Tacoma's crime plan has ended after nearly 3 years. Here's what the data tells us

Yahoo

26-02-2025

Tacoma's plan to reduce violent crime has concluded, and the social scientist who presented new data to the City Council on Tuesday said the strategy had an immediate positive effect on safety that continued over nearly three years.
The Violent Crime Reduction Plan was a partnership between the Police Department and the University of Texas at San Antonio that combated crime in phases with a data-driven approach.
It started with officers activating their patrol cars' lights at hot spots of violent crime to deter criminals. Later phases worked to address underlying conditions causing problems in crime-prone locations such as South Hosmer Street in the South End and the East 25th Street Corridor near the Tacoma Dome. Officers also started getting out of their cars while doing hot-spot policing to patrol on foot and talk with residents.
Assistant chief Crystal Young-Haskins, who introduced Tuesday afternoon's presentation at a City Council study session, told the council that the plan was one of the Police Department's strategies in its day-to-day operations, and it is continuing to focus on reducing crime in areas the plan identified.
Young-Haskins noted that there had been a recent uptick in homicides — six so far this year — and there is still work to be done even if the partnership with the university has concluded.
'We're going to utilize all of the strategies that we have in place today, and that's things that we learned from actually working this plan,' Young-Haskins said.
In the last six months of 2024, average monthly violent-crime incidents were down in all but one area of the city, Sector 1, which includes Hilltop, downtown, the Tideflats and Northeast Tacoma. According to data presented by Michael Smith from UT San Antonio, Tacoma saw a 13.2 percent decrease in violent street-crime incidents during that time period.
Specific violent offenses were down, such as murder (38.9 percent decrease), robberies of individuals (21.3 percent), aggravated assaults (4 percent) and drive-by shootings (32.3 percent).
The greatest reduction was in business robberies, down from 131 reported in the last six months of 2023 to 70 in the latter half of 2024.
'I just feel like there's something to be proud of here,' Deputy Mayor Kiara Daniels said of that statistic.
Council Member Joe Bushnell, who represents parts of the South End, South and the Eastside, said residents near South Hosmer Street had told him they'd seen a marked decrease in violent crime, and they appreciate the level of engagement from the Police Department.
One change from previous updates on the effects of the crime plan was a finding that suggests police enforcement in hot-spots could be driving criminal activity to nearby areas. While violent crime in hot spots was down about 36 percent in the last six months of 2024, in areas surrounding those hot spots, called 'catchment areas' violent crime was up about 12 percent.
Smith said it was the first time they'd seen that kind of uptick, but it was offset by the much more significant reduction in crime in the hot spots. He said it was driven by increases in violent crime in catchment areas in Sectors 1 and 2. Sector 2 is the city's North End and West End neighborhoods.
One effective tactic for hot-spot policing, Smith said, was having officers get out of their patrol cars to walk the area on foot. Data showed that approach led to a 40.9 percent reduction in violent crimes in hot spots compared to a 26.1 percent reduction when officers just turned on their emergency lights for 15 minutes.
If you zoom out on what violent crime looked like throughout the life of the plan, the data shows that overall, average violent-crime incidents and victims have continued to fall since July 2022 when the plan debuted.
Some on the council questioned whether it could all be attributed to the Violent Crime Reduction Plan. Council Member Olgy Diaz, who represents all of Tacoma as an at-large council member, asked how she could know that the data wasn't just related to how crime was trending in society in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
'A graph can tell me the trend, but I don't know how this compares to other places who didn't have a violent crime plan,' Diaz said.
'I'm struggling with how we are better today having implemented this crime plan versus had we not,' she added.
Young-Haskins and Smith cautioned against comparing Tacoma to other mid-size cities. Young-Haskins said a lot of others don't have ports or an entertainment center like the Tacoma Dome. Smith said the FBI has a caveat on its website advising against using its crime data to compare cities, and there are a variety of reasons for it, including that not all cities apply crime definitions the same way.
Smith was confident that Tacoma's Violent Crime Reduction Plan had worked from the start.
'We have little question in our mind, as social scientists who do this work around the country, that the crime plan had an immediate impact on violent crime in your city that continued to manifest itself over the life of the crime plan,' Smith said.
Mayor Victoria Woodards said she appreciated Diaz's question, and while she didn't doubt the data, there could be a question of how Tacoma compares to other cities where the University of Texas had implemented a crime plan.
Woodards said she had talked with mayors across the country, and everyone felt the uptick in crime that came during the pandemic.
'In all of those cities, nobody just stood by and did nothing, right?' Woodards said. 'Everybody did something in order to drive their numbers down.'
There was essentially no change in the level of violent crime in the East 25th Street corridor in the last six months of 2024, and Smith said it would require a long-term commitment to see improvement.
All measured public-safety categories saw increases compared to 2023, such as violent offenses and calls for service related to narcotics, loitering and violent crime. But Smith said calls for service trending upward was positive because that indicated residents and businesses were more engaged in calling police for help.
'Keep in mind that this is on the list as one of the areas to be treated because it was a persistently violent location for several years before this strategy went into effect,' Smith said.
Council Member Sarah Rumbaugh, whose district includes the corridor, said it was an area that had been neglected for 10 or more years. She said it doesn't have a very active business district, and a smaller portion of it has residents, so taking care of the neighborhood tends to fall to businesses.
She said the perception from business owners she'd spoken with was positive, and, although the numbers might not show a change, the fact that police were there and taking steps to make it better was helping.
Among the steps taken in the area were addressing problems related to urban blight like graffiti and overflowing garbage, and physical improvements were made such as installing lighting and no-parking signs. Police performed special enforcement missions and addressed narcotics use. Rumbaugh said those actions were a big part of why the perception was positive.
Police also engaged with people experiencing homelessness in the area. A low-barrier emergency shelter is operated at 1421 Puyallup Ave. by the city and Catholic Community Services that can serve 100 people.
'I think we need to also recognize what happens around some of our homeless encampment areas that we are taking care of,' Rumbaugh said. 'And so this is directly related, in some way, to things that happen in these areas.'