Tag: Seattle

Bicyclists Get a Safe Space to Learn Traffic Laws, Fixing a Broken Ballot System and More

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White Center Bike Park pleases many ‘spokes people,’ West Seattle Herald
It’s practically an American tradition: Dad takes his child to an empty parking lot to learn to drive a car. Why don’t we have the same for biking? In cyclist-friendly Seattle, a new “traffic garden” — a car-free model of real road, complete with stop signs, roundabouts and one-way streets — in a local park is giving kids a risk-free space to learn traffic laws.

Designing a Better Ballot, The Atlantic
In a country already mired by low voter turnout (two-thirds of citizens didn’t bother to vote in the last midterm election), ballots that go uncounted because they are left blank, unsigned or marked improperly is an even bigger civic concern. In Florida, home of the notorious hanging chad, and other jurisdictions, elections officials are simplifying language and adding design elements to ensure ballots are properly cast — and counted.

This Machine Could Prevent Gun Violence — If Only Cops Used It, The Marshall Project
When it comes to creating a national gun registry, law-abiding firearms owners often feel their Second Amendment rights are in the crosshairs. But if there’s one issue they should be able to agree on, it’s this: reforming an underutilized database that targets only criminal shooters. The National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) helps police track the unique markings imprinted on shell casings and flag matches at other crime scenes, implicating only the perpetrators.

How One School System Is Fighting Back Against the Achievement Gap, A Better Way to Help the Homeless and More

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What Are Massachusetts Public Schools Doing Right? The Atlantic
The Bay State may be tops when it comes to reading and math, but officials aren’t resting on their laurels. Instead, they’re directing resources towards Massachusetts’s achievement gap, which remains stubbornly high. Can a focus on social-emotional learning and childhood trauma bring disadvantaged students up to the same level as their more affluent peers?
Give Directly to the Homeless Through a New Sharing Economy App, Fast Co.Exist
Known as the “City of Goodwill,” Seattle is living up to its moniker. Thanks to one tech entrepreneur and an advocate for the homeless, residents can now use the WeCount app to donate unwanted items (think: blankets, coats, sleeping bags) directly to those most in need. With homelessness an ongoing problem in many urban areas, let’s hope this technology spreads across the country — fast.
What If Mental Health First Aid Were as Widespread as CPR? New York City’s Planning to Do It, Yes! Magazine
Often, law enforcement encounter people suffering from mental illness, yet many haven’t received the education necessary to recognize and provide assistance (instead of arrest). In response, the New York Police Department is joining forces with the National Council for Behavioral Health to provide 250,000 first responders with mental health first aid training. The ultimate goal? To prevent suicide, which currently takes 40,000 lives each year.
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Wrongful Conviction Spurs Texas to Reform Police Lineups, Scientist Discovers Efficient Way to Restore Coral Reefs and More

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Recognition, The New Yorker
Texas has the reputation of being tough on crime and even harsher on those found guilty. For those who binged Netflix’s recent “Making a Murderer,” the tale of Tim Cole, an Army veteran who, because of incorrect eyewitness identification by the victim herself, was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault in 1986 (and died while incarcerated), will make it seem like our criminal justice system is broken. Fortunately, there is a silver lining to this tragic story.
This Village of Tiny Houses Is Giving Seattle’s Homeless a Place to Live, Fast Co. Exist
With approximately 10,000 people living on the streets, it’s an understatement to say that there’s a homelessness crisis happening in Seattle. Since affordable and free housing for the homeless is a costly endeavor, the nonprofit Low Income Housing Institute needed to get creative. Their idea? Tiny houses that can house a small family, yet cost just $2,000 to construct.
A Coral Reef Revival, The Atlantic
Helping a century’s old coral reef come back to life certainly sounds like science fiction, but it’s exactly what David Vaughan, Ph.D., is doing off the coast of south Florida. He and his team of scientists are restoring reefs by producing thousands of new pieces of coral using microfragmentation — a new process that he developed by accident.
 

