Homicides increased in WA state in 2021. What about in Tacoma and Pierce County?
Homicides in Washington surged last year, setting another somber record for the most murders in the state since records began being kept in 1980, according to an annual report released by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
There were 325 homicides in 2021, up from 307 killings in 2020. That’s an increase of 5.9 percent. Between 2019 and 2020, the increase in homicides was a staggering 47 percent. Violent crime also increased by 12.3 percent last year, which includes murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults.
The 590-page report collects data from 232 cities, counties and tribes across the state. It comes from data submitted using the National Incident-Based Reporting System, and the report uses a snapshot of the database as of March 22 of 2022. The data is then forwarded to the FBI. As a result, the reports’ figures differ from local agencies’ latest numbers.
Tacoma Police Department also recorded an increase in homicides and violent crimes, but killings did not increase as dramatically as they did in 2020. According to the report, the city saw 32 homicides last year compared to 29 in 2020, a 10.3 percent increase. In 2020, the increase was 82.4%. Not included in WASPC’s count of killings are “justifiable homicides.”
In Pierce County, 13 of the 19 jurisdictions saw no homicides in 2021. Four agencies reported an increase in homicides, with Tacoma having the most. Pierce County Sheriff’s Department reported 18 homicides compared to 13 in 2020. It also saw an overall increase in violent crimes.
Though homicides are at a high, 2021’s statewide murder rate, or the number of killings per 1,000 people, was not record-setting at .04. According to WASPC, murder rates were higher in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Out of the total homicides in Washington state, investigators cleared 154 cases (47.4 percent). In 2020, the clearance rate was 54 percent. According to Tacoma police spokesperson Wendy Haddow, the department cleared 28 of 33 murders from last year, a clearance rate of 85 percent. In 2020, the department reported that it solved 26 of 32 homicides, a clearance rate of 81 percent.
According to the report, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department made arrests in 10 murders last year, a clearance rate of 55 percent.
Despite the increase in homicides and violent crimes, total crimes were down, due in part to large decreases in identity theft (down 78.8 percent) and drug offenses (down 60.9 percent) compared to 2020. The state saw a huge spike in fraud cases that year from pandemic unemployment benefits.
According to WASPC, decreases in drug offenses were driven by the state Supreme Court’s Blake decision which found in 2021 that a law making simple drug possession a crime was unconstitutional because it did not require prosecutors to prove that the defendant knowingly possessed the drugs.
What’s driving the surge in homicides, violent crime?
The statewide increase in homicides appears to follow a national trend of increased killings in 2021, albeit at a slower rate than in 2020. The FBI has yet to release preliminary data for national crime statistics from last year.
Experts say there is no singular answer for why homicides are continuing to increase. Some point to societal disruptions that resulted from the coronavirus pandemic, an increase in the number of guns Americans purchased and changes in policing. Experts have said a lack of confidence in police from the public might have played a role in the spike.
“All three played a role,” Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told The New York Times. “What’s difficult is to assign priority to one compared to the others.”
Law enforcement officials point to staffing shortages at police agencies as part of the reason for a spike in violent crimes being reported. Steven Strachan, WASPC’s executive director, said in a July 20 news conference that concerns raised by officers over the last two years regarding changes in laws that affect the way they do their jobs also had some relationship to crime stats. But Strachan said there are other reasons for the spike in some types of crimes, and he pointed more directly to staffing issues.
“We were the lowest-staffed state in the nation two years ago,” he said. “In the past two years, particularly in 2021, it has gotten much, much worse.”
The per-capita rate of law enforcement officers fell to 1.38 per 1,000 statewide in 2021, compared to a national average of 2.33. According to WASPC, the state had a net loss of 495 officers, falling from 11,231 to 10,736.
Strachan said reduced staffing means a more “reactive” response from police and less time for follow-up investigations, slower response times and fewer people available to de-escalate situations when possible and ensure a scene is safe. He also said law enforcement leaders are seeing greater frustration and burn out from officers.
“The number that are applying are down,” Strachan said. “In many cases they will say the quality of people they’re getting is very strong. That’s a good thing. They’re getting good people who are interested in doing the job for the right reasons. But getting and recruiting those folks is getting more and more difficult.”
This story was originally published July 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
