SPOKANE, Wash. — The city of Spokane saw a growing number of drive-by shootings in 2022, a trend the Spokane Police Department (SPD) hopes to address in 2023.
KREM 2 tracked numerous shootings in Spokane throughout 2022. In some cases, a handful of drive-by shootings happened within days of each other. This became an alarming trend for SPD.
Throughout the year, SPD shared the latest total of shootings within the city. By April 2022, SPD responded to more than 40 shootings. At that rate, the department worried this upward trend would surpass the number of shootings in 2021.
Turns out, it did.
Data provided by SPD shows the total number of all shootings in 2022 was 166, a 10% increase from 2021. In the same time frame, there were 71 drive-by shootings in 2022, a 73% increase from 2021.
SPD Shooting Data: 2019-2022
2019
- Drive-by shootings: 28
- Other shootings: 24
- Total: 52
2020
- Drive-by shootings: 42
- Other shootings: 52
- Total: 94
2021
- Drive-by shootings: 41
- Other shootings: 110
- Total: 151
2022
- Drive-by shootings: 71
- Other shootings: 95
- Total: 166
At the request of Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward, SPD responded to the trend by creating a Violent Crimes Task Force. The department also ramped up efforts to arrest felons illegally carrying firearms.
Officer Jacqueline Valencia said they are hoping these efforts will make an impact on next year’s totals.
“There’s definitely an increase and we're not going to hide behind that number," Valencia said. "But we made major steps to put these people behind bars for the acts they committed. We don't know what the numbers would have been if we didn't create these task forces or go after the people who committed these crimes."
In the first week of 2023, Spokane police announced it restructured its staffing. Doing this put 30 more officers on patrol. SPD hopes this will not only put more eyes on the streets but also reduce officer response times.
Data also shows that shootings last year happened all over the city, but SPD said a majority of these incidents were committed by a small percentage of the community.
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