The American City That’s Adopting a Pay-What-You-Can-Afford Model for Public Transit

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For Andrea Smith, a Seattle resident who commutes to her job at a nonprofit theater daily by bus, the latest fare hikes for a monthly transit pass were making the trek unaffordable, particularly as business slowed after the Great Recession.
“I was paying cash, ride by ride, since I couldn’t afford a monthly pass,” she says. “I commute to work every day, often six days a week, and I was spending far more…, just because I couldn’t afford to pay all at once.”
A new pilot program launched three months ago by the King County Department of Transportation provided a fix that so many residents who rely on public transit (yet found they couldn’t afford it) desperately needed. The first of its kind in the nation, Seattle’s ORCA Lift offers fares directly tied to a person’s income. For anyone below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $23,340, riders only need to pay $1.50 a trip — reduced from the standard $2.75 fare (though that number changes based on distance traveled and time of day). That means a person who rode the bus to and from work, five days a week at peak travel times could save up to $910 a year.
“The ORCA Lift reduced fare for low-income riders is an important step forward in making public transit affordable for everyone in King County,” says Katie Wilson, the General Secretary of the Transit Riders Union, an organization of working-class individuals who lobby for affordable and reliable public transit.
According to numbers provided by King County officials, nearly 9,000 riders have signed up, accounting for around 54,000 weekly boardings on the bus system.
While the program is a good first step, Wilson says, but there’s much more that could be done. Before the recession in 2008, standard adult fares remained stable around $1.25 — lower than even ORCA Lift’s new total, Wilson points out. “Standard adult fares have doubled since then, and on March 1, the same day as the ORCA Lift program was introduced, fares were also raised again for youth, senior and disabled riders,” she says. “The ORCA Lift program is not enough. We’re still a long way from a public transit system that is affordable for everyone.”
A New Yorker for 16 years, Smith says she loved “how you could get around so easily on public transit” in Manhattan. Even thought transportation in the Emerald City still lags, she’s telling all her friends to sign up. Though it’s tough seeing how many of her colleagues qualify for the reduced fare, at least she knows they’re all still able to get to work. “The ORCA Lift card has been a godsend for me.”

This City’s Police Want to Protect Your Right to Privacy

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What did the Seattle Police Department do when an activist requested their entire archive of patrol car videos — all 1.6 million videos? For the hometown of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, the answer was easy: Seattle’s cops went to the computer nerds.

Law enforcement agencies are promising body cameras will bring a new era of accountability by capturing cops’ every interaction on film in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York and other cities encouraged by Obama’s promise of $263 million in funding. But all that video presents a technical problem: how can a department possibly sort and release so many hours of footage? Stepping up its commitment to transparency and collaboration, Seattle’s police asked 80 local tech wizards from Amazon, Microsoft and Evidence.com to streamline the disclosure process at its first department-sponsored hackathon earlier this month.

“We’re having a conversation about transparency and privacy. How do the two intersect?” Sgt. Sean Whitcomb, a spokesperson, tells the The Seattle Times. “How can the Seattle Police Department share terabytes of information we’re storing?”

Citizens only feel cameras increase accountability if they trust the devices are used properly, if they cannot be switched off at critical moments or if the video won’t be buried by scandal-averse commanders. But police departments cannot simply post raw video of every arrest to YouTube. To protect individuals’ privacy, state law prevents police from releasing details like the faces of juveniles or sexual assault victims as well medical details or mental health history, explains Mary Perry, the police department’s counsel.

But currently, removing a simple cut from a one-minute video “can take specialists upward of half an hour, whereas more complicated edits — like blurring multiple faces or pieces of audio — can take much, much longer,” an S.P.D. statement says. That’s a problem when the police are already burning an average of 7,000 DVDs every month and will have even more as body cams are rolled out for the entire force.

Technologies like image-recognition seem to be the police’s best bet for a quicker, cheaper way to systematically redact sensitive information. “Government agencies don’t jump out to me to be at the forefront of technology research,” says Simon Winder, head of Impressive Machines, a tech company focused on robotics, machine learning and recognition software. But with such huge tasks, cities are primed to adopt cutting-edge solutions. “There are so many ways we can yet use technology,” Seattle’s mayor Ed Murray responds. “We want to be the number one digital city.”

One of the recurring topics the hackers discussed was what to do when an algorithm makes an error in identifying a person or a frame of video, particularly because so many are shot in the dark of night or in the blur of pursuing a suspect. “The problem is you can’t just say ‘oops’ when you violate someone’s right to privacy,” says Brandon Arp, a software developer at Groupon who attended the hackathon. He proposed a “very conservative” system that hides more information from a clip than required by law but allows for a person to request a manual secondary review of individual redactions.

Ideas like this emerged over the five-hour brainstorming session (and free lunch) in the basement of police headquarters, prompting officials to predict they will become a national model. Officer Patrick Michaud says he was “blown away” by the hackathon. “Options came out of it, which is what we look for,” he tells The Seattle Times. “A different way to look for problems always works for us.”

DON’T MISS: This Is What Community Oriented Policing Looks Like
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Could This Be the Next ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?

