Six male students were robbed at gunpoint while smoking cigars on a bench near Boren and E Fir early this morning, according to a campus email alert sent by Seattle University’s Department of Public Safety. SPD searched the area, but did not locate any suspects.
The SU alert:
At approximately 1:15 AM this morning SPD officers notified Seattle University DPS officers, of a robbery report they had received from six male students, who had just been held up near Boren & E. Fir (approximately five blocks south of campus). The students reported they were sitting on a park bench, smoking cigars, when two unknown males approached them. The two suspects asked the students for a cigarette, which they smoked while chatting with the students. A couple of minutes later one of the suspect’s said “they were going to have to take their stuff”, as one suspect was now holding what appeared to be a hand gun. The suspects took the student’s wallets, cell phones, and a small camera. The two suspects then left the park area on foot. Seattle Police officers searched all city streets around the small park, but no one matching the suspect’s descriptions was located.
The suspects were described as two males in their early 20s. The suspect armed was described to be 5’10”, medium build; wearing a Minnesota Twin’s baseball hat; red and black hooded sweatshirt, baggy jeans, and had a goatee. The second suspect was described as being 5’8”, thin build; wearing a white hooded sweatshirt with gray circle designs; baggy jeans; and wore a diamond earring.
How odd given recent responses on CDN to crimes. Hey, they were able to afford cigars, so they asked for it, right?
Well there was someone who came on this thread and posted a crazy comment but he was quickly booted. He wasn’t exactly blaming the victim, but did say some out of line stuff. I’m not sure why you want to egg things on in the way that you are.
Lighten up with that heavy editor’s hand. Last time I complained about you deleting a comment, you said it contained a threat, which I thought a stretch. Now you delete something “out of line.” This is a community forum, and not all members of the community share the same values. We want to know whom we live with, how they think. You edit this blog to make the CD look like some Yuppie utopia. This goes along with deleting most of the crime reports.
I don’t have any editor hands, man. Like you, I have also complained about comments and posts being deleted. I’m not the one deleting comments. I just saw the comment. “Out of line” was my words and if you saw the comment you might say it in a different way. I’m glad that particular comment is gone. In fact it looks like every comment the guy made was gone within a few hours. Opinion is one thing, but trolling is another. That is what the comment seemed to be.
An unmoderated CDN could be interesting. It could also really suck. If it’s going to be moderated I really think a good approach would be to have some rules about comments and posting and for the moderator/s to remove comments and posts that break those rules. When a comment or post is removed it would be nice for the “editorial hand” to make note of it in the comments section. This is how the Rainier Valley Post does it and it seems to work well. As it stands the terms of use on this site are vague and basically state the administrators can remove you or your comments for any purpose. Although that doesn’t happen often it does happen. I agree with you that this blog tends to favor certain opinions and shun others making things look like a yuppie utopia indeed. It’s not just the moderators though, it’s the people commenting as well.
although it’s wonderfully P.C., I find it interesting that the description of the suspects includes mostly their clothing (after an hour or so it’s worthless) – and only a limited physical description that does not include white, black, hispanic, asian….seems to avoid the most obvious starting point.
Sorry JB, mixed you up with our current editor (jseattle?). I’d like to have the option of knowing there was a comment, that it was deleted, and that I could see it if I made an effort, that’s all.
I was the one moderating this story. I did remove a couple comments. One person was basically being a vandal all over the site, including this article. The other comment had poorly-hidden racist language, which is not tolerated. Since that comment did have a response, I could have left a note saying that a comment had been deleted. I’m still getting the hang of this moderation thing, and I’ll try to be more clear about removing things. Thanks.
I think that you could safely assume that if a suspect’s race or ethnicity is not mentioned in a crime report on this blog that their description is most likely non-white. It is the same thing that happens most of the time on CHS seattle….the editors of these blogs who are not professionally-trained journalists often wish to not fan flames so they leave out vital descriptive elements, which in fact, causes more flare ups. Its the curse of the internet, people who are not trained to properly disseminate information often wind up mucking a story in a neighborhood around. Please CHS and CDN, you guys are playing a much larger role than gossip, bar and restaurant reviewers. Its time to really start acting like a more professional outlet.
Your claims are ridiculous. There are plenty of examples on both sites where race of suspects is included in descriptions.
In this case, we are including a bulletin sent out by Seattle University verbatim. Your beef — whatever it may be — is with SU, I guess.
Did you not see that the alert is from Seattle U? Were you expecting Tom to see this email alert and say, “wait in the interest of journalism I need to find out what race the suspects were?”.
He got a Seattle U security bulletin that did not identify the race of the suspects. And he chose to post it. I’m not sure how you have missed all of the crime reports on this site that clearly list a suspect’s race.
My experience with journalism and crime reports is actually the exact opposite as what you say I “could safely assume”. Usually if a race is not mentioned, the implied race is white. If the race is not available or mentioned, someone becomes upsets and talks about how people are too PC here.
Actually JB, the Journalistic thing to do would be to find out as much information as you can about the incident instead of simply reposting the SU bulletin.
Well we know that most sites now (esp local newsy sites) just cross-post the heck out of everything (driving up hits and numbers for the adverts I imagine) so its a lot easier to aggregate news from a desk then going out and grabbing new facts. ANYHOW, it would be nice to see a complete copy of the poilce incident report with a complete description of the suspects. I walk the dogs every night when i get home after work around midnight and i’d like to know who to avoid, and what they look like.
I think its time to stop being afraid of what everyone thinks and just deal in facts and not supposition or innuendo. If a description of a suspect is lacking, then a complete one should be provided, otherwies the criminals using deadly weapons will not get caught. It would be nice to see a compilation on this site of the descriptions of all suspects in crimes within the central district and cap hill. I think if there was a page someone could easily click to on their phone or compture quickly it would make catching these thieves, murderers and rapists easier. It a heck of an idea JS–or maybe Jonah would be better at this…?
http://www.centraldistrictnews.com/2011/04/12/details-releas
There’s the facts you want. The full police report. Did JS do a better job? The police report doesn’t mention a suspect description either. Hmmmmm.
@JB-what
The journalistic thing to do? LOL.
Lol…”cigars”????