Beneath Northgate Mall's south parking lot runs Thornton Creek. For years, Northgate residents and environmental groups have been working to "daylight" the creek (a reality that Mayor Nickels' current plan for Northgate doesn't include). But the buried creek is not the only controversy that disturbs the peace of Northgate Mall. Some months ago, a dozen Seattle-area mothers began publicly breastfeeding their infants in the foodcourt. Breastfeeding is natural, they pointed out, and should be accepted as such by the mall's employees and shoppers.
Northgate Mall is the site of a great deal of repression: the repression of natural elements, the repression of breasts, the repression of neighborhood aspirations. There is also a secret that Northgate Mall represses, a secret that the mall's owners and the city want to keep quiet. The secret is violence. Like creek water and breast milk, violence courses through the banks, boutiques, restaurants, furniture stores, clothes stores, and parking lots that constitute the 68-acre mall.
Some history: When the open-air Northgate Mall was completed in the 1950s, the essential selling point was convenience. The new mall offered easy access to consumer goods for those who lived far from the downtown business district. But in the '60s and '70s, with race riots and antiwar protests in the inner cities, malls began to emphasize safety above convenience. It was about this time, the mid-'70s, that Northgate Mall constructed a lid. The cover was practical and symbolic; it protected suburbanites from the weather and from the society they lived in. The mall was a utopia from which crime, and particularly violent crime, was banished forever.
But minor crimes (car theft, shoplifting) as well as major crimes (acts of madness, armed robberies, murder) thrive at the mall. Indeed, a mall is a microcosm of America itself, and, as the terrorists and terror warnings have made clear, there is no safe place in America. In that same spirit, there is no truly safe place in any mall, even Northgate Mall. Crime stats for census tract 12, which runs from 15th Ave. N.E. to Meridian Ave N., and from 100th St. N.E. to 115th St. N.E., shows decidedly higher rates for robberies, theft, and non-residential burglary than average citywide stats. Northgate's marketing director Angela Forest says these crime stats accounted for an area that encompasses more than the mall, adding: "The safety of our customers is our number-one concern, which is why we work closely with the SPD to ensure that we provide a safe and enjoyable shopping experience for our customers."
Nevertheless, the police have been called to Northgate Mall 360 times since June 1, 2001. The crimes detailed at right are but a few of the many that have occurred within and outside Northgate mall over the past six years.
THE Dead Deal
Just two days after several bullets were exchanged between rival gangs, on Sunday, May 2, 1999, a second shooting took place next to the mall's Red Robin. This shooting resulted from a drug deal that went bad, and though fewer bullets were discharged than the Friday-night incident, the marksmanship had improved considerably. When the smoke cleared, one man was dead.
The History of Violence
In 1997, a man, Jeffrey Scott Oertle, was beaten with a pipe to an inch of his life in the mall's north entrance. After recovering from a coma that imprisoned him for several weeks, he sued the mall for not informing him and other citizens of the mall's history of violent crimes. From his lawsuit: "[The mall] had a duty to warn all Northgate Mall customers, patrons, and invitees of all dangerous conditions they knew, or should have known, existed." The lawsuit was settled out of court.
Boyz in The Mall
On Friday, April 30, 1999, at around 8:30 p.m., members of an armed gang were hanging out at the mall, shopping, relaxing, sharing small talk, when at the mall's north entrance--near what was then Seafirst Bank but is now Bank of America--they chanced to come across a rival gang that was doing pretty much the same thing. After taunts, boasts, and threats, guns were drawn and bullets began to fly. By some miracle the bullets that whizzed through the mall or across its parking lot failed to claim one life. One mall patron, a woman, was shot in the buttocks.
The Bloody Car
After leading a fleet of cops on a high-speed chase that began in Everett, a Russian-born 22-year-old named Alexander Novitsky came to a terrible end near Northgate Mall, just minutes before the day--January 25, 2003--became part of eternity. At one point of the car chase, a trooper, Officer Hunter, tried to force Novitsky into a controlled crash, but he had to back off because the suspect flashed a gun at him. Before arriving at what might have been his destination, Northgate Mall, Novitsky shot himself to death and his car rolled and crashed. According to an obituary published in the Bremerton Sun, Novitsky continues to live "through the lives of those who received his organs."
