Woman sexually assaulted says Seattle police responded hours later

A woman who called Seattle police after she was attacked on a downtown street in broad daylight said an officer didn’t respond to her 911 call until hours later — and she never spoke to them in person.

The woman, Grace, called the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) response “disappointing” after she was approached by an unknown man as she walked toward Macrina Bakery & Café in the Belltown neighborhood on First Avenue on April 26. She told KIRO Newsradio the man began following her and muttering.

“I kind of gave him the stink eye to get him to go away, which he did,” she told KIRO Newsradio. “And I made it to the bakery.”

But as she left the bakery, the man approached her again.

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“I kind of told him to just fuck off and leave me alone,” Grace said. “I guess he didn’t like that. He immediately slapped my butt very hard.”

Grace said she instinctively turned around and kicked him in the stomach.

“This is something I don’t normally do,” Grace said. “I usually freeze.”

When the man walked away, Grace called 911 and followed him. The operator told her to stop and stay where she was and that an SPD officer would meet her there shortly.

“I waited an hour and they never showed up,” she said.

An SPD spokesman confirmed the call came in shortly after 3 p.m. and an officer was dispatched to the scene at 5:48 p.m. By this time, Grace had already gone home and asked someone to meet her there to take her statement. According to Grace, no one has ever done this. An officer called her later that evening and told Grace he would be filing a report on her behalf.

Grace said she felt her situation wasn’t taken seriously.

“The officer taking the report on the phone? Who does that?” Grace said. “I’ve never had the police call and say, ‘Okay, I can’t come by your place, so I’ll call you instead.'”

If things had escalated there on the sidewalk, she may have been in even greater physical danger since there would have been no officer nearby to intervene.

“The man could have been angry and turned around and tried to find me and do something else to me,” she said.

Tight staffing and slow response times for Seattle Police

A source within the SPD told KIRO Newsradio: “It’s impossible for an officer to simply not respond to a call. “We don’t do that.”

But Grace’s experience bears some similarities to another incident reported last month in which a man reportedly threatened and assaulted employees at a cafe and bakery in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. In this case, the business owner said his employees also called 911, but officers were not dispatched, reportedly due to staffing reasons.

The SPD has a well-documented history of staffing shortages in recent years. The department told “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH last month that the current number of officers on duty is at its lowest level since 2009. SPD data showed that response times have increased significantly since 2020, according to a KIRO 7 report from last year.

KIRO Newsradio reached out to city officials regarding both incidents. In Grace’s case, SPD confirmed that the emergency call was received by the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) team. The department, which was officially founded last October, is separate from the SPD. It operates the city’s 911 communications center and consists of behavioral health specialists trained to provide support and resources to people in times of crisis. Along with an SPD officer, team members respond to emergency calls that determine there is no threat of violence or a medical emergency.

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Police records indicate that the CARE team was responsible for prioritizing Grace’s call. The officer, who arrived at the scene nearly three hours after the initial report, clarified the matter about an hour and a half after speaking to Grace by phone. CARE’s public affairs department said it continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the other incident at Pike Place Market.

How the SPD deals with cases of sexual assault

Amid concerns about delayed response times, Grace told KIRO Newsradio she believes there could be significant improvements in the way officers treat people who report crimes, particularly of a sexual nature.

“He got my name and date of birth and then kind of joked with me, ‘You know, the Valentine’s babies, our parents were having fun, haha,'” Grace said, referring to the phone call she had with an officer hours after that Attack.

Grace said she felt the treatment was inappropriate under the circumstances.

“We are already in shock. And it’s okay. If you ask us questions, we will answer,” Grace said. “But when we make light-hearted jokes like that, we’re not in the right frame of mind to deal with something like that.”

Emily, a woman who spoke to KIRO Newsradio after she was attacked on Howe Street Stairs last year, told a similar story. She said the SPD officer who took her report was “super blunt.”

“I explained all the details to him, but he wasn’t empathetic at all. I’m just wondering, “What’s your name?” What’s your address? Realize what happened,” she said. “Which isn’t a great feeling when you’ve just been attacked.”

The SPD has experienced similar convictions in the past

It is not the first time that the SPD has been confronted with such criticism.

A 2022 Seattle Times watchdog report revealed an internal memo within the police department that said staffing shortages in the sexual assault and child abuse unit meant cases involving adult victims were not investigated by SPD. This caused so much outcry that SPD police chief Adrian Diaz addressed it directly in a video message and promised to provide more resources for solving sexual assaults.

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“Sexual violence is one of the most serious crimes our department investigates, and when I learned of staffing issues at the SAU in April (2022), I immediately began bolstering the unit with additional detectives as well as non-police personnel to support them. “Support for victims of sexual violence,” Diaz said in part. “If you are reporting a sexual assault, please do not call 911; Call 911. With the relocation of 911 to the new Community Safety and Communications Center, SPD will not have access to the non-emergency number, which is not always staffed. We want to ensure we never miss a call and we are committed to ensuring every victim’s voice is heard.”

Grace said she did just that and nothing happened.

“I told them I couldn’t wait any longer,” Grace said, stating she waited on the sidewalk for over an hour. “And the 911 dispatcher said, ‘Go home, call us when you get home and we’ll send an officer,'” she said. “I called them and told them I was home. They said, ‘Okay, we’ll send someone out there.’ And they never sent anyone.”

SPD could not confirm whether the officer assigned to the case attempted to meet Grace at her home as requested. While some inside and outside SPD blame the COVID-19 pandemic and the Seattle City Council’s so-called “defund the police” vote in 2020 for staffing shortages and slow response times, Grace said getting help from officers is a problem to get long before that.

“I had an incident in 2015 where I was hit by a car while I was riding my bike. And I didn’t want the driver to drive away, so I called the police,” she said. “We waited two hours for the police to come. They never came. So I had to go home. And finally, about 30 minutes after I got home, a police officer showed up to take my statement. So to me this feels normal, and it shouldn’t feel normal.”

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