KING 5 reports that the man arrested early this morning as a suspect in the Greenwood arsons has confessed to several fires. Kevin Todd Swalwell, 46, admitted that he was at the scene of the Aug. 13 fire at a home that severely burned a man, and was responsible for the Nov. 9 fire at Olive You.
Swalwell has a court appearance scheduled for Saturday afternoon.
35 responses so far ↓
1 Fed up // Nov 14, 2009 at 12:34 am
I’m sure there are some who will disagree, but the arrest and confession of this guy should be a wake up call to the neighborhood.
I don’t want to hear anyone feeling sorry for Kevin Todd Swalwell or blaming his actions on a society that “didn’t take care of his mental illness.” That defense just doesn’t fly…
Given his prior history of convictions and his admission that he set some of the fires to cover up thefts or attempted thefts, there’s just one reason: He is a criminal with no regard for other people or their property and who doesn’t care who or what he harms to get what he wants.
It seems that lately we’ve had a lot more of these chronically homeless criminals take up residence in the public parks, on the sidewalks and in the old beater vans and campers that line some streets in Phinney Ridge and Greenwood.
I know that not all of them are bad people, but I guarantee you that several of them are out here prowling our cars and homes and businesses every single day.
These people don’t take advantage of the shelter options available to them because they don’t want to follow rules. There are definitive reasons why they remain chronically homeless. It’s all about what society owes them, and their attitude is that they’ll take whatever they want.
Our neighborhood walks and watches are good in theory, but probably only minimally effective. I would love to see stronger laws (and funding/staffing for the police to enforce those laws) that take these criminals off the streets of our neighborhood.
Let’s use every legal tool and ordinance available to get these criminals out of our neighborhood and off our streets.
Mayor McGinn? Council Members? Are you listening?
2 BallardMum // Nov 14, 2009 at 12:51 am
Just a theory here, but I had the feeling he was out to be caught and now it makes more sense to me. He’s been in prison for 12 of the last 26 years, a transient whose mailing address is the Ballard Food Bank, a “three strikes and you’re out” mandatory life sentence… Perhaps, for him, life imprisonment (or even in a mental institution) is just a more comfortable, more predictable existence than life on the street??
3 Matt // Nov 14, 2009 at 1:14 am
@BallardMum:
That’s a pretty interesting theory. I went back and looked at the string of arsons listed in a previous post. Couple in June, then a couple in August (mix of business/residential), one of which resulted in a serious injury. Then nothing for a couple months, and when they picked back up again the arsons were almost entirely in business at night.
It’s entirely possible if he was just looking to get caught (even subconsciously) that there was a certain amount of remorse for the injury, and he largely confined himself to businesses after that to reduce the likelihood of endangering or killing someone.
The fact that he readily confessed to at least a couple of the arsons after being captured would support that theory as well.
4 Fed Up // Nov 14, 2009 at 1:20 am
If he was out to get caught, there are much easier ways to get oneself sent to jail. Robbing a bank, even without a weapon, would be one. (Kind of like the vagrant-looking dude that made a feeble attempt to rob Frontier Bank in Ballard the other day… he looks like one of the regulars around here)
I think you missed my second & third paragraphs…
5 jm // Nov 14, 2009 at 7:32 am
The homeless are in the area because of the soup kitchens and free food.
6 R // Nov 14, 2009 at 8:03 am
All resolved? Let’s see…
(http://seattlecrime.com/2009/11/13/greenwood-arson-suspect-admits-to-setting-fires) mentions that
“Law enforcement sources say Salwell is also under investigation — along with at least one other man — for a burglary committed at one of the sites of the arsons. One source says a safe was broken into or taken from a business before the building was torched.”
In (http://www.phinneywood.com/2009/11/13/arson-person-of-interest-in-custody/#comment-10934), John Walker states that his friend saw K. S. (AND A SIDEKICK) while on patrol.
Is this sidekick the person someone that the police have already taken into custody? Is this someone that we need to be on the lookout for? Does anyone have a photo of the sidekick(s)?
In (http://www.phinneywood.com/2009/11/13/1-arrested-1-detained-in-arson-investigation/), “Jonni” mentions that his/her father was arrested “Wednesday” (presumably 11 November 2009) in connection with these fires. Phinneywood has no mention of this arrest as far as I can tell. There was one person temporarily taken into custody and released on the 13th, but I thought that this person was picked up on the 13th, not the 11th (perhaps I am incorrect).
Regarding the arson count, the press conference mentioned “17″ and “68″. I don’t know what “Greenwood area” means in this context, but the last “count” list that I have seen was for “14″ (http://www.phinneywood.com/2009/11/10/600-people-pack-greenwood-arson-meeting/#comment-10821).
