(Image: Pelicana USA)

Capitol Hill’s restaurant sale season continues with a “business as usual” transition at the corner of Pine and Harvard. Recent filings show the corner’s Korean Fried Chicken joint Pelicana has changed hands.

The new owners Hye Ri Park and Taehwan Lee are bringing experience from the world of teriyaki to the fried chicken joint. Seattle food and drink entrepreneur J Hwang opened Pelicana — and helped usher in Capitol Hill’s new KFC era —  in the former home of Bill’s Off Broadway in 2021.

The bones of the old Bill’s make Pelicana a pretty decent hangout in addition to its Ban Ban chicken, cheese sticks, and Bburingkle fries.

Pelicana is beginning its sixth year on Capitol Hill with more passersby than usual. The corner has been busy with some long, viral video-stoked lines for neighboring Vietnamese coffee shop Phê.

Across the street, meanwhile, the latest cafe to hold down the northwest corner of Harvard and Pine nestled into Seattle Central’s big parking structure is Cafe Ashiana. The Indian cafe took over last year for the short-lived chicken tenders joint Chiqpa. Chiqpa, of course, replaced the also short-lived but well-loved Korean corndog spot Korn Dog.

Founded in 1982 in Daejeon, South Korea, Pelicana is one of the largest fried chicken chains in the world though its Seattle franchise is its only Pacific Northwest presence.

The E Pine Pelicana transaction is the latest sale involving one of the Hill’s smaller eateries and independent ownership outside the city’s growing “restaurant groups.” CHS reported here on cook Chuy Mendoza Gamillo taking over ownership of Broadway diner Americana and here on new owners at 2010-born Pinto Thai.

You can find Pelicana Chicken at 725 E Pine. Learn more at pelicanausa.com.

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Downtown’s King County Correctional Facility (Image: King County)

According to a command report, a jump in “medical declines” at the King County Jail last weekend depleted police resources in the East Precinct, leaving officers sidelined to guard suspects at Harborview Medical Center.

The bottleneck reportedly began Friday night when a man arrested for kicking in an apartment door was refused booking. The resulting hospital guard persisted through a busy Friday night and into Saturday morning, according to the precinct report.

On Saturday, the trend continued after a suspect arrested on Broadway with a stolen firearm was declined despite being physically capable of fleeing from police earlier that night.

The SPD report says the situation escalated Sunday following three arrests involving felony warrants for vehicle theft, narcotics, and organized retail theft. Despite all three suspects being alert and ambulatory, jail staff issued medical declines for the group. In one instance, a suspect was declined twice; in another, jail staff reportedly repeatedly questioned a suspect on his drug consumption until a declinable condition was established.

“All three of these were declined, with one declined twice, and the other after being asked multiple times at KCJ if he was sure he smoked drugs and didn’t swallow them,” the report reads. “As of writing, all of the alert/conscious/ambulatory suspects are on guard at HMC, using a significant portion of police resources.”

Under King County Jail’s Health Services policy, the facility may refuse to book individuals who have medical or psychiatric needs that exceed the jail’s internal care capabilities. This “medical decline” protocol requires arresting officers to transport suspects to a hospital for a “Fit for Jail” clearance. Designed to ensure inmate safety, the policy can add significantly to the process of booking a suspect.

It is not clear if last weekend’s totals were higher than normal or part of longer trends. A spokesperson for SPD said they did not have immediate totals for recent medical declines.

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Officer Haden Barton asked CHS to share this notice about the “member of our community,” saying loved ones are searching for Nessa Albert:

Neither friends nor family have heard from her, and we are all very concerned. We are asking that anyone who has had personal contact with her or knows of her current whereabouts, please call 206-625-5011.

The 19-year-old is described as 6’1″ and 120 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes.

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The group is calling for the entire Real Time Crime Center’s network of city cameras to be turned off. Community Not Cameras is planning a Friday rally outside Seattle City Hall.

“This will be Mayor Katie B. Wilson’s 100th day in office, and we are hosting this rally and press conference to collectively call her to immediately stop the surveillance cameras expansion and to turn off all cameras asap,” the group says in its announcement of the noontime rally. “Power is only as good as its accountability.”

Wilson is under pressure from supporters who say she is not living up to promises made last year as she campaigned to oust incumbent Bruce Harrell.

