The West Seattle Crime Prevention Council is back to holding monthly meetings (the third Tuesday of each month) after a summer break, and with its return comes monthly crime reports from Southwest Precinct Operations Lt. Pierre Davis.

“Throughout the summer months we have really had an up-and-down-type summer,” Lt. Davis said. “It hasn’t been bad, but there were times that we had spikes in burglaries and different types of youth activity and we just couldn’t really pinpoint exactly why that was.”

So the Southwest SPD went to work identifying “hot spots,” made some “really, really favorable arrests” and “put a really big dent in the car prowls, auto thefts and the burglaries,” Lt. Davis said.

He said a handful of burglars “responsible for more than half of the issues we had …” were arrested over the summer and may be headed to prison for several years thanks to the Repeat Burglar Initiative where prosecutors can go for exceptional sentences if they can prove serial criminal activity.

The hot spots disappeared after those arrests and “as if someone took a salt shaker and kind of threw it at the map,” Lt. Davis said crime started popping up randomly, so they went back to work and made more arrests.

Over the past six weekws, Lt. Davis said auto thefts are slightly over average with 13 reported versus the West Seattle average of 10.

He said burglaries have dropped over that same period of time.

“I have to give a plug in to our citizens, I have to give a plug in to our Community Police Team and to Mark Solomon (crime prevention coordinator) who gives a lot of community outreach information as far as what to look for (and) how to report,” he added.

“We still have a ways to go,” Lt. Davis concluded with a warning for the future. “We are coming into the holiday months and we always suspect (crime activity) goes up from there. The hours of darkness are upon us … and under the cloak of darkness our bad guys like to get active.”

WSCPC’s guest speaker for the evening was King County Deputy Prosecutor Angela Kaake speaking about identity theft. Expect a full report from that speech, with some surprising tips, posted to the Herald website soon.

The West Seattle Crime Prevention Council’s next meeting is Oct. 18 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Southwest Precinct.