Presumably one of these is:
November 13, 2009 ~00:06 - 17000 _ Aurora Avenue N - NW Discount World - Arson,
in which case “area” extends beyond Seattle city limits. I don’t yet know of a web site listing Shoreline 911 or fire activities.
(http://www.phinneywood.com/2009/11/13/arson-investigation-press-conference/#comment-10927) provides a link to probable cause documents, which may or may not detail this, but the link appears to be dead.
Now that we have video and photo of K. S., do his images appear to be a match for the Zesto dumpster file person images?
(http://www.phinneywood.com/2009/09/09/ballard-restaurant-arsonist-caught-on-camera/)
7 Tiktok // Nov 14, 2009 at 8:19 am
People living on the streets are a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
In any social system, there’s always going to be some folks who can’t “make it” for a variety of reasons (a sense of entitlement is not high on the list–mental illness, substance abuse and chronic lack of living skills are the real culprits), and those people are going to end up on the streets, unless you’re willing to make vagrancy a crime, and fund the jails and prisons to “home” these people. There are significant legal and financial obstacles to that approach.
8 SeenItToo // Nov 14, 2009 at 8:22 am
I agree COMPLETELY with FedUp. I saw a report on TV where they interviewed some victim of the fires who said he hoped that this suspect will get the help he needs. HA! this community has been bending over backward giving transients the “help they need” and it results in more of them coming to the neighborhood. Anyone who has lived in this neighborhood for 20 years like my wife and I have knows that there has been a vast change in the character of the neighborhood. You never used to see drug deals in plain sight on Dayton and Fremont, hookers walking along 85th, rows of burnt-out vehicles parked alongside the zoo for close access to the free soup kitchen, etc. People used to feel safe walking the streets at night, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. We need to remove the attraction and the rats will go away.
9 Tiktok // Nov 14, 2009 at 8:34 am
While Seattle has undoubtedly provided a plethora of help to the homeless, it still has a sizable homeless population, which shows we’re not providing the help that those homeless folks need…to get off the streets.
We don’t know what to do with a lot of those people, or how to do it *effectively* for the toughest cases. The financial cost of helping some people is beyond what society as a while is willing to pay.
10 SeenItToo // Nov 14, 2009 at 8:47 am
No, it shows that the “plethora of help” has attracted more homeless people. You will NEVER be able to provide vagrants with enough “help” to get off the streets because there is no need to get off the streets when the generous people of Seattle meet your needs for you without requiring you to do anything for the handout.
11 Trix // Nov 14, 2009 at 9:16 am
Oh, goody, another excuse for homeless bashing.
Tictoc is right, there are more homeless now because of the financial situation, and also because of the financial situation there are fewer resources for the mentally ill.
I’m not making excuses for the arsonist, that guy should be strung up by his balz.
Just saying the increase in the homeless population is just the symptom of a bigger problem.
12 82nd // Nov 14, 2009 at 9:34 am
Legitimate people slide into homelessness due to circumstances beyond their control, but it’s also true that there is a whole subculture of transients who are attracted to free resources. Maybe the answer is to require work or some other sort of contribution in exchange for the handout.
13 Penny // Nov 14, 2009 at 9:52 am
I had a friend born and raised in Hollywood who visited for the first time last month. He was absolutely blown away by the amount of homlessness and drug deals going down in plain site. He thought it was comparable to the steets of Hollywood!
14 Fed Up // Nov 14, 2009 at 9:53 am
82nd:
The “whole subculture of transients who are attracted to free resources” are exactly the group I’m talking about. They are MUCH more likely to steal and commit other crimes against people and property in the neighborhood. And they know they can keep on getting away with it because there will always be people (as we see here) who rally to the defense of “the homeless”, and they just hide under that blanket of protection and keep on committing their crimes.
It’s time to Stop the Insanity!, to quote a famous neighborhood resident.
15 Iron City Mike // Nov 14, 2009 at 10:08 am
I don’t see this as a case of homelessness vs. the economy vs. living off of the dole etc. - the guy is nuts, plain and simple, he likes to start fires, and needs to be put away for life. Case closed.
16 SPG // Nov 14, 2009 at 10:41 am
There’s some truth to FedUp’s rant, but it’s not a blanket truth. There are some homeless who have had a string of bad luck and are trying to turn their lives around the best they know how. There’s a lot of homeless people who you wouldn’t ever guess are homeless if you met them on the street, and then there’s the bums. The bums don’t want to go to the shelter because they have to be in at a certain time and out at a certain time. The bums have to sober up to get in to most shelters so that’s a non starter. The bums will get drunk or high on the money they panhandle from you and then crap in your front yard. If there’s an easy score like a purse forgotten on a bench they won’t hesitate to steal it.
