The way in which SPD’s officers are getting involved with crime prevention and response also changed hugely in 2021 (Image: SPD)
Gun violence in Seattle in 2021
Seattle is on pace to fall only about ten cops short of its budgeted plans to end 2022 with 1,200 sworn officers.
The numbers come as part of a review of Seattle Police staffing by the Seattle City Council and new reporting showing violent crime reached a 14-year high in 2021 even as the city’s measurements of “pro-active” policing fell as “community reporting” of crime increased.
Meanwhile, the council’s public safety committee is asking for more information about SPD’s efforts to curb “organized retail crime” amid concerns groups of shoplifters are wreaking havoc on the pandemic reopening of downtown.
The SPD 2021 Year End Staffing Report (PDF) delivered this week to the council committee is part of new oversight implemented in the wake of Black Lives Matter and anti-police violence protests and shows Seattle is set to fall short by 2022 police hiring and retention plans by 10 officers.
The numbers will shake out with “in-service” available officers in the city falling below 1,000 through much of 2022, based on current conditions. SPD reported 20 separations in January, including 12 officers removed due to vaccination mandate requirements.
SPD Chief Adrian Diaz, still officially the interim leader of the department since the resignation of Carmen Best, says the projected shortfall only adds to concerns about the challenges his department faced in 2021 as SPD says violent crimes reported in the city climbed 14%. Gun violence in the city has also soared as part of regional and national trends sparked by the pandemic, social service cutbacks, and prevalence of firearms.
The property crime rate in Seattle also climbed but only slightly from 5,267 to 5,686 per 100,000 residents.
According to SPD’s report on 2021 (PDF), 911 response times reached “historic highs” with the median response time for the highest priority calls climbing to seven and a half minutes, “approaching a historic 10-year high.”
The way in which SPD’s officers are getting involved with crime prevention and response also changed hugely in 2021. The department reports a massive 27% drop in officer-generated responses like, for example, an officer driving by and noticing a smashed window at a business. Part of the gap was made up for by so-called “community-generated” calls like 911 calls or someone flagging an officer down — those incidents climbed 6% to just over 233,000 events. But overall, SPD responded to 5% fewer events in 2021, according to the department’s computer aided dispatch report. Check out the graphic from the SPD presentation on the changes at the top of this post.
An infamous roster: Here’s where SPD was called to the most in 2021. Mayor Bruce Harrell says he supports a “hot spot” approach to reducing crime concerns in the city
Meanwhile, the public safety committee and Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Lisa Herbold have ordered an audit to determine to what extent “downtown Seattle has been adversely affected by organized retail crime.”
Organized retail crime is a subset of overall retail theft that involves organized efforts to steal and resell high-value items, often through online marketplaces. During the pandemic, the characteristics of retail crime have shifted, and there is emerging evidence that ORC has increased during the pandemic due, in part, to increased use of online marketplaces for selling stolen goods. Several national retail organizations agree that ORC is more effectively dealt with away from the stores and at the level of the people reselling the stolen goods.
A report from SPD on organized retail crime can be found here (PDF).
SPD has touted a few major busts in organized shoplifting including an operation in December when 35 people were arrested for thefts from the downtown Target.
But the operations have been largely ineffective as ongoing COVID-19 restrictions in jails for people booked for misdemeanor crimes have put offenders back on the street.
King County, and Seattle prosecutors have said they are looking at solutions including combining multiple misdemeanor offenses into a single felony charge.
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My storage was broken into, and report filed online with the police department as I was told there wasn’t enough police to take a report on the phone! No detective or officer ever showed up to take my statement. This cost me a LOT of money. While being a reality check to myself, it also supports my opinion that defunding and cutting the police force is NOT the right idea folks. Please get off that bandwagon of insanity. We’ve proven we can’t police ourselves as much as we’d like to think we can.
As is typical, the article lays blame for the rise in crime on the pandemic, cuts in social services, and prevalence of firearms. BS. Then why did crime go down in other countries during covid? The elephant in the room is the defund the police movement and decriminalization of crime movement. The social experiment has failed, and we are now seeing the consequences. Time for a course correction.
Could you tell me if the other countries paid people more or less money to their citizens during the pandemic?
Which countries are you referring to specifically? Because most other Western European countries have both far better social services and far fewer firearms, so you don’t have much of an argument without specifics. I’m not a fan of the defund movement at all, but I’m also not a fan of bad arguments.
Other countries don’t have social systems that drives people into crime to avoid crippling poverty. But at least OUR rich people can blast themselves off into space, so totally worth it?!?
My car was broken into 3 separate times in Seattle between 2006-2018, all before we talked about defunding. Cops never came. There was a famous story where a woman tracked down the people who stole her purse and phone and the cops said they were not coming. Absolutely nothing has changed.
They can’t come at the drop of a hat over a stolen purse. Much as I myself would be very upset if I had my purse stolen, if all deployable officers are at other more serious crimes at that moment – no one is going to come. Of course if you were the person whose occupied burglary they were responding to, and you’re in your house saying “robber inside my house come quick!” you’re going to want them to be deployed THERE not to the purse theft. It’s about triage, as well it should be. If your car was broken in to you don’t need an officer dispatched, you just file a report online or on the phone. That too is a low priority because again, they need to deploy in order of urgency. When my car was broken in to it was 6 hours before the police came. So? There wasn’t anything they could do other than take the report for my insurance. You’re not going to get actionable prints off a car break in, so it’s just report taking. Low priority.
What you should be saying is that we should be funding policing to include non-police officers who can take reports of non-in-progress crimes. They would be unarmed, and just be people in plainclothes to take reports, enter them, and allow trends to be properly tracked. Similarly, they could be tasked with investigative work that doesn’t involve being in the field; research, etc. (Like your laptop is stolen; someone can probably sit in a room and try to track it online. If it’s found, you send cops.)
That’s what defunding police is about. You don’t need to send two armed officers to handle storage that’s broken into, they don’t need to be handling Google searches. They should be reserved for active crime scenes.
It is hard to believe property crime isn’t up further. The relentless breaking of windows of local businesses and level of vandalism is shocking. I would suspect that the property crime levels are much higher than reported. Residents and businesses stop reporting crime when they give up hope that anything will be done about it.
Reality you are correct. The decriminalization of crimes and the result were easy to predict. Property crime is under reported for many reasons. Many businesses and residents are facing losing their insurance and/or the rates skyrocketing due to the level of crimes along with the fatigue of reporting crimes with no results. It is like you say time for a course correction.
It’s way up. People just stop reporting it, just like package theft.
The council’s staffing targets were inadequate, which makes it all the sadder they couldn’t even manage to reach the very, very low bar they set for themselves.
The police are not capable of doing what so many are asking and expecting of them. Get it through your skulls. “I called customer service and was on hold for an hour!” smdh.
Lefties like you simultaneously want the police to do their jobs and also not exist.
Those community groups we were promised that could solve all of this are free to get up off the couch and start any time. If they want to demonstrate how much more effective they are than the police I’ll be happy to advocate for them to get further funding.
i’m looking at this map, and I’m seeing that the bulk of violent crime is … downtown… belltown… CD and Rainier Valley… and Aurora.
So
Basically the same it’s been for over 20 years
We already know that no matter how much money we throw at SPD the way it is that it simply isn’t able to properly keep those areas safe.
this is like someone being upset that the US chooses its presidents undemocratically. like yes, it’s an issue, but it’s not exactly a new one
Same patterns and up 25%