Clark County law enforcement officials discuss rising property crime at town hall - The Columbian
Crime in the city of Vancouver has increased by about 60 percent since 2019, Police Chief James McElvain said Wednesday during a virtual town hall event on rising property crime in the area.
A community group, Vancouver Citizens Against Property Crime, organized the event out of concern for increased crime in their neighborhoods.
Speakers included McElvain; Clark County Sheriff Chuck Atkins; Clark County Prosecutor Tony Golik; Jill Brown, widow of sheriff’s Sgt. Jeremy Brown; Vancouver police Cpl. Greg Catton; and several state legislators. More than 200 people joined the two-hour Zoom meeting.
Officials said one cause of rising crime rates is a lack of jail space, particularly while following COVID-19 distancing protocols. People arrested for non-violent crimes, such as theft, vehicle prowling and burglary, are being released while their court cases are pending.
Atkins said officers are seeing people who are released with pending property crime cases, such as mail theft, re-offend. Golik said it’s common for those who are released to stop showing up for court.
“The local issue for property crime is the jail,” Golik said. “It’s our jail before COVID, but now during COVID, it’s a huge issue.”
Atkins stressed a need for a larger, more modern facility. The effort to replace the jail stalled in 2019 after proposals for a new facility came with $381 million to $413 million price tags.
McElvain shared data that showed a sharp increase in property crime and other lower-level crime in Vancouver since 2019. According to department data, officers responded to 173 percent more auto theft calls in 2021 compared with 2019. The agency saw an 88 