The problem here is that too many people treat the bums like the down on their luck homeless, and the rest prevent the down on their luck homeless from getting long term help because they’ve dealt with too many bums. We need to separate the two and apply the correct solution to each. Housing and life skills coaching to get the homeless back on their feet and law enforcement to keep the bums in line. Zero tolerance for public drinking and unruly bums on the street. Call 911. Support the shelters that are working towards a long term solution unlike SHARE that sees homelessness as a perfectly acceptable lifestyle choice that should be supported by the taxpaying “suckers”.
If you have a car camper set up on your street you can report it here if it’s parked for 3 days:
https://www.seattle.gov/police/forms/Abandoned_Vehicles.htm
Get the address, vehicle make and color, and the license plate if you can. The police will ticket it and make them move.
17 Atamatic // Nov 14, 2009 at 10:41 am
I walk my dog every day around Greenwood, I had seen the arsonist many time walking around Greenwood this last year. To me he was just another one of the homeless squatting at the closed McDonald’s. Gotta say I had a hunch it was one of the homeless in this area. I understand the need to help the homeless but I’m through compromising the safety and integrity of my neighborhood. In the last three years I have seen Greenwood get infested with shady folks who are here to sell drugs, squat or beg. It needs to stop now before we cant reverse it!
18 Fed Up // Nov 14, 2009 at 10:50 am
Thanks SPG @15. You delineated the problem better than I did in my late night frustration.
19 BallardFisherman // Nov 14, 2009 at 11:42 am
The last decade or so the city of Seattle’s priority is reducing the homeless problem in downtown in opening up food banks and shelters in neighborhoods in ballard, greenwood etc., which is the reason why we see these sort of situations arise. I’m not saying screw the homeless. I think it more of a statement of how our city deals with the homeless issue.
20 Wolfie // Nov 14, 2009 at 11:46 am
Just the other day, some folks were cleaning up behind McD’s and one of them got stuck with a hypo needle in the trash. They went to the hospital and all is well. That area behind McD’s is out of hand.
21 Christophe // Nov 14, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Well maybe Mayor McGinn will listen to the neighborhoods and kick the bums back down to where they came from…downtown, 3rd Ave.
22 Rob Fellows // Nov 14, 2009 at 3:39 pm
There’s no reason to sympathize with someone who attacks our neighborhood because they’re homeless, and it’s not a reason to tolerate their behavior - obviously.
BUT that said, the homelessness problem in America is not separate from our collective decision to de-fund and de-institutionalize mental health care. There was an overnight increase in homelessness in the early 80’s, and part of that was related to mental health policy.
It’s not a matter of being sympathetic, but a matter of practicality — there are some people who are not in mental shape to be out and about. Mental hospitals have been cleared out in a wave of deinstitutionalization - and that was not the right choice for many of the mentally ill (and often addicted) homeless living around us. It’s not good for them or for the rest of us either.
23 car // Nov 14, 2009 at 7:49 pm
I have seen a few drug deals on Dayton, and a few potential car vandals/prowlers. They weren’t homeless, they were all late teens to mid 20’s. Guys and girls.
24 ss // Nov 14, 2009 at 11:04 pm
#5: The homeless are in the area because they live here.
25 MMGood // Nov 14, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Send them back to downtown where they belong. Growing up in Seattle you only saw bums/whinos/drunks/homeless/whatever along 1st Ave. How? Move all the food banks there.
Better yet: Liberals, invite a homeless man or woman to stay with you.
26 jm // Nov 15, 2009 at 9:25 am
No SS, they are here because of the lax parking restrictions and free food. The police don’t enforce the parking laws and we have a community of bums living around the soup kitchens and the park.
27 jm // Nov 15, 2009 at 9:27 am
MMGood, in case you haven’t noticed, First Avenue went upscale a few years ago and a bum needs 5 million+ for a condo with a view.
28 MTH // Nov 15, 2009 at 11:50 am
The comment by Rob Fellows is right on. We need to get these mentally ill homeless off our neighborhood streets, and they probably need to be in some kind of institution. There’s a guy who roams up and down 84th St and 8th Ave. all the time, often on a small kid’s size bike, who yells at me or my kids, making no sense. There’s a couple other guys we see often, looking like creatures from a Dicken’s novel, all tall and skinny and pale as death. Another fairly well groomed guy who frequents Greenwood Market yelled at me recently while shopping for groceries, for being a woman. It’s not okay to be afraid of letting my kids play outside or to be afraid to shop. Greenwood needs help. There are a lot of these mentally ill guys. This arson arrest is a wake-up call. Please, mayor-elect and city council members, make this your top priorty.
