Cleanups reduce crime and improve city's pride

In the sun of a summer morning, just down the road from his auto-body shop, Mike West stood at the curb of Highway 99, pulling up weeds. His wife, Donna, swept the sidewalk beside him, brisk with her broom.

For a decade now, they have done this, middle-school sweethearts by the side of the road, in their neon-bright traffic vests and white rubber gloves, collecting needles and condoms and bottles and cigarettes. It's good for business, they said, and good for the city's pride, to see this stretch of Tukwila clean, with less crime.

"Now if I can just convince my fellow citizens of that," said Mike West, 60, who with his wife owns Southtowne Auto Rebuild.

The Wests are the driving force behind the Highway 99 Action Committee, a group of business leaders and residents who have worked with the city and its police department to clean up a corridor once overwhelmed with crime.

When it was unincorporated King County, and there were fewer resources available, the area was known for its prostitution and drug dealing, auto thefts and assaults. But with the city's annexation in 1991 came more police and a push to clean up.

Citizen patrols were formed. Cameras were hung from lampposts along the road. A neighborhood resource center was set up, with volunteers watching the tapes for signs of crime, then calling it in. The road itself was improved, with new sidewalks and more lighting.

The city set up the Highway 99 Action Committee, a citizen group that focused first on reducing crime. Back then, business owners would take down the license-plate numbers of people who solicited prostitutes, then report that information on forms they created themselves. The police would send letters home, detailing the offense.

"A lot of times, the wives opened the letters," said Tukwila City Council member Pam Carter.

And over time, the crime calmed down. There were no police statistics available on Saturday, but Tukwila Mayor Steve Mullet said criminal activity has dropped about 70 percent since the annexation. A slight uptick has been detected over the past few years, he said, as it has in small cities across the country. But the citizen patrols disbanded years ago, he said, for lack of crime to report.

In the meantime, the Highway 99 Action Committee has grown, and is going strong, with a focus now on cleaning up the environment. The monthly cleanups usually draw about a dozen people, from a police officer to a hotel manager to a pair of brothers who haul the trash to the dump.

Over the past decade, the committee has collected more than 19,200 pounds of litter from the street.

"The criminals don't like to operate where it's clean, neat and bright," said Donna West, 60. "So we try to make them feel uncomfortable."

Occasionally, the committee makes other business owners uncomfortable. They push hard for trash cans in private parking lots where there are none. They discourage the selling of any drug paraphernalia, even when it's legal.

In return, they get blank stares. They get shrugged shoulders. And occasionally, they get appreciation.

Donna West was sweeping on Saturday when a driver pulled up to the side of the road, rolled down her window, and shouted, "Thank you." It's always a thrill, West said, to get those kinds of words.

Still, Mayor Mullet wanted more.

"Did you tell her she could park right over there, and pick up some rubber gloves?" he joked.

In a city with such high turnover, the mayor said, it's always a challenge to get more people involved and invested. The committee does its best, hosting a barbecue for the community every year, and handing out awards to citizens who come regularly to the cleanups.

Joe Sabey, of the Sabey Corporation, a commercial real-estate firm, decided recently to provide his own incentive. When the Foster High School football team asked for a donation, Sabey said they would have to work for it: $20 for every student who took the time to clean up their community.

On Saturday, the football team raised $1,000.

Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com