BY JACK CAMERON

I’ve been tasked with writing about the last five years of crime in the Tacoma area. As someone who has written about Tacoma homicides for almost twenty years (at TacomaStories.com), this job isn’t outside of my wheelhouse. It is, however, very daunting. In fact, it might just be impossible. I’ll start with the good news. Violent crime is down 40% compared to last year. The bad news is that’s because last year was a record-breaking year for crime in Tacoma. For the first time ever, we had 45 homicides in a calendar year. It would be relatively simple to rattle off a bunch of statistics about crime in Tacoma, go over a few highlights, and call it good. The problem with this approach is it masks the reality. Every crime statistic is someone’s world shattered. Every homicide is a meteor strike in the social circles of the victims. And that kind of thing is more difficult to capture in numbers and statistics.

In Cha Choe

So before we get to the crimes that made big headlines over the last five years, I want to take a moment and focus on In Cha Choe. In Cha Choe was 59 years old in 2019 when she was working at the McChord Mart at 5105 Solberg Drive on the night of October 14th. It was 10pm. Her son had recently left to grab a late dinner for them. If the 25-year-old man who walked into McChord Mart that night had simply asked In Cha Choe for the money in the register, she likely would have simply given it to him. Instead, the man walked down an aisle, picked up a bottle of BBQ sauce, and placed it on the counter before going behind the counter. When he reached for the register, Choe tried to stop him. He stabbed her repeatedly in the abdomen, chest, and arm and exited with the money. Choe gave chase, carrying a collapsible baton. They struggled at the door, but then he shoved her to the ground. Nevertheless, she followed him outside, but he had someone waiting in a vehicle and escaped.

In Cha Choe stumbled back into McChord Mart, shut the register, locked the door, and closed the store. She got in her car, briefly left the parking lot, then returned, stopping the car in front of the store. This is where police found her unconscious. She’d die later at the hospital. In 2021, her killer received a sentence of over 31 years in prison. In Cha Choe was called ‘Mama’ by her regular customers. She was known for giving customers hugs or cooking for them. If your family was in need, she wanted to help. No one bought coffee at the McChord Mart. ‘Mama’ always had a pot on for her customers. Her kids found little IOU notes from customers she let slide when they didn’t have the money. By all accounts, she was one of the people who make Tacoma better.

Homicides

That was just one of thirty-five homicides in Pierce County in 2019. And one of over 150 in the last five years. No crime is just a number. We’re talking not only about the life of the homicide victim, but that of everyone who knew them is forever altered. In recent years, our homicide numbers have spiked. In 2022, Tacoma had 45 homicides in a year for the first time in its history. On a slightly brighter note, the homicide rate this year is distinctly lower than last. Domestic violence seems to be a more common cause than gang violence. That said, drug-related murders are increasing, as are overdoses. Though overdoses do not count towards homicide numbers. There has also been a significant uptick in road rage murders in recent years. Like the rest of the country, we had our share of mass shootings, most notably the murder of four people in Salishan in an unprovoked shooting by a mentally deranged shooter. But also like the rest of the country, mass shootings account for a tiny percentage of overall violent crime.

Robberies

There were a handful of violent home invasions over the last five years, but two specific forms of theft have become especially popular. The first is the theft of catalytic converters. Thefts of catalytic converters skyrocketed over the pandemic due to the price of the rare metals used in catalytic converters increasing thanks to supply chain issues. This, coupled with people driving less during the pandemic, helped create the near epidemic levels of catalytic converter theft. These thefts can sometimes turn deadly, as when Michael Campbell, 54, caught someone stealing the catalytic converter from his truck, shot the thief, then dragged him around a gravel lot by a rope with his truck before leaving the would-be thief’s body there. The other increasingly common theft involves robbing Marijuana shops. In just the two months of December 2021 and January 2022, there were over 30 pot shop robberies in the Puget Sound area. These robberies come in the form of one of two tactics. Either they come in right before closing armed with guns that they may or may not use and rob the place. The other method is to steal a car, crash the car into the shop after hours, and then use a secondary car as a getaway vehicle.

Police

It would be irresponsible to talk about the last five years of crime in the Tacoma area without talking about the behavior of the police departments patrolling this area.

There were at least twenty-five police-involved shootings in Pierce County in the last five years. The vast majority of them involved the victim using a weapon against officers in situations that were relatively quickly cleared as justified by subsequent investigations. That said, there were some police-involved shootings that are much more controversial.

The death of Manny Ellis at the hands of Pierce County sheriff’s deputies in March of 2021 has resulted in changes in police policy, protests in the streets, and a trial against three officers accused of killing him is going on now.

Payouts

A frequent consequence of bad police behavior is expensive civil suits that often cost taxpayers millions of dollars. In the past five years, settlements of over $20,000,000 in at least ten separate incidents from as far back as 2011 have been reached. And currently, there is a lawsuit brought on behalf of Jay Barbour by former Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist for $23,000,000 after Jay Barbour was paralyzed for life by a gun police literally gave to the shooter.

[One solution brought up over the last five years is the concept of ‘defunding the police’. This concept ignores the facts that military surplus equipment is free to police departments (they only have to pay for shipping) and that in order to have better policing, officers need more extensive and better training that costs money. Defunding the police is the absolute best way to make sure things like the very killings they claim to want to stop not only continue but increase.]

New Faces, Same Old Challenges

Another thing that has changed in the last five years are the people in some of the top law enforcement jobs in the area. In 2019, Mary Robnett was sworn in as the new Pierce County Prosecutor after being elected, replacing Mark Lindquist. Paul Pastor retired from being Pierce County Sheriff. Ed Troyer won the election to replace him. The Medical Examiner, Thomas Clark for Pierce County retired after a series of whistleblower complaints against him. He was replaced by Dr. Karen Cline-Parhamovich. And Donald Ramsdell stepped down after being the longest-serving police chief in the Tacoma Police Department’s history. Tacoma’s current chief of police, Avery Moore started in January of 2022.

Tacoma’s crime rate has largely kept pace with the rest of the country though it’s worth noting that our standard level of crime is distinctly higher than the national average, but that’s nothing new. While we did hit a new record in the number of homicides in a year, Tacoma of 2023 remains a safer place than Tacoma of the early 1990s.

That’s Not All

As I mentioned at the beginning, covering crime in the Tacoma area over the last five years in one article isn’t possible without leaving a lot out. There are major crimes that devastated countless lives that happened here in Tacoma that I didn’t even mention because there simply isn’t time or space to do so.

Now that we’re back, we’ll do our best to keep you informed of the criminal activity and the response from law enforcement in our city of Destiny.