Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz says he believes the city’s approach to emphasis policing and better management of the reduced number of officers on the city’s streets helped slow rising crime trends late last year even as 2022 marked the city’s highest violent crime rate in 15 years.
Statistics for the East Precinct, below, also mirror the citywide peak in violent crime totals as reports across the Central District and Capitol Hill climbed 8% vs 2021 — but the numbers here also back up Diaz’s contention that late 2022 showed signs of improvement.
(Image: CHS)
With no signs that the department’s challenges with hiring and retaining more officers will end soon, the chief has announced a new scheduling strategy he says will allow SPD to have more officers active during “peak hours” and make sure officer staffing totals are at “safe numbers” while also allowing officers to have an extra day off “for their own level of wellness.”
Diaz discussed the 2022 crime report and new schedule for the department’s officers this week at a meeting of the Seattle City Council’s public safety committee.
Starting today, instead of working 9-hour shifts, SPD officers will now work 10-hour shifts and all patrol officers will move from four-days-on, two-days-off to four-days-on, three-days-off schedules.
The move comes as SPD has continued to have its staffing fully funded by the city but has so far been unable to recruit new officers fast enough, dropping from around 1,300 sworn officers prior to the pandemic to just under 1,000 in 2022 after resignations and an increase in cops choosing to retire. A new hiring bonus plan is hoped to grow the force by 50% by 2027.
For now, Diaz and officials say they expect the scheduling change to help reduce the need for more officers to work overtime while also producing more time of overlap so SPD can have more officers on the street during its busiest hours. The change is also helpful in matching other departments, Diaz said, to help retain and recruit officers.
While overall violent crime totals rose in the city again in 2022, Diaz said a marked downturn in the final months of the year is a sign that efforts to make better use of the department’s resources and more limited staffing through emphasis policing and operations have started to to help improve public safety in the city.
Still, gun violence remains a plague. Seattle and King County have reported a major surge in shots during the pandemic and the SPD totals bear that out with 2022’s gun violence totals eclipsing even the heights of the COVID-19 crisis.
In the East Precinct across Capitol Hill and the Central District, overall crime climbed 3.7% in 2022 vs. 2021, matching the city’s uptick.
In the East Precinct, overall crime was up nearly 22% over recent averages and 39% compared to five years ago driven especially by skyrocketing property crimes like arson and motor vehicle theft. Other property crimes slowed including burglaries which finally fell off after years of high totals.
There was little good news in the violent crime totals for the year, however, as assaults jumped 13% and there were a reported 11 homicides as gun violence in the city, region, and nation continues to spiral.
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