SPOKANE, Wash. — For the Wall Street Diner in the Garland District, a spot that's been open since 1949, there's history in and on the walls.
But now, there are reminders of a more recent past on the door and windows too.
“Yep, that’s the only one but it’s just breaking apart as it’s in there," said manager Jessica Patchin, pointing out a bullet or pellet hole in the glass door, before moving on to other holes in the windows. "Yeah, there’s three in this one, and that one’s from three weeks ago we thought was just a rock.”
Patchin was the first to see the damage after she was called in Sunday night. She says the restaurant's broken glass alarm went off around 9:30 p.m., alerting them to what they now believe is vandalism from someone shooting a BB gun.
“They literally got nothing out of this so I don’t understand. Why someone would just be out shooting windows in businesses, small businesses at that," Patchin said.
The shooting came just months after the diner had the door fixed after Patchin says someone threw a rock through the same glass door.
She says she's lived in Spokane for years and feels property crimes have increased.
She says other businesses in the district have had similar issues. The Milk Bottle was hit a couple weeks prior, a broken door forcing owner Tom Ritchie to have it replaced in the middle of a busy lunch hour.
“It didn’t go all the way through but it just shattered this glass door," he said.
Ritchie is just as baffled at the vandalism.
“Every customer leaves here happy so it’s obviously not a customer. Yeah, it’s just senseless," he said.
And just as frustrated.
As a small business owner, he says any damage like that comes out of his pocket book, and he's not about to raise prices or cut employee pay to fund the fixes. He assumes there also won't be any sort of payback.
“I called CrimeCheck and I still haven’t heard back on a report or from a cop," he said.
“We don’t always report it, necessarily, because there’s not a lot they’re gonna do about it," Patchin added.
Spokane Police tells KREM 2 police do respond to property crimes like this, "to take any pictures and try to gather surveillance videos."
Other calls are handled by CrimeCheck, depending on the incident.
"It helps when we have video to ID the suspects but if we don’t then we don’t have a lot to go off as far as identifying a suspect. This is why we say cameras help business not only when stuff happens but it also helps deter crime. Cameras actually are great and we are constantly reviewing them, identifying people and making arrests," Jacquelyn Valencia with SPD said in an email.
Ritchie says he did have video, showing a gray sedan stop next to his restaurant with what appeared to be the window down, then drive away. Though he tried and failed to make out a license plate.
For now, what's been broken has been boarded up, though there are other things not so easily repaired.
“I don’t know how to stop it, ya know?” Patchin said.
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