Seattle’s North Precinct, the largest precinct in the city, is undergoing major changes for the new year.

Beginning today, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) will implement their Neighborhood Policing Staffing Plan for the next three years, addressing several major problems with the North Precinct, which encompasses the high-crime neighborhoods of Northgate, the area around Aurora and the University District.

“The North Precinct is by far the largest in this city, and its geography is immense,” said SPD Capt. Mike Washburn of the 32-square-mile area. “If the police are [in] Sand Point and a call comes in from Ballard, it’s hard to get there.”

The large precinct consists of very different neighborhoods, all with their own distinct types of crime issues, and the police are struggling to be in places where they are needed at the busiest times of the day.

The new plan aims to be a “faster, stronger, and smarter” approach to pro-tecting Seattle neighborhoods, according to an executive summary of the 28-page report, available online.

One of the most significant goals of the plan is to address three problem areas, including police response time.

The average response time to calls is seven minutes, which is the national average for a large American city.

“Although Seattle as a whole is at the national average, some areas are below that average,” Washburn said. As the report points out, police response often exceeds seven minutes when call volume is high.

“No matter where you are in the city…we should be able to get to you,” Washburn said.

The new plan aims to redraw the outdated beat system and assign more (or fewer) officers according to the needs of the different sectors of the city. The reassignment was based on two years’ worth of data analysis.

The beats have not been significantly altered since the 1970s, despite notable demographic shifts in the city since then, and the balance between workload and the number of officers on duty varies drastically from precinct to precinct.

The North Precinct, in particular, has a much greater call load — nearly two times the rest of the city — during the busiest hours, between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m., as well as on Friday and Saturday nights.

With more officers, police can cut response time and have additional people work on proactive policing, such as patrolling and preventing crime, according to the report.

Redrawing the beat system also keeps the same officers in the same neighborhoods, so they can build experience and make connections.

“It’s the ‘neighborhood officer’ idea, where people feel that they can go to their community policeman ‘Bob’ if they have a problem,” Washburn said. “That way, a lot of information goes back and forth. Officers keep in touch with folks, they get to know the businesses and the business owners, and they get to know the bad guys in an area too.”

Officer Randy Maxwell is one of those neighborhood cops patrolling the U-District area.

“It’s pretty time-consuming,” Maxwell said. “It’s a large area, and I handle [anything from] concerns related to noise issues to communicating problem areas so we can do what we need to do to address it.”

By forming community connections and communicating with residents, officers will be able to better target problems specific to their neighborhood.

Washburn said that for the U-District in particular, the issue of drug crime is comparatively high.

“The U-District is still known as an area where one can get drugs fairly easily,” Washburn said. “We’ve made some headway. There’s a lot of narcotics, and along with that comes the disturbances.”

The U-District also suffers from problems with nightclubs along the Ave, car prowls and auto thefts, and the nuisance of the party houses north of Northeast 45th Street, Washburn said.

“We also have to worry about the U-District because there are a lot of young people that can be easy victims,” he said.

The plan will revise the system of work shifts and duty cycles so more officers are on duty when they are needed — during the busiest hours of the day, the busiest days of the week and even the busiest times of year. For the U-District, this includes weekend nights, especially during the warmer spring quarter when crime begins to increase.

Under the plan, 105 officers will be added to the force by 2012, which may prove to be challenging, as police forces nationwide are struggling to increase their staffs.

“Recruitment has become very difficult for us, and it’s a national issue as well. … There is a generational gap in which younger people aren’t looking for long-term careers, and law enforcement isn’t something you do for just a few years,” Washburn said.

Washburn said that for every 100 people who test, perhaps only one person is selected.

“[We] will not relax the system or cut corners,” Washburn said.

Washburn, however, sees the addition of the 105 new officers as key to the success of this new plan.

“I really can’t overstate enough how much simpler life will be when I get new officers and I can put them where they belong and where they are needed,” he said.

Out of the 105 new officers, 40 to 60 will be assigned to the North Precinct, Washburn predicts, a testament to the demanding problems of the largest precinct.

The final reform will be the addition of a new computerized dispatch system that will analyze call load and response time for police so they can monitor where calls come from and where officers are most needed.

The rest of the reforms will be made gradually, with a target of eventually realizing all goals by 2012.

[Reach reporter Siv Prince at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]