King County Prosecutors have filed charges against the three suspects who were apprehended in Monday’s officer-involved shooting on Jackson Street. 

The first, 28-year old Demetrius Lee James, who we referred to as “Suspect A” in a follow-up story on Tuesday, is charged with Assault in the 2nd degree for an alleged attempt to strike a Seattle police officer with a vehicle as they tried to escape. He’s held in King County Jail on a bail of $40,000, which authorities are attempting to increase to $100,000 due to his “danger to the community and law enforcement.”  He also was found to have an open no-bail warrant for previous parole violations.

The second suspect, 30-year old Ricky Benjamin Valley, aka Kevin Orlando McClain, is charged with Obstructing a Police Officer.  He has an open warrant from California on a weapons charge, and remains in custody in the King County Jail.

A third 17-year old juvenile suspect is also charged with an obstruction charge.  The fourth occupant of the vehicle is still at large.

According to court documents released today by the King County Prosecutors, the incident started as we previously described, when two East Precinct officers noticed a discrepancy between the license plates on the suspects vehicle as it sat parked and occupied in the Star Market parking lot at 20th & S. Jackson.  As one officer tried to talk to the driver of the vehicle, James, the driver, put the car in gear and started driving toward Jackson Street, rapidly accelerating and ignoring officer’s commands to stop.  The second officer heard one of the car’s occupants say “Hit that fucker! Hit that fucker!,” prompting the officer to fire his taser into the open passenger window of the vehicle. The vehicle continued to accelerate towards the first officer, and he responded by firing his service weapon into the vehicle, hitting it five times.

The suspects continued to drive away, heading westbound on Jackson.  At some point the suspects all bailed from the vehicle, with Valley and the juvenile suspect running westbound down the street.  Their vehicle struck another police vehicle that was responding to the call, and the officer in that vehicle was knocked to the ground and then pursued those suspects down the street, capturing Valley about a block away. A citizen who was witnessing the scene captured the juvenile and held him to the ground until additional police arrived.

James ran southbound, and was found hiding in the 1800 block of S. Lane with a gunshot wound to his right hand and a taser dart stuck to his shirt. He told officers “the police shot me.”

Police recovered a loaded revolver from the street near where the suspects bailed from their vehicle. None of the three were eligible to be in possession of a gun.

An arraignment is scheduled for July 23rd at 8:30am for Demetrius James and Ricky Valley.  The third suspect will be arraigned tomorrow at 1pm in juvenile court.

KING 5 Story from June, stumbled upon via the usual circuitous path of “the internets”.

11:35 AM PDT on Tuesday, June 26, 2007

 By KATHERINE SATHER / KING5.com

As far as Lottie Cross is concerned, there is no Central District in Seattle anymore.

Gentrification has changed the character of the historically African American neighborhood.

“It’s phasing out,” she said.

But as condos sprout up on street corners and new white, middle class families move in, some say an integral part of the community has been victimized. Black businesses struggle even as new wealth enters their neighborhood.

………(read the rest)

(Photo: Lucas Anderson/Neighborlogs.com)

For the second segment on Central District urban agriculture, I visited the home of Chris Rogers. It’s hard to believe that the walls of a steel-clad house on Olive contains a lover of agriculture. After a summer school program he attended when he was in middle school, Rogers became hooked on what became a life long passion: bees.

Hidden behind a stone wall, his hives are easier heard than seen, spewing bees protecting their precious honey. “Bee keeping is the next step after a vegetable garden”, says Rogers, who has been doing urban agriculture for years. Compared to chickens, bees are a little less friendly (and seemed to be particularly spiteful towards reporters). “I probably get stung every time I’m out with them” he said, despite having a beekeeping suit. But the drawbacks to bees end with the stinging, as Rogers harvests gallons of honey each year to be used in cooking, eating, and for gifts. He even notes the stings tend to make his joints feel better, referencing Apitherapy, or the medical use of honeybee products.

While the upfront cost to start beekeeping is high, maintaining the hives is low cost, and if you aren’t afraid of bees, fairly easy. Rogers checks on his hives every two weeks, and harvests two times a year. Seattle law on beekeeping requires you to register with the State Department of Agriculture and limits the number of hives to 4 on an average lot. Also, the city requires a solid fence if the hives are too close to the edge of your property.

For more information, The Puget Sound Beekeepers Association, which Rogers is a member of, meets monthly to discuss beekeeping and other bee related topics. 

Is a large mixed-use apartment building really moving forward during the down economy? We’ll all have an opportunity to ask that question and take a peek at how it might look at a design review scheduled for next Wednesday.

Plans call for 95 apartments to be placed in a six-story building with underground parking and ground-floor retail. The project documents mention the need for a contract rezone on the site, but the reason for that is not entirely clear since the property is zoned NC3-65, which should already allow for a six-story mixed use building.

The project site is currently home to a very large, very deep hole that will presumedly become the underground garage of the new structure. It was previously home to an old brick auto shop on the corner and a single-family home and apartment building on the parcels to the south along Broadway. Those were demolished earlier this year and contaminated soils under the old garage were dug up and removed.

