Armed Citizen Patrol gets some ink

This week's edition of the Seattle weekly has an article about the group of folks we wrote about a little while ago--the ones that met down the road from us on East Marginal, who have organized themselves into a neighborhood patrol up on Beacon Hill:

"We're not looking for trouble; we just want to see what's happening," says Cheney, a longtime Beacon Hill resident and former Fort Lewis military police officer. Tall, slight, and intense, with a shaved head and small, circular glasses, Cheney, whose wife Ann also carried a gun on the walk, says carrying a concealed weapon "is like buying insurance or wearing a seatbelt. It's something you do to be prepared."

The patrols are an offshoot of Cheney's new group, Citizens for the Second Amendment, which had its first meeting last month. "It doesn't mean you're a gun fanatic or a freak just because you have a concealed-weapons permit," he explains one morning at Galaxie, a popular Beacon Hill coffee shop.

Cheney--who grew up in Georgetown, mentioned later in the article that he was prepared to address the concerns of folks who might be opposed to the idea, but says no one in opposition showed up to their inaugural meeting.

One interesting aspect of the article is toward the end, an officer touts the lowest crime figures in 40 years as a partial reason why police response isn't overwhelming to citizen calls. Hmmmm.