Ballard man catches apparent drug deals on home surveillance, goes to cops

It’s not an uncommon situation: a resident captures an apparent Seattle crime on camera. One of the more recent cases is that of a Ballard man, who discovered people using his private driveway as a meetup spot.

It happened in Magnolia when a business filmed alleged drug deals at an RV parked in front of their building. Not much could happen at the time, but police eventually amassed enough evidence to make an arrest.

Related: Seattle police make arrest at infamous drug-dealing RV

“I’m suspecting drug deals because it seems pretty obvious to me,” said Paco Leibowitz, whose security camera caught instances when people would use his driveway to meet up and make exchanges.

“I don’t have proof, looking at the pictures, what else could it be?” he said.

On three separate occasions, the camera caught two men on bikes riding onto his driveway — it’s a townhouse driveway and out of view from the street. Leibowitz said that it has been different men each time — though one may be the same guy in two images.

He originally set up the cameras because of recent Seattle crime — things like package thefts.

“I’ve lived in this townhome since January 2009,” he said. “In the last couple years, there has been this change in Ballard.”

“We’ve been getting people coming back into our area, other neighbors have been having the same problem and there’s package theft and things like that,” Leibowitz said.

He said that change has been instances of crime. And Leibowitz stresses that he doesn’t want people confusing that with homelessness. He’s lived in the Ballard area for 24 years — homelessness in the area is nothing new to him. For the most part, he said everyone has always coexisted in the neighborhood. But the crime — that’s new. So he put up the camera.

“It’s a pretty cheap webcam,” Leibowitz said. “If it detects motions, it snaps a series of pictures and emails them to me. What I’ll get sometimes is just my neighbors coming and going, cars pulling in and out.”

“It’s there as a deterrent, but also to find out what’s going on back there,” he said. “There have been a few people coming back there looking for, I guess, packages. And another person went back there late at night. I think they were using the place as a bathroom.”

But three times now, the cameras caught the exchanges.

“I have another one with two other people doing an exchange,” Leibowitz said. “And I have another one that looks like a repeat of the dealer, I’m assuming he’s a dealer and a new person. They are coming into the camera and one picture you can see him look up at the camera and then I don’t see them because they moved off to the side.”

Cameras and Seattle crime

After the camera incidents, Leibowitz contacted his community policing officer who told him that he would look into increasing patrols in the area. But the problem is larger than Leibowitz’s corner of Ballard.

“I sent (the photos) to him just to have a look,” Leibowitz said. “(The officer) said they were pretty good and he would try to get more patrols in the area. But with what they have, their resources, they can’t put up a sting operation.”

“But he also said that a couple weeks before, they had another report of this problem over on 56th Street,” he said. “So they addressed the problem by putting more patrols there. And it just moved up here.”

The ultimate answer, according to Seattle police Sergeant Wean Whitcomb, is to keep notifying police about such problems. Like Leibowitz’s issue, it is usually part of a larger problem.

“If there’s criminal activity going on, regardless whether it’s happening in public, on a sidewalk, out of a car, or on private property, out of a business in someone’s driveway, it’s important to us,” Whitcomb said.

“We’re concerned about it, too,” he said. “There’s a heroin epidemic going on the country and our region. And people who suffer from chemical addiction also commit a tremendous amount of property crime. So when we have the opportunity deal with the supply side of narcotics, that is very gratifying.”

While it might be one, or three, instances that police may not be able to do something about after the fact, it adds up. Whitcomb notes that the more people report, the more data police have to work with to combat Seattle crime. So those webcam photos from Leibowitz’s driveway add to the larger picture of Ballard enforcement.

“Maybe it’s one of those things that we end up going, doing some surveillance and it’s something completely different and everyone can rest easy,” Whitcomb said. “Or maybe it’s the start of something we can turn into a something bigger by investigating. Ultimately, we don’t want people to be frustrated by potential criminal activity that they witness. We want them to be empowered to call us.”

Just as with Magnolia’s infamous drug-dealing RV, when Seattle police were initially contacted about it, they couldn’t do anything. Police need to document an investigation and amass evidence. But that was on public property. What about this case, when it is clear that people are trespassing?

“Trespassing is a misdemeanor and a pretty low-level offense,” Whitcomb said. “Something like this, it’s a little more nuanced. You want to have more of a sophisticated approach. The approach we would typically take is to get a sense of what’s happening.”

Whitcomb said that “sense” generally leads to larger Seattle crime cases. And could lead to a mix of undercover surveillance, plain-clothes surveillance, increased patrols or other responses.

In any case, SPD wants people to report Seattle crime through a variety of channels. If the crime is happening presently, call 911. After the fact, people can call the SPD non-emergency number; or call the city’s narcotics department directly; there’s also an online form. Or talk to the neighborhood police officer as Leibowitz did.

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