At a Wilson-organized forum on “security and surveillance” in the city held last month on First Hill, the mayor had to shout down the audience.

“I would like everyone to listen,” Wilson said over outbursts from the audience. “What I said repeatedly last year during the campaign was that I did not support the city council’s decision to expand surveillance given the concerns that I was hearing from immigrants rights groups and civil liberties groups about the danger that that data could fall into the hands of federal authorities.”

“That is why we are doing an audit,” Wilson said. “I’m doing the due diligence to try to understand. whether these data security concerns are warranted and take some steps to make sure that the data is as secure as we can have it.”

“I never said I’m going to turn all the cameras off. I never said all the cameras should be turned off.”

CHS reported here last month as Wilson ordered “a privacy and data governance audit” and announced she was pausing the expansion of the city’s Real Time Crime Center camera system to Capitol Hill and the Central District and suspending the use of Automatic License Plate Readers by the Seattle Police Department over concerns about potential misuse of the technologies by law enforcement.

Wilson said cameras already installed for the Real Time Crime Center downtown, in the International District and along Aurora would remain active during the audit. She also gave the go ahead to the expansion of the camera system to the city’s stadium district in time for this summer’s World Cup.

On Capitol Hill, work is on hold on the plan to install cameras in the core of the Pike/Pine neighborhood along E Pike and E Pine between Broadway and 12th Ave with an extension along Nagle Place and Broadway north of the core all the way to Denny/E Barbara Bailey Way and the southern edge of Capitol Hill Station and its Sound Transit security camera installations.

In the Central District, the Harrell administration and District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth pushed for the camera system to be centered around safety at Garfield High School with boundaries running from a block north of the school along E Cherry all the way to S Jackson. The western edge has been planned to include 20th Ave and the eastern edge would extend along 26th Ave.

SPD’s CCTV map shows where the cameras are already in place and where they’re planned to be deployed

The Capitol Hill system is estimated to cost around $400,000 to install and $35,000 a year to operate. The Central District installation has a budget of $425,000 and also an estimated $35,000 in “ongoing annual costs.” Wilson has said SPD has yet to receive the ordered cameras from technology provider Axon but did not say if the orders can be canceled.

While not yet operational here, East Precinct officers make regular requests of RTCC analysts for information about suspicious vehicles or suspect images from the center’s databases. With the Real Time Crime Center’s limited footprint, many of those East Precinct requests currently go unfilled.

SPD says the Center is now staffed 19 hours per day, seven days a week, combining “technology with real-time analysis to improve public safety outcomes.”

Proponents including SPD Chief Shon Barnes and City Council public safety chair Bob Kettle says critics are overstating the risks — and under appreciating the value to safety on city streets. SPD says its analysis shows police are “three times more likely” to make an arrest in a case when working with the analysts who staff the Real Time Crime Center with access to its network of police and traffic cameras across the city, as well as important databases and resources like the license plate reader technology that can be used to identify suspects and vehicles — and sometimes track them across Seattle.

The cameras are sure to be a topic next week as SPD says a planned April 14th community meeting at Capitol Hill’s Miller Community Center will be an opportunity “discuss public safety strategies” and “meet directly with Chief Shon Barnes and SPD Command Staff members.”

Our City, Our Safety Community Meeting
Tuesday, April 14th 6:30-8:00pm
Miller Community Center (330 19 Ave E)

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SPD and Seattle Fire responded to the 2700 block of E Roy just before 6 PM following reports of the collision that left sent two to the hospital and left three cars damaged.

According to the SPD report on the incident, the driver of a car traveling eastbound down the grade of E Roy told officers their brakes “ceased to work.”

The vehicle gained momentum to “soar through the air,” police say, before crashing and hitting two cars. One occupied vehicle was shoved onto a lawn, while a second, parked car was pushed onto the sidewalk by the force of the impact.

The vehicle came to a halt at the bottom of the hill at 28th Ave E.

SFD medics evaluated those involved, transporting two passengers from the car that lost control for evaluation. The occupants in the struck vehicle were uninjured.

While the crash caused damage, police say the driver of the car showed no signs of intoxication and was not impaired. The Traffic Collision Investigation Section (TCIS) was notified. The investigation into the reported failure is ongoing.

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