Numbers show less violent crime in Tacoma compared to last year, still higher than pre-COVID

TACOMA, Wash. — The Tacoma Police Department briefed the Tacoma City Council Tuesday on the department’s Violent Crime Reduction Plan numbers. According to TPD, the numbers show that crime in the city declined from July 2022 to July 2023.

TPD said there was a 17.5% decrease in violent street crime incidents in Tacoma in the last year. However, the numbers in 2023 are higher than they were before COVID.

Violent crime in “treated hot spots” was down more than 25% than the year before. It added that violent crime was down a similar amount in the surrounding areas, showing the reduction wasn’t because of the “hot spot treatment,” according to TPD.

According to the plan, hot spots “often consist of street segments or similar small areas that are no more than a city block long and which extend no more than a half a block on either side of the segment.”

“The appropriate size of a hot spot should be driven by empirical considerations, such as the spatial distribution and density of crime, as well as considerations of geography and local police operational knowledge of street activity. In some cities, specific addresses may serve as appropriate hot spots for the concentration of police resources,” says the plan.

Total arrests were up slightly but violence-related arrests, drug arrests, and illegal weapons arrests were down around 38%, 61%, and 7%, in the hot spot areas, said TPD.

TPD also said violence-related calls were down almost 20% in hot spots.

“Taken together, the hot spot results, along with an interrupted time-series analysis of violent crime pre-and post-implementation of the Crime Plan, provide strong evidence that the Crime Plan’s focus on hot spots was likely responsible for a 17% reduction in city-wide violent crime compared to the previous year,” said TPD.

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