From broken windows to homicide: How to understand what ails Tacoma, and then fix it
The crime is a symptom. The broken windows are a symptom. When you talk to the experts, that’s what you learn.
Tacoma is sick right now, and it’s not alone. You don’t need me to tell you. In cities across the country, lawlessness is up, along with desperation and despair. We see the effects on our streets, with the utter cruelty of homelessness now forced into full view. We see it on people’s faces — in measurements of their mental health and well being — as the cumulative weight of institutional racism, extreme political polarization, COVID-19, war and inflation (to name but a few current crises) continues to take its toll.
Frankly, it’s a lot to deal with. Even when you account for historical context and necessary perspective — which we’ll get to in a moment — the impact is untethering. You don’t have to strain your eyes to see a societal structure that appears to be crumbling, and that carries mental and emotional weight. From homicides to brazen corner store smash-and-grabs, to the divisions between us that have become all too clear, making sense of it can be hard. It’s easy to find yourself wondering: What is going on?
To help answer that question — at least in part — I reached out to local and national criminologists this week. While much has been written about the increase in violent crime over the last two years in the United States, I was specifically interested in the signs of decay that surround us on a daily basis but don’t always stop us in our tracks — like the randomly broken windows, the vandalism, the seeming disregard fellow human beings and all the little signs that something is very wrong.
So what was the takeaway?
The experts largely agreed that the negative crime trends we’re experiencing on a local level, big and small, are signs of larger, system-wide failings — from our inability to provide opportunities, services and a safety net to those who need it to the fractured discourse that currently defines our politics.
“I really do believe that there is a lot of pent up frustration and anger about lots of things in society,” said criminology professor Alex Piquero, the chair of the department of sociology at the University of Miami, when asked how he explains it.
“It’s not just anger and rage. It’s anxiety,” Piquero said.
Crime perceptions and reality
Recently, Piquero — who has studied crime trends, crime rates and crime-prevention for more than two decades — worked with the cities of Miami and Dallas to help establish responses to crime that involve policing and non-policing strategies. He’s also worked nationally and internationally to inform crime policy decisions.
Speaking with The News Tribune, Piquero was quick to note that the rates of violent crimes and property crimes have dramatically dropped since the 1990s, and in the grand scheme current increases in violent crimes appear to be aberrations that in many cases dwarf what the country experienced 30 years ago.
Still, Piquero acknowledged the reality: even if increases in violent crimes are temporary — and many cities have actually seen property crimes decrease since the pandemic, which is important to note — the angst and concern are not necessarily reactions to imaginary problems.
Unknowingly, he could have been talking about Tacoma, where Mayor Victoria Woodards recently underscored upticks in homicides, assaults, arson, vehicle thefts, vandalism and property destruction during her annual State of the City address.
Identifying the precise causes of these increases can be difficult, Piquero indicated, but broadly — from a national perspective — he said that factors like COVID, social unrest, unemployment, and increases in opioid disorders, alcohol sales and gun sales have all played a part, at least when it comes to violent crimes. Responding will require a combination of strategies, he believes.
Piquero also said that it’s more difficult for criminologists to follow issues he described as “incivilities” — like broken windows, vandalism and property destruction — because they’re not well tracked on a national level.
When considering those issues, Piquero said it’s important not to understate the wide-ranging impact of COVID-19 pandemic, including the economic instability it created, the way it disproportionately affected certain populations and the deteriorating effect it had on our community mental health and well-being.
“We have a mental health problem that I’m absolutely convinced we’re going to be dealing with for a long period of time,” Piquero said. “This pent up anxiety and anger and stress is all starting to come out, and has been coming out. So I think that the pandemic itself didn’t cause (increases in certain crimes) but the pandemic caused other things that ultimately have led to the increases in crime.”
Tacoma is no different
Janelle Hawes, an assistant professor at University of Washington Tacoma’s School of Social Work and Criminal Justice, offered similar perspective — from the local level.
Hawes was one of several criminology professors from the school who helped craft a report delivered earlier this year to the City Council on youth gun violence and how to prevent it. At UWT, among other things, she teaches classes on mental health and substance use in the criminal justice system.
Discussing violent crime, Hawes, like Piquero, noted the stark decrease compared to the early 1990s. She also said that Tacoma’s history of systemic racism — particularly in housing and the distribution of services — has helped to create longstanding “extreme inequities” across the city, including neighborhoods disproportionately exposed to violence.
If anything, recent increases in crime have likely been fueled by disparities and injustices COVID-19 has exacerbated, Hawes said.
“We’re seeing these physical, external manifestations that society isn’t well, but there was lots of evidence prior to this,” Hawes said.
Kenneth Cruz, an assistant professor at UWT who helped author the report on local gun violence and has taught at the university’s school of social work and criminal justice since 2019, said that the disparities Hawes described should be placed at the center of Tacoma’s decisions and crime reduction policies going forward.
“There are areas across the country that were already pressure cookers for crime and violence before the pandemic. When the pandemic hit in essence it turned up the heat and added significantly more pressure to already strained and desperate conditions. … These are places that have been politically neglected for decades, and so folks who live in these communities are traumatized because of the conditions that they live in,” Cruz said. “When you have a large number of traumatized people living in a pressure cooker type situation and COVID-19 turns up the heat, that unbearable pressure is going to cause a lot more people to engage in desperate acts.”
To reduce crime, Cruz said it’s important to understand where it comes from and the factors that contribute to it — whether the focus is murder or broken windows.
Some issues can be solved by increased policing, but most require a more holistic, preventative approach, he believes.
“At the end of the day,” Cruz said, “Tacoma is no different than cities across the country.”
“We need to fund these communities. We need to invest in these communities and provide high quality public education and after school programs. We need to invest in job creation and home ownership, similar to the investments that we made when the suburbs were created,” Cruz added.
“There is no magic bullet to solve this, but multiple investments can be the answer.”
This story was originally published March 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
