The Seattle Police Department now makes it possible to track crimes down to your neighborhood using social media tool Twitter with Tweets by Beat.

You can follow or view a Twitter feed of police dispatches in each of Seattle’s 51 police beats, and find out about the flashing lights and sirens on your block, though with a bit of a delay.

Since putting information out instantly would potentially jeopardize crime victims, officers, and the integrity of investigations, calls will display one hour after a dispatcher sends the call to an officer. The feeds also do not include information about domestic violence calls, sexual assaults, and other certain types of crimes.

You can check out the beat for your area on the Seattle Police web page here http://seattle.gov/police/tweets/

That page explains:

WHAT ARE BEATS?
Seattle is divided into five geographic areas. Within those areas are the 5 precincts or police stations: North, East, South, West and Southwest. Precinct boundaries were determined through consideration of s:neighborhood boundaries, geographic and other natural boundaries.

Each precinct is divided into 17 smaller geographic areas called Sectors.

Each of these Sectors are divided into between 3 smaller sections called Beats (i.e. Ocean sector has three beats O1, O2, O3) These are the areas that individual patrol officers are assigned responsibility for.