Basic math: More cops on ground, crime goes down
Good news, City of Destiny, you’re No. 1 on the list!
The bad news? It’s not the good kind of list. According to a police reporting system used by Seattle and other local agencies, Tacoma has the highest property crime per capita in a state the FBI ranks as worst in the country.
Rather than just shrug — hey, at least we beat Seattle at something — our civic leaders took a bold step and formed ... a committee! Can’t you just smell the leadership?
Forgive the sarcasm, but this type of inclusive, feel-good approach won’t solve the problem, not when the solution is obviously more police officers.
According to a recent TNT article (“Why can’t Tacoma hire more officers?” 6/19), the Tacoma Police Department has shed nearly a sixth of its sworn positions since 2008. Whether you blame that on rising wages or the recession won’t change the fact that slashing 60 cops (398 to 338) spells trouble for a city long viewed by state legislators and the corrections system as fertile soil for planting felons.
Despite that, penny pinchers argue that beefing up the police department is the wrong answer to what is arguably a social problem. With all due respect, this appears to be the view of Mayor Marilyn Strickland, who opined, “as if that’s going to solve it,” when discussing (or more apt, dissing) the radical notion of hiring 100 new officers.
True, without the active participation of the community, no real transformational change is possible.
But one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the first casualties of a shrinking budget are always the specialists — cops who work in gang units, proactive teams, auto-theft details, multiagency task forces, even bike patrol. These cops then filter back into patrol cars where they run back and forth cataloging crimes they might have prevented. Fighting crime soon reverts to the Sisyphean model — forever pushing that rock back up the hill.
In 1995, there were more cops and fewer citizens, but Tacoma was still one of the most violent cities in the country. Those of us working the Hilltop back then watched drug deals and drive-by shootings by night, and picked up used needles and shell casings off the sidewalk. Though we arrested a lot of people, it often felt like plugging a leaky dike only to have water spurt out somewhere else.
But we had help back then — an undercover unit targeting gang members who sold drugs. Over a couple months, they picked off one dangerous criminal after another until you could almost hear the neighborhood breathe a sigh of relief.
I’ve observed that same effect again and again: when Tacoma’s long-defunct Proactive Team conducted stings against prolific burglars; when TPD’s Burglary-Robbery Unit set traps for would-be bank robbers; when regional auto-theft task forces used bait cars and informants to break up theft rings and shut down chop shops.
Operations like these picked off many career criminals over the years, thus saving many would-be victims from undue suffering and keeping crime stats in check.
Fast forward to the present: TPD’s specialty units have been shut down or severely depleted by an anemic budget, their roles handled on an ad-hoc basis by overworked patrol officers exhausted by a never-ending flow of paperwork and overtime. Is it any wonder property crimes are skyrocketing?
But humans will be humans, after all. Not everyone can be convinced, shamed or otherwise cajoled into law-abiding behavior. When the societal dam breaks, it is not enough to simply plug the holes.
If Tacomans want to see those upward-trending crime stats come back down, I suggest you contact your local council member, neighborhood council or, better yet, Mayor Strickland, and tell her to bring TPD back to full strength.
Because being “best of the worst” is a tag Tacoma doesn’t need anymore.
Brian O’Neill is a former police officer who previously wrote “Blue Byline” for the TNT online edition. Reach him at btoflyer@comcast.net
This story was originally published June 24, 2016 at 3:50 PM with the headline "Basic math: More cops on ground, crime goes down."