Here’s some shots of what-was from Google Streetview that we’ll try to preserve for posterity:

View Larger Map

Demolished Auto Shop at Broadway & Jefferson

Demolished home & apartments from 400 block of Broadway

I came across an apparently abandoned bicycle on the sidewalk at the corner of 26th Avenue and Fir Street this morning (7/9/09) around 7:20am and two hours later see that it is still there (someone moved it slightly into the grass parking strip). I suspect it is stolen and then abandoned — one plastice pedal was partially broken off and I saw the piece of pedal halfway down the block from the bike. It is an adult mountain bike. I have already called it in to the police non-emergency line (206-625-5011) and they said they were going to send someone by to check on it, so the police department may end up in possession of it if it is not still there in the near future.

From Seattle’s East Precinct, Thursday, July 9, 2009

When? Saturday – July 11, 2009 9:00am – 5:00pm (or until everything’s gone!)

Where? The front yards of 20th Avenue – between Union and Marion (Participating houses will make themselves known!)

What will you find for sale?

• Clothes, Shoes, Accessories
• Pet Supplies
• Kitchen Essentials
• Mid-Century Collectibles
• Movies
• LP’s
• Tools
• Glassware & Tableware
• Luggage
• Artwork
• Furniture
• And all kinda of other stuff!

And homemade pickles and giardiniera from Chef Brenda Lee!

Come early for the best stuff! See you all there!

Last Friday, CDNews member soundviewrob posted a short notice and photo of his bike that was stolen from his driveway the previous night. That bike is now back in his possession thanks to that post and an eagle-eyed officer in the East Precinct.

I just got the full story from SPD’s Lt. Deanna Nollette, who said that Officer Chin and his partner were on routine patrol Monday when they saw a man riding a bike without a helmet. They made a traffic stop for the helmet violation, and on closer inspection Officer Chin realized he recognized the bike. He had visited CDNews earlier that day and had seen soundviewrob’s post about the bike, and made the connection.

The suspect was taken into custody, the police report on the stolen bike was found, and soundviewrob was brought in to make a positive ID of his property. He got the bike back, and the suspect got booked into the King County Jail for Possession of Stolen Property.

CentralDistrictNews.com is a community platform. Anybody can post a story that will get attention and help communicate with your neighbors. If you’ve ever got news you’d like to share, register for a free account and post your story!

The stolen bike, now back at home

Type in James Donaldson into any search engine, and you’ll probably come across a young basketball player for the Seattle Supersonics with an Afro about as big as the ball he’s holding. Now, with a little less hair, and a lot more experience, Donaldson is challenging incumbent mayor Greg Nickels for the chance to run Seattle. On Monday of this week, Donaldson visited the Central District to meet business owners and discuss their concerns.

As a former owner of a health and physical therapy business at 22nd & Jackson, Donaldson said he is very familiar with the area and the struggles of small businesses in the city. His main suggestions for easing their burdens are to reduce business taxes and help speed up the permitting process. “I don’t think there needs to be a penalty for business to grow. We need to have incentives for business to grow,” he said, referring to head and square footage taxes the city levies on businesses. Donaldson wants to get rid of the taxes to ease the stress on small businesses that he says are most effected by them.  

Mary Wesely, owner of Flowers Just 4U since 1984 and a supporter of Donaldson, is looking to him to tighten up the streets around the Central District. One of her major concerns are the large groups of young people that hang out on the streets near her business. She’d like to see a stronger police presence, including police patrolling on foot, and for the city to provide more options to keep kids involved in positive activities. “You’ve got to let the kids know that there’s other places they can go, other than hanging out on a street corner. It looks bad, it gives them a label, and they may be good innocent kids, but we don’t know.”

Donaldson addressed these concerns when asked about crime in the Central District and elsewhere around the city, calling for a larger police force and change in focus to have more walking, biking, and horseback-riding officers in neighborhoods. “We need to make sure that we get more police officers involved in our community than has been done in the last several years,”  he said. Donaldson would fund additional police resources by seeking other efficiencies and looking for ways to reduce the more expensive levels of management in the city bureaucracy. “There are over 13,000 city employees now. Around 800 of them make over one hundred thousand dollars per year. How much duplication and replication and triplication is going on?”

On the topic of development, Donaldson stressed the need to insure that the city can continue to grow and accommodate new residents. “We can’t keep on getting by with the way things have been,” Donaldson said. “We want to keep neighborhood charm and historical aspects, but we need to build for our growth.”

Editor’s note: This story was written by our awesome Neighborlogs news intern Lucas Anderson, based on audio recordings of an interview conducted by Scott

Note to other candidates: let us know when you’ll be in the neighborhood and we’ll be there to cover it

You’ve probably already heard the beep-beep-beep of progress if you live within four or five blocks of 30th & Denny. Construction crews are on the site of the Madison Valley drainage pond, positioning heavy equipment and preparing the site for the expansion of the hole to handle larger flooding events.

Although construction was originally to have begun this week, the construction company has to finish up various paperwork and planning tasks before they can get started. A project engineer tells me that things will likely start in earnest next week. In the meantime, the entire property is now fenced off and a construction office trailer is parked along the edge of the property on 30th.

According to Seattle Public Utilities, neighbors can expect “increased noise, dust, and vibration” and a lot of truck traffic once construction begins. It will take hundreds of dump-truck trips to haul away all of the excavated soil. If neighbors run into any issues with the construction, they’re encouraged to contact SPU engineer Cynthia Blazina, who will be on site and available by phone at 206-423-1474.

The park bench along 30th was left out of the project fence, giving construction-watchers a front-row view of the noisy, dusty, vibrationy fun.