29 andia // Nov 15, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Are there people out there who are just inherently bad? I’m not so sure. There are plenty of evidence-based interventions out there to reduce homelessness among people with chronic mental illness:
http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpubs/sma04-3870/chapter6.asp
Unfortunately, we haven’t prioritized our dollars to successfully implement these types of interventions. Meanwhile, we have services like soup kitchens to make up for the fact that we haven’t got a place for these folks to fit in our society.
I personally work in Belltown and live in Greenwood, so moving the problem around seems like a waste of time and resources to me. Belltown has enough problems already.
Has anyone actually had a real conversation with a homeless person you’ve seen on the neighborhood streets? Just curious, not saying I have. I’m wondering what the outcome might be…
30 Weenie d // Nov 15, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I agree with MTH, I have been yelled at and catcalled by those same guys she is talking about. It is not ok to be called a b*tch while walking to your car, just because you don’t respond to a cat call from a drunken blithering vagrant. I mean, really what do they expect me to do? Drop my drawers!!! Yet even by just ignoring them I am offending them.
I have had some conversations with a few of them. Mostly regarding the fact that they don’t like my neighbors dog barking at them when they stumble by. It is usually a waste of time because they are so loaded they can barely form a sentence. I did get through to one guy that it was not ok for them to urinate in the alley because the neighbors daughters walk through it after school. But that was just one guy. The guy on the bike has actually grumbled curses at me for calling the medics because I thought he was dead. Anyone who is sleeping in the middle of the alley and doesn’t move when you almost run them over, and even honk at them, is automatically having the medics called on him. Ironically as soon as he hears the sirens he tries to get up and stumble away!
I for one am sick of calling the police on them, and I shouldn’t be afraid of walking to my car from my house.
31 R // Nov 16, 2009 at 12:51 am
More on the track of the message above posted (Nov 14, 2009 at 8:03 am)…
1) Local media recently quoted someone saying that Swalwell was always accompanied by two other men.
2) The SPD & SFD have not stated whether couches were used in November 5, 2009 ~04:10 arson @ 8402 _ Greenwood Ave. N (Rosewood Guitar). Two couches (1 brown, 1 black) were still sitting in the parking lot behind this business on the afternoon of November 3, 2009. These couches were no longer there @ 6:30 am on November 5, 2009. 130lb K.S. could not have placed these couches in the gap (where the fire occurred) without help. {NOTE: A King5 online video showing firefighters attempting to pull something, with a resemblance to a couch, from the gap seems to have now been modified to no longer include that image.}
32 Monty Piethong // Nov 16, 2009 at 10:43 am
Some streets in Ballard have rules against overnight parking. I believe the no parking signs were installed to keep the campers away.
33 MTH // Nov 17, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I have had conversations with a few of these homeless guys, too, and they never make any sense. The bike guy likes to either yell odd things at me out of the blue as he goes by, such as “No Kissing!!” or he likes to stop and complain about the contents of peoples’ garbage in the alley. Or he often has conversations with invisible people, and he’s usually angry at them. The guy in the parking lot at Greenwood Market likes to yell about how mean all the bit***s like me are. It is very unpleasant. Then there’s whoever it is who yells (in what my daughters call a “pirate voice”) in our alley, singing drunken songs, until we call the police. It really isn’t a matter of making friends with these guys and trying to talk with them. It’s way beyond that. They scare me and my kids. This neighborhood needs help.
34 andia // Nov 17, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Making friends with a person who is likely schizophrenic and actively hallucinating and/or probably high is not very realistic, you’re right. We need some professionals to intervene.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have never come across these folks, but then again I am new to the neighborhood. I’ve seen plenty of folks nodding off on the bus, but at least they aren’t aggressive. Still painful to see, though.
A couple of resources to try:
Adult protective services for self-neglect: (206) 341-7750.
Crisis Clinic: (206) 461-3222
King Co. Crisis and Commitment Services: (206) 263-9200
(http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/MentalHealth/Services/CrisisServices/CommitmentServices.aspx)
This is what our system has to offer at this point. Maybe we can find out how effective it really is.
35 andia // Nov 17, 2009 at 9:33 pm
P.S. FAQ’s on commitment to mental institutions: http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthServices/MentalHealth/Services/CrisisServices/FAQs.aspx
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