By Patrick Robinson
Crime of all kinds, in the past six months is down in our area, but that’s in contrast to last year and early this year when crime went up alarmingly in both Southwest Seattle and in King County. Shootings in areas like White Center, Burien, SeaTac and other South King County communities were “through the roof” in 2016 according to King County Sheriff John Urquhart. Residential burglaries in West Seattle were “out of control” last year, driven largely by the opioid epidemic, according to Southwest Precinct Commander Pierre Davis. But the methods they used to reverse these crime trends were different.
“The first four months of this year from January through May 9th the number of gun homicides in King County? 16, “ said Urquhart. “Shots fired injuries? 45 cases. Shots fired property? 101. Shots fired calls? Well over 100. That’s a lot.
King County forms a task force
In King County “Operation Quiet Nights” was formed earlier this year as a coalition between more than 70 officers and nearly two dozen agencies whose mission, armed with information and warrants was to send small teams out to find gang members suspected in shootings. It went into action in May. That worked. 26 arrests were made in the initial stages of the operation and Urquhart says more are coming. “Since I’ve been Sheriff the crime rate has gone down every single year and the amount of crimes that we have solved has gone up. In fact it’s never been higher.”
He noted that this was the first time so many diverse law enforcement agencies had come together to address the same issue.
"If you look at the calls from May 10 to Aug. 7," said Urquhart, "Homicides from 16 down to 4, Shots fired injuries from 45 down to 20, Shots fired property down to 60, almost in half, General Shots Fired calls, about the same. This is because of arrests and working with the Prosecutors office we were able to keep these people in jail. Who's doing all this? If you are one side of the debate, it's undocumented immigrants. But that's just plain not true. These are young people from 15 to 25 who were born in this country. Yes, they may have an ethnicity such as hispanic or African American, that's quite common. But they are gang members of one sort or another. There's a resurgence in gang activity for some reason. We don't know why but it's definitely here. What's unique is that we were able to put a stop to this or at least reduce it during the summer months when it's usually just the opposite."
Urquhart offered some insight into the reasons behind the shootings. "Is this over drugs? No, these aren't drug wars. Are they turf wars? Maybe Graffiti wars? Or oftentimes it's 'You disrespected my girlfriend' or 'This is my corner today' and tomorrow they don't care about it. That's the thing about gangs in this part of the country. It's not like you see on television. Not like it is in Chicago or Oakland or other areas. You can be in a gang one day and not the next. They are very loose knit organizations."
In Southwest Seattle Precinct Commander Davis said that property crimes saw a jump that surprised them and to get a handle on solving and preventing them meant pointed use of a powerful database system called SeaStat, linked to the city’s Real Time Crime Center (RTCC). That combined system has made a major difference in both apprehension and prevention.
SeaStat, in place since 2014 and RTCC established in 2015 enable the police to look at crime occurrences and see how they might be tied to specific areas or other crimes that happen in sequence, so officers can be dispatched and investigations assisted.
SeaStat is aimed at quickly addressing crime hotspots based on analysis of crime data and community reports of incidents. Emphasis is on using real-time data, getting direct feedback from community members, and increasing communication and collaboration throughout the department.Variations of SeaStat, often called Compstat, are used by police departments around the country including New York and Los Angeles, to combat serious crime.
'What we do is arm our community members with information," said Davis," and we do that through the community meetings we hold here, such as Blockwatch meetings, Precinct Advisory Councils we hold once a month or our Crime Prevention meetings we hold here. There are times we bring in guest speakers. Plus we have our own Crime Prevention Coordinator now. We want our community to know first hand what we can do for them and what they can do for themselves."
Captain Davis explained, "We had a car prowl epidemic last year and we ended up last year reaching over 18% more than we were the year before. We had individuals from outside the city to steal. West Seattle is a nice place and people are friendly and for the most part well to do. These individuals see that and they are more sophisticated now. These guys will steal a car and then steal what they can. The catalyst for these types of crimes is the opioid addiction. These guys are feeding their habits." He acknowledged the problem is far worse now than a few years ago. "This is the worst I've seen."
He noted that the normal advice of locking your car, not leaving items in plain sight, parking in a well lit area all help and that having officers present to act as a deterrent or arrest people when necessary works too. "But you are not going to arrest your way out of this problem. So what you do is offer these individuals some type of assistance while they are incarcerated. In lieu of serving more time. Punishment is one thing and rehab is another and then there's both. But if their crime is too horrific then obviously that's off the table. Drug court can help. Part of me would like to think that this is just another tool to help us prevent a rash of these instances down the road."
