tomato slices with Jack Mountain meats bacon, crisp lettuce and rich tangy mayo, unperfectly toasted comobread. That's an Italian rustic white bread with a gold crust, any soft and chewy center house made of course. And if bacon's not your thing, just get it without the bacon. It's equally delicious. Or you can add some of these fresh local tomatoes to your favorite sandwich like a cheddar egg biscuit, which sounds delicious. Find out why people rearrange their vacation plans for this BLT, order online at www.brandcentralbakery.com or at any of their eight neighborhood locations. And yeah, they do deliver.

11:24We talk a lot on this show about building community. And Sam, I know you recently dug into this program that's been a big part of neighborhood community building in Seattle since the 70s, the P patch program. Yeah, so I started digging into this actually because Ben, who is our Princess Social Media, was asking me like, where where does the P patch name come from? Like, why do we call them P patches? And I feel like I've had a lot of conversations with friends too, where people will come to visit town or whatever and we're driving down the street. And I'm like, oh, there's the P patch of whatever neighborhood. They're like, excuse me, what? And I'm like, oh, you don't call them P patches in other places. And so yeah, I started digging into it. I talked to a number of people who have been involved with the program for many decades now, including Kenya Freeti, who is the program manager. And what she told me was that the P patch name is actually in honor of one of the last urban farms in Seattle that led to the creation of the P patch program. Guy, I know you know a little bit about this too. Do you want to say anything about your relationship

12:29to that farm or that you used to live near it? Yeah, I used to live like a couple bucks away. It's kind of on the border of Ravenna and Wedgewood. It's very impressive. If you look from far away, it's like pretty big parcel right on this side of the hill. I never thought too much about it, but kind of hearing the history, it definitely made me appreciate like that we have like this nestled in between a bunch of houses. And it's right by Delfield as well. I find it special. Yeah, so the Picardos were of truck farming family that had this big urban farm in Seattle and they would sell produce at like all the local markets as sort of the need for urban farming started to drop off because of like the way food distribution was changing in the country. The Boeing bust kind of coincided with that in the 70s. And there was a woman who was a UW student at the time and also a neighbor to the Picardos farm who thought what if we use some of this land to grow crops for our neighbors who

13:30are in need right now. And so she approached Rainy Picardo and he said yes. And basically she and neighbors started farming around the edges of the farm to grow food to donate to their neighbors. And then many of the families also got their own eight by eight plots to grow produce for themselves. And about a year after that started, City Council started looking into buying the property to continue that work. And they bought the land and did a sort of 10 month trial program and then launched the original Peepatch program. And there were 10 community gardens across the city. And they were all named Peepaches in honor of the Picardos. It's actually pretty cool because the origins of the Peepatch program are still very much like true to its spirit today. So there are now 91 Peepaches across the city. And 56 of them have what are called giving gardens, which grow food specifically to donate to food banks and food distribution programs.

14:35Kenya told me that last year they donated 41,000 pounds of food. So it's this really amazing program that started with like this little tiny idea and now is you know totally city wide. Something that I found really interesting about this program that I think makes it unique is one there are 15 languages spoken across all of the gardens. So there's a real diversity of Seattleites who are involved in this program. And then it's all organic gardening and apparently unlike a lot of other community garden programs. The county offers free soil testing for nutrients and heavy metals and will also help with figuring out soil health if you do discover heavy metals, which in a lot of other places those programs aren't offered for free. And so poor and working class gardeners are often left to deal with the expenses of that themselves, which means they're often farming and soil that's not actually healthy for them to be exposed to. But there is also this issue of like there are just so many people interested in gardening and the program doesn't have

15:40enough funding or staff to expand beyond the 91 gardens they have right now. So they were telling me that they encourage people to start their own projects and seek out like other forms of funding. If this is something they really want in their community. And Guy, I know you did some digging recently into an example of that. Yeah. Recently I made a scene with my friend Robin about the Black Lives Memorial Garden. It kind of brought to mind this concept of food sovereignty. And basically the idea that a community should be able to take control of its food system and make sure that everyone has quality, nutritious, culturally relevant food. And you know, folks might have heard about the Black Lives Memorial Garden in the context of chop because it started during that time. And basically a group known as Black Star farmers ended up kind of

16:44stewarding this garden in Calanderson Park for about three years. And it was filled with like food crops as well as medicinal herbs, native and culturally kind of important plants as well. It was never a sanctioned project. And in part that's why I ended up getting removed at the end of 2023. But I think since 2020 we have seen a big upswing in the amount of groups that are doing food sovereignty work. Not just Black Star farmers. Nurturing roots has been around for a while. And there's a lot of other groups as well. And you actually have like several gorilla gardens right now in Seattle that folks are kind of tending to. Sometimes it's even as simple as like taking over a curb strip or just like a little parcel of underutilized land. It would be interesting to see how we as a city could maybe explore this and make it easier for people to

