Is Seattle safe, dangerous, or somewhere in between?

My favorite columnist at the Seattle Times is Gene Balk, the FYI Guy. I always enjoy his well-researched articles.

But I’d like to offer an addendum to his recent article titled “Mean world syndrome: In some Seattle neighborhoods, fear of crime exceeds reality.”

RELATED: South Lake Union shrugs off smash-and-grab spree

Gene takes some recent data from a public safety survey and compares it with crime statistics from police departments to highlight the differential between the fear surrounding crime and actual reported crime by neighborhood. His basic conclusion is for almost every neighborhood, people are more afraid than the actual crime stats warrant.

Now, I’m not critical of his research at all. All the graphs and charts line up. Based on what he looked at, it’s all accurate and fine reporting.

But I’d like to suggest that this analysis is leaving out one of the most important aspects of this perception vs. reality gap. That aspect is unreported crime. I realize that there is no way to measure an unknown variable like this, but I think it not only can explain why the gap exists, but validates it in some ways.

Unreported crime in Seattle

I’ll give you a few anecdotal examples to consider from my own life that I’ve shared on the air.

The most obvious incident was my stupidly chasing down the guy dressed in black that stole a cooler full of beers and sodas from my porch. It was a dumb move on my part, but my instincts took over. Now in days of yore, I would have called the police on this guy. There most likely would have been some kind of charge. I literally caught him red cooler handed. But I felt it was useless to call the cops for this. I got my cooler back, nobody was hurt, and I doubt an officer would come out anyway.

What about the several times my car has been broken into? I didn’t call the cops. When the same thing happens to Don, he doesn’t call the either. Smash and grabs? I doubt even half end up in the crime stats used by the FYI Guy. Things like petty crime, car break ins, and general nuance prowlers once ended up in police data. But that no longer happens.

Seattle residents have been trained not to call 911 because of the long response times from an overly taxed police force.

While I’m sure there are plenty of neighborhoods that are overly fearful compared to reality, Seattle is not the sleepy, safe town it use to be. Petty crime and drug-fueled theft are on the rise in all these neighborhoods and many go unreported.

I’m not suggesting that we live in fear. But I believe that the gap in the stats is much closer than the official numbers show because of unreported crime.