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Last month, a burglar broke into veteran Andrew Myers’s Seattle house. But as the security camera footage in the YouTube video “Mr. Wrong House – Robber Meets Paratrooper” shows, Myers tackled the robber, punched him and held him until police arrived. The story spread across the country, and the video has been viewed almost 4 million times.
“Part of the reason it became a national story is, gratuitously thanking veterans makes people feel good about themselves,” Myers tells KIRO Radio. “That’s my opinion as a soldier watching civilians. It makes people feel patriotic. It’s like warm apple pie to see veteran justice. Another element to it is, people love instant karma. It really seems like these low-level home invasions are a much bigger deal than I realized. So many of these comments are people with similar experiences.”
When some suggested Myers should try to profit from his new fame, he rejected the idea. But then he got to thinking about a grave problem facing veterans — the suicide rate of 22 deaths a day — and decided his video might be able to help. After all, he knew what it was like to have long lasting effects from military service.
Myers served in Afghanistan as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. When he returned home, he began to experience symptoms of PTSD. He soon contacted Paws and Stripes, an organization that provides service dogs to veterans with PTSD, and was matched with Hunter, an Australian shepherd. Myers instantly felt better with Hunter by his side. “I was 100 percent different person within two days of having the dog. I was like, ‘I need you.'”
So Myers set up a website, MrWrongHouse.com, where he invites people to take a donation challenge which involves uploading a black-and-white photo of themselves with their arms extended in a “come at me, bro” gesture that he makes in the security camera footage, making a donation to Paws and Stripes and nominating three other individuals to participate.
“Go on the porch, do the wingspan pose, take a black and white picture, and challenge your friends to do the same,” he says. “Keep the challenge going long enough to hit that viral-ity that will raise enough money to make a difference.”
After viewing the “Mr. Wrong House” video, our guess is many people will be inclined to do what Myers tells them to do.
MORE: After Losing Her Marine Son to PTSD, This Mom’s Mission is to Save Other Veterans

Santa Fe is Changing the Rules in the War on Drugs

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According to Santa Fe police captain, Jermone Sanchez, cops are “chasing the same people over and over again,” since there’s a repeat cast of opiate addicts committing 100 percent of the city’s burglaries and other property crimes.
So what is the southwest city doing to reduce the number of repeat offenders?
Back in July 2013, the city voted to launch the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (or LEAD).The pilot initiative involves the Santa Fe police department, the district attorney’s office and public defenders, City Hall, various nonprofits and the Drug Policy Alliance of New Mexico.
Under this progressive program, which is already at work in Seattle, Wash., instead of becoming prisoners, people arrested for low-level drug offenses are given the option of becoming a “client” before they’re booked.
These clients are then assigned a case manager that offers an individualized regimen of not only “drug treatment, but also housing, transportation, and even employment support programs,” according to the Nation. Since initiating the program this April, Santa Fe has enrolled 10 offenders in LEAD.
Interestingly, participants don’t get in trouble for relapsing, and while they can be thrown out of the program, that will only occur if they commit a serious crime, reports the Nation.
Emily Kaltenback, state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, first proposed getting addicts into comprehensive treatment instead of constantly cramming up the courts and jail; she’s since won over the collaborative support of the “Santa Fe Police Department, City Hall, nonprofit service providers, the District Attorney’s office, and public defenders.”
Sanchez and Kaltenbach both believe that this program and ones like it are the best chance at overcoming the societal hardships drugs create. It also doesn’t hurt that the Santa Fe Community Foundation also thinks that LEAD could eliminate half of the $1.5 million it currently spends on the drug war.
Already, the City Council pledged to spend $300,000 on the program over the next three years, and new training for police officers begins this month.
The buzz of LEAD has made it to the east coast, too, with New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio recently announcing the start of the Public Health Diversion Center to route low-level offenders into treatment, health and welfare services instead of jail.
Safer streets on a lower budget? Count us in.