17:48kind of revitalize like areas that have become in some ways ecologically barren due to monoculture or like grass being planted. Could we do like more orchard streets? Can we do more things like the beacon food forest? Which I know actually needs more support right now. Yeah, I know that we have partnered in the past with city fruit, which is a very cool program that goes out and like harvest the fruit from people's trees that like aren't using it themselves and finds it a home for folks that are interested in that we will have an event that we will be announcing soon related to that. So you can learn more about some of the orchards that are just like in the city that are available to people. I've been seeing some beautiful apples just smashed on the ground over the past few weeks. Just some real you know grocery where the apples just sitting there rotting. Yeah, there's also quite a few kusa berry trees in my neighborhood, which was something that I

18:48learned a few years ago is an edible fruit and makes like a really delicious jam. And so I have been that weirdo like walking around the neighborhood with like a grocery bag just like picking these berries because I'm like no one's going to eat them. They're going to end up on the sidewalk you know stepped on and like I can make something with this. In many cases no one even knows that they're edible or has bothered to try. Yeah, and you know this brings to mind like the idea that if you got to know your environment more and like if you start to learn like hey this plant is edible I can eat this. Maybe we can like grow this in our garden. Then people will be more aware of their environment in general and it really creates this idea of community belonging. And Sam like you said like there's a real desire here in the city for people to get involved more and like shape the natural environment and the ecosystem in Seattle. I think this is a great opportunity for the city

19:49level like how do you empower people to get more involved to be more creative like is there more we could be doing in terms of depaving like parking lots and turning them into gardens or putting more rooftop gardens like to create more capacity. So especially for renters and folks who don't have their own lawn or their own patch of land they can cultivate. Can we create more opportunities for them to also be able to enjoy nature and grow food. There's a really cool example of that in the sort of right by Seattle Center the Mercer Street garage has a pea patch on it called up garden and if you literally walk up the stairs in the garage and go to the top level there's just a huge garden up there with all these people's plots and it's like a really bizarre sensory experience of going from like a busy city street to emerging into a place where there's flowers everywhere there's birds flying around there's bees buzzing people are like hanging out reading a book

20:51and you're just like in the middle of Seattle Center basically. It's it's a very cool place for a pea patch to be and I think that's the other cool thing about pea patches is even if you're not a gardener in that program or in that particular patch they're open to the public so you can just go and you know spend an afternoon like sitting on a bench there and I walk my dog through the pea patch I you know when my kid was younger we would go there looking for bugs like Rolly Pulleys and such so they do serve much more of a third space function than just producing food. When I go to the CID one of my favorite places to go is that pea patch on the side of the hill next to the highway neighbors just carved out that space and turned it into that land like especially for communities that don't have enough green space like this is one way we can like restore some of that and it's just better for our health it's better for the environment and for like our sense of community. Well let's take a break now and when we come back some updates on city services

21:55you might want to know about. Starting June 1st 2027 homeowners can opt out of real estate solicitations those predatory phone calls, texts and mailers offering to buy your home below market rate to help you get out of a tight spot. The mayor joined by accounts member Dion Foster other city officials and representatives from advocacy organizations signed ordinance 127491 which prohibits soliciting homeowners 30 days after their names are added to a do not solicit list. If the order is violated the city will find the solicitor a thousand dollars for a first violation and a two thousand dollar penalty for each repeat violation solicitation includes mail oral communication and electronic communication. Chikundi Salisbury executive director of Black Legacy homeowners told the South Seattle Emeralds Connor Nash for some in Seattle this might be just an annoyance but for those who are on the edge those who are behind on a mortgage payment or have just lost their significant other these people have been coming into our community to catch us

22:55at our lowest moment where we are at our most vulnerable and ready to give up. I know they've been talking about this for years and so I'm glad it's finally going to be implemented. Obviously it's a little sad that it's coming after a lot of the damage has been done you know especially with gentrification in the central district and it's not lost on me that you know the places that tend to be considered undervalued you know historically black neighborhoods as well as historically POC or immigrant communities as well and so this is definitely like a good protection and I hope that community members in the city will do outreach to homeowners to make sure they're aware of this resource they can use. It's not going to fix everything but yeah it's good to see that the city is trying to actually at least do what they can to help stem the tide of gentrification and you know make sure that you know if someone is going to sell their home they're doing it on their

