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Officer Cat Citron, the Renton Police Department s Safe Place liaison, holds a decal that signals a business or organization provides a safe harbor for victims of hate crimes. (Renton Police Department)
RENTON, WA The Renton Police Department is launching a new program to combat hate crimes and provide a network of safe locations for victims amid a recent uptick in such incidents across King County.
Created by Seattle police officer Jim Ritter in 2015, the Safe Place program is a community partnership that invites businesses and schools to identify their properties as somewhere for people to seek safety and wait for investigators if they are targeted in a hate crime. At its inception, the program was designed to combat crimes against the LGBTQ community and has since expanded to assist victims of any hate crime.