Name the Most Pedestrian-Friendly City in America

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Pedestrian life is picking up speed across the country, with an estimated five percent more Americans walking to work now compared to 2000, Bloomberg reports. But with more than 4,700 pedestrian deaths in 2012, city planners are recognizing the importance of improving pathways and policies to protect citizens on their feet.
In a study of the safest cities for pedestrians by insurer Liberty Mutual Holding Co., Seattle topped the list. The Pacific Northwest city had fewer than 10 annual pedestrian deaths in 2012 and was noted for its investment in infrastructure to improve the walking safety of more than 108,000 commuters each day. That same year, the city ordered more than 500 crosswalks and also improved walking routes for students.
Boston and Washington, D.C. came in second and third, respectively. San Francisco notched fourth and New York City grabbed the fifth spot on the list of of 25 cities analyzed for pedestrians. The most dangerous for walkers? Detroit. The report ranks cities by traffic data, infrastructure and local attitude on public safety among 2,500 residents across the observed cities.
Dave Melton, Liberty Mutual’s managing director of global safety, attributes well-planned pedestrian safety to countdown lights and flashers at crosswalks that help drivers focus on the road and direct attention from pedestrians. But pesky cellphone usage still remains an issue. 

“The human brain doesn’t multitask,” Melton says. “It switches back and forth.”

It’s tricky to try to control phone distraction, but ensuring every other component of protecting pedestrians is a step in the right direction.

MORE: These Kids Are Powering Their School Just By Walking

Want to Throw Food Away in This City? It’ll Cost You

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There’s a new contender for greenest city in America. Seattle’s City Council unanimously passed a new policy that will fine businesses and residents for not composting.
Starting Jan. 1, 2015, all Seattle residents and commercial establishments must separate food waste and compostable paper for recycling — meaning these items can’t get sent to the landfills like regular garbage. With the new regulation, the city’s trash collectors can hand out tickets if they find a trash bin with more than 10 percent compostable waste. “After receiving two warnings, residents and businesses will be fined $50 for dumpsters and a more modest $1 for waste at single-family homes,” CNN reports.
Even though a $1 fine isn’t very much (for comparison’s sake, San Francisco fines its residents up to $100 for failing to compost), Seattle isn’t actually trying to make money off of trash violators. Rather, the city wants to stress to its residents the importance of recycling. As Tim Croll (Seattle Public Utilities’ solid-waste director) tells the Seattle Times, the city has collected less than $2,000 in fines since it outlawed recyclable items from the trash a whole nine years ago.
“The point isn’t to raise revenue,” Croll adds. “We care more about reminding people to separate their materials.”
MORE: The State That Has Made It Illegal to Throw Away Unwanted Food
Seattle has a goal of recycling 60 percent of waste by 2015 and 70 percent by 2022. However, its recycling rate for 2013 was at 56 percent, which fell a little short of the city’s target, the Times reports. The new law should generate an additional 38,000 tons of compost material every year, hopefully putting the city back on track.
Food and paper waste is a huge, expensive problem for the whole of America. We’ve previously reported that more than any other material thrown away by Americans, paper has the biggest presence in landfills. According to the EPA, paper takes up the largest chuck of solid municipal solid waste at 27 percent. As for our food scraps, a staggering 40 percent of the food in this country is completely wasted, or about 36 million tons of food annually, setting us back $165 billion in wasted costs per year.
Seattle’s continued efforts reduce waste is something that other cities should aspire to.
DON’T MISS: 6 Common Environmental Culprits That Need Regulation
 

Which Cities Are Working the Hardest to Save the Planet?

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With more green space and lower greenhouse gas emissions, cities nationwide are striving to become leaders and innovators in the environmental movement.
Recently, the International Business Times decided to take a look at the cities leading the pack, and while the publication didn’t use exact science, it examined criterion such as carbon footprint, LEED certified buildings (LEED stands for leadership in energy and environmental design) and green space, among others to find the top 10 eco-friendly cities in the U.S.
Among their findings (in no particular order):
SAN FRANCISCO
Not only is it the first city to ban plastic grocery bags, but it also has a curbside compost pick-up program, among numerous other eco-friendly projects.
SEATTLE
This rainy town is a leader in green space with seven parks per 10,000 residents. It also has over 20 buildings that are LEED certified or are being built with the intention of being designated as such.
PORTLAND, ORE.
In addition to building a well-structured mass transit system, Portland has taken the bike craze to a new level. It also boasts loads of green space, a strong recycling program and its carbon emissions per capita rank it in the lowest 20 percent of U.S. cities.
CHICAGO
The Windy City is home to the most buildings with green roofs, which not only help to control temperature by heating and cooling the inside, but they also improve air quality – which isn’t a bad asset for any urban area.
BURLINGTON, VT.
With a third of its energy coming from hydroelectric dams, another third from wind energy and the final third from biomass renewal, this northeast city of 42,000 people just began the first city to be powered by 100 percent renewable energy.
While this is just a small sampling of what this country is doing to go green, it demonstrates how cities are working to be more environmentally conscious all the time. To find out the remainder of the top 10, click here.
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