By Anne Higuera
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
If you feel like there have been more reports of shootings in the last few years, it’s not your imagination. Seattle Police are responding on average to twice as many reports of suspected shots fired as they did prior to the pandemic and 20% of the citywide incidents from 2021-2023 have been in District 1, which includes West Seattle.
Why is it happening and what changes can be made to bring those numbers back down? A new City Auditor’s report on gun violence is being presented tomorrow (Thursday, March 27)to a City Council committee with an eye toward increased cooperation and more effective ways to marshal data to reduce the injuries, deaths, and fear that come with gunfire.
The Governance, Accountability & Economic Development Committee will hear the results of the audit, which was at the request of the committee Chair, Council President Sara Nelson, and Mayor Bruce Harrell. What the audit found is that while a number of different agencies, including public health, have been gathering information about gun violence, they haven’t been collecting or sharing it in a consistent way. The audit pointed to more systematic programs used in a number of other cities — Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Portland — where sharing the data regularly within public agencies, coupled with a public information campaign to address gun violence, has resulted in a significant decrease in gun incidents and injuries.
The biggest takeaway from the audit is, “communicate, communicate, communicate,” but it also urges stronger data analysis and taking advantage of any resources that are available. It pointedly mentioned that the US Department of Justice offers a 10-step “roadmap” for reducing violent crime, for which the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs offers technical assistance free of charge to communities. Auditor’s staff took advantage of this assistance for the purposes of the audit, noting, “Before our audit, the City had not been following the Violent Crime Reduction Roadmap nor using free technical assistance from OJP.”
The question about why there’s been such an increase in guns being fired (and a similar increase in injuries and deaths) since 2020 doesn’t have a single answer. The audit does note that the number of guns stolen in the city is also up since 2018. But it focuses most on clues in the data that have the potential to yield actionable next steps. Patterns like time of year (gun violence spikes in the summer), location (a particular park or street corner), who is involved and why, whether there is other crime in the area, can help focus violence prevention efforts in specific places rather than responding to calls of “shots fired,” when it’s already happened. A suggestion to potentially bring in the city’s Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) Department was another key recommendation.
The committee meeting starts tomorrow at 2 pm in the Council Chamber at City Hall. There is an opportunity for public comment shortly after the start of the meeting for which you must register ahead of time, as the agenda explains.
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