Heist one
On Wednesday, October 3, 2001, two men walked into Kay Jewelers at 10:30 a.m., pulled out guns, and informed the employees that they were being robbed. The two men collected as much jewelry as possible and made their getaway in the south part of the mall. The cops cordoned off Northgate Mall for several hours before coming to terms with the fact that they had lost the armed and dangerous robbers.
Mallnapped!
On July 21, 2002, a 16-year-old Oregon girl named Sarah Roberts drove her parents' Jeep to a Portland-area state park. She did not return home that night. The Jeep was found at the park's trailhead with two dogs inside it and a broken necklace. Because the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart of Salt Lake City was in the news, a massive search for Sarah Roberts was launched. Helicopters flew across the park; search dogs sniffed. Later the next night, Monday, July 22, Sarah Roberts called her parents from Northgate Mall. She had concocted her own kidnapping (along with its suggestions of sexual assault--the snapped necklace) with her friends so that she could spend a day hanging out at her favorite Seattle places, one of which was Northgate Mall. Sarah Roberts, who faced charges for false reporting and animal cruelty, always loved hanging out with friends at malls.
Bumped and Punched
On March 11, 2003, two young men were hanging out at the mall when one was bumped deliberately by another young man who wore a black jacket and a black hat. Angry words were exchanged between the bumped and the bumper. The bumped decided to step down from the confrontation and continue his walk around the mall with his friend. The bumper began to follow him, trying to provoke the young men into a fight. Near the south entrance, the bumped was suddenly punched in the nose by the bumper--blood was everywhere. The bumper also punched the bumped's friend in the face. The bumper then left toward the mall's notorious transit center, where, he warned, he would be waiting for the two. "I made an area check of the bus station and then remained in the area so the victims could catch a bus home safely," Officer Berg wrote in his police report.
Deadly Granny
Around 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 10, 1999, an employee of the Bon Marché in Northgate Mall decided to take her break outside on a bench. She sat down. The night was warm; the air refreshing. Then an elderly person attempting to park in the open space in front of the bench suddenly pressed the accelerator, rushed forward, jumped the curve, and crushed the life out of the young mall employee.
Heist Two
On April 24, 2003, two men and a female walked into JCPenney, grabbed 25 shirts, and ran out of the store. They were pursued by a pack of security officers; just as they were about to exit the mall, one of the suspects was captured by one of the security guards. But the captured man's partners-in-crime were loyal: One stopped running and swung a punch at the security guard's head. The officer was felled by the blow, and the suspect liberated. As the three criminals were getting into the getaway car, they dropped some stolen shirts, which were recovered and returned to JCPenney.
Permanent Crime Center
The Northgate Transit Center in the mall's south parking lot is frequently the scene of a crime. The examples in my police files, which have been monitoring crime in this area for the past four years, are so numerous that only by throwing the related 60 or so reports into the air and selecting the one that hit the ground first did this incident report, which was written on Saturday, April 4, 2000, make it into Topography of Terror IV: On that date a white male lurking in the Northgate Transit Center attempted to kill several people with a long knife.
Pure Terror
After 9/11, malls like the Mall of America, which is owned by the same company that currently owns Northgate Mall, Simon Property Group, have increased security to prevent nightmare number one: a terrorist attack of the very symbol of safe and controlled consumption. "Historically, malls have been safe havens, places where parents feel comfortable granting their young teenagers a bit of freedom... [and] shopping mall managers and owners want to keep it that way," Kathy Mulady wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
But how would parents feel about their teens' safety if they learned that on Friday, February 7, 2003, a security officer for the Bon Marché at Northgate Mall observed two adult males of Middle Eastern descent taking pictures of the Bon's entrance area? According to the report, which was written by Officer Cook of the North Precinct, the suspects were "looking around and acting nervous." And when the security officer made eye contact with them, they stopped what they were doing, got into a blue Toyota Supra, and left the area. Officer Cook was handed a videotape of the incident; he in turn forwarded a copy to the SPD's Emergency Preparedness Bureau.