23:55own terms and they're not you know being pressured by constantly being bombarded with you know predatory real estate companies. And legislatively this just seems like a real layup too and it almost boggles the mind why it took us so long to do this especially considering Bruce Harrow lives on the south end the area most impacted by these type of calls. We didn't see any movement on this during his administration these are just all pretty easy layups. Who is the lobbying base that's opposed to this? I will be curious to see what enforcement actually looks like. How do you track down the person who is sending these calls or texts and then how do you force them to actually pay the fine but you know I think having a database where people can at least feel like city is paying attention to them and taking these kinds of solicitation seriously is a step

24:55in the right direction. Is this the job for like a PI you know do you go in and you're like I'm on the case I'm getting quite one speech. I that job sounds very appealing to me. Yeah very clear cut right and wrong. Yeah very like morally satisfying. Yeah and it's interesting. Harold did sign like executive orders on displacement and like I guess I wonder what if that led to this creation of this ordinance or if it really did take new energy with some like foster to kind of spearhead and actually make it come to fruition. Next up a C-TAC airport announced that starting November 30 of 2026 the C-Spot Saver will no longer be available. This is incredibly upsetting to me personally. I only learned I'm only learning about this through you Sam so can you tell us how you're using the C-Spot Saver. It was a program that was started I think in 2021 or somewhere around that time period because the lines to get through security at C-TAC were and I'm refusing to call

26:00it C even though I know that's what they want to call it now. But the lines to get through security were just you know they were wrapping around the whole airport and it was really really stressful. And so they started this program where you literally would go on the airport website. You'd put in your flight info and the checkpoint that you wanted to go through and you'd make an appointment and then you'd walk up to the security line where pre-check also was like there were kind of two lanes and you'd show a little QR code and they would just bring into the front of the line and it was a 15-minute window on either side of your appointment. I'd show them later than that sometimes and they'd still let me through and it was just like amazing because you don't have to give any of your data to the federal government you're not getting fingerprinted and you don't have to stress about making it through the airport line. And my understanding is that they're sun setting this because they've added a new checkpoint and they've redesigned some of the old ones and so they're saying now that 94% of travelers are

27:03getting through in 20 minutes or less. It's improved quite a bit. It's legitimately impressive how much those times have improved. Yeah so I have to give them credit where credit is due on that but I would just love to continue to have a TSA pre-check alternative that is free and accessible to whoever wants to use it. When friends would come into town and visit and I would like prep them for their flight out I would tell them to make an appointment and they were always like that's so cool that Seattle offers this. I'm retroactively pissed that I didn't know about this for years. I do wonder if the sun setting of it will mean that like a lot more people find out about it and that are outraged that it's going away. Yeah I have no idea either to me on this stuff. Wow guys I've been talking about this I've been telling everyone to use it. Do you even tell me? Do we for I haven't ever had like an issue with the lines at least since COVID you know I feel like they've been pretty good but maybe it also just depends what time your flight is that going out and

28:05if you're flying domestic international and I don't know maybe I've been pretty lucky. It sounds like you have been I feel like it's very producer energy of me to just be incredibly stressed out by like logistical situations and so getting to there for you know ahead of time and being like okay I need to know I'm going to make it through the TSA line and then I can like go get my latte at plurette or something and then go sit and and have like a time to read a book. It's also a producer energy of you to have researched and found out about this before everyone else and been using it for years before the rest of us know about it. Do you go three hours before? I don't go three hours before that feels a little wild to me but I do I take the bus to the light rail and then I take the light rail to the airport and so I do need like an hour commute to get to the airport and then I like to be at the airport at least an hour ahead but I feel like with sports they were going away I might try to get there even sooner just to make sure.

29:07I'm surprised how many people don't take the train to the airport. I don't know if like if your flight is before the link is on don't do it. Yes the light rail has forever changed the game of friend obligations or familial or spousal obligations because like it really does make much more since than driving on any left now I live close enough to a light rail station that it's just a quick hop over but like it's just there's no longer that sense if you especially if you live near a light rail station jump on the light rail I'll meet you at the station. Yeah just drop them off at this station. Yep I did I did that this morning actually and don't pay a hundred dollar Uber. No absolutely not and if you really need to take a ride because you're there really later really early use the cab it's cheaper. Another another life. Sam's airport tips as someone who's in a long distance relationship and his flight. Especially the Union cab drivers. Yeah yeah many reasons to support

30:09cab drivers. Well that's all for us today here at CityCast Seattle. Thank you guy for coming on and speaking to us. As always it was wonderful. And of course thank you Sam you have to be here but just a little thanks now and then too. I'll take it where I can get it Brett. I'm your fill-in host Brett Hamill and listeners we want to hear from you send your news tips, questions, hot goss or your thoughts about life hacking plane trips by sending an email to Seattle at citycast.fm. You can also text us or leave a voicemail in the citycast hotline at 206-880-3931. Until next time see you Seattle.