Follow-up results reported with crime plan

Police Chief Avery Moore appeared before the Tacoma City Council on April 16 and led an update on the city’s violent crime reduction plan. Now, halfway through the year, in the second year of the plan’s implementation, the report presented shows that significant results have been achieved in increasing public safety.

A comprehensive overview of the effects of the plan to date was given by Dr. Michael Smith of the Center for Applied Community and Policy Research at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio. Smith and his team played a key role in formulating the plan from the outset and Smith has presented to council several times since the plan’s launch in July 2022.

The report Smith gave focused on the results of the crime plan from July to December 2023, the mid-year of the plan’s second annual period. Most striking, according to the analysis presented by Smith, is an 18.6 percent decline in violent crime compared to the same period in 2022.

“Among the major types of violent crimes the plan tracks, homicides have remained the same, aggravated assaults have decreased significantly, individual robberies have decreased slightly and business robberies have increased slightly,” Smith said. “That’s what amounts to that 18 percent reduction.”

Smith’s update noted that crime hotspots across the city are generally declining in the crime plan treatment grids and in the areas surrounding the treatment areas.

“It’s confirmation that crime isn’t just around the corner as we deal with these hotspots in Tacoma,” he said.

The total number of arrests increased slightly in the last six months of 2023. Smith explained that the big picture is that arrests are up slightly across the city, with more in the covered areas and most involving drug arrests.

“It is indicative that the Tacoma Police Department is working to make arrests as necessary.”

Violence-related calls for service across the city fell by about 15 percent in the last six months of 2023 compared to the same months last year, and by about 8 percent in covered areas. Smith said this is “good evidence that the crime plan is having the kind of effect we hoped it would have. Not only is violent crime decreasing, but so are calls from citizens for help related to violent crime.”

A crucial aspect of the crime plan is how committed Tacoma police officers are to making it work. This revealed even more good news: Officer fidelity to the plan is at 98 percent – ​​that officers are where they need to be, at crime hotspots and when they need to be there.

“The Tacoma Police Department has always been excellent in this regard. They are almost perfect at being where they need to be when we need them,” Smith said.

The crime plan’s medium-term strategy, called Problem-Oriented, Place-Based Policing, began at two adjacent addresses in the 800 block of Hosmer Street. An effort was made to develop an operational plan to identify the nature and extent of the problems there and develop a range of solutions to address those problems. That plan came into effect at that location last fall. The plan focused on code compliance at two addresses in the Hosmer 800 block, solutions for the homeless, blight and trash removal, and working with community stakeholders to focus on long-standing problems at this location.

As Smith explained, “The impact of these efforts during treatment in the last quarter of 2023 resulted in no reports of violent crime or homelessness-related crimes and no calls for violence-related crime services. Significantly, there was a measurable reduction in the types of cases the plan was intended to address.”

During this council meeting, TPD Captain Christopher Karl provided an update on the Special Investigations Unit focus on narcotics, street racing, property crimes and the Kia/Hyundai task force.

Karl reported that from January 1 to March 31, 64 narcotics investigations were conducted, resulting in 20 arrests and the seizure of 83 pounds of methamphetamine and 110,000 fentanyl pills, along with 33 recovered firearms. Police also arrested nine violent offenders, including murder suspects.

The unit led a multi-jurisdictional organized crime investigation focused on illegal marijuana operations and seized 3,580 marijuana plants, 78 pounds of processed cannabis and 12 vehicles.

Attempts to crack down on street racing led to 106 arrests and 43 arrests of spectators. In the area of ​​property crime, the unit investigated 661 cases of crime, issued 83 bulletins and arrested 55 persons.

Dedicated efforts to combat Kia/Hyundai theft resulted in 55 arrests. On March 15, the Tacoma Police Department, in partnership with the Puget Sound Auto Theft Task Force and Hyundai Motor Company, hosted a software update event at the Tacoma Dome, demonstrating its commitment to preventing theft and improving public safety .

Work on phase 2 of the crime plan will continue in the future. A working group has met to identify the next location for the medium-term phase of the East 25 crime plan^e Street.

“I came down here and sat in on one of their working group meetings and we all visited that location,” Smith said. “There is an operations plan similar to what was done on Hosmer and it is being worked on.”

The crime planning team continues to monitor data collection and the impact on East 25^e Street regarding police in hotspots. At the end of this summer, the end of year two of the crime plan, Smith will also appear before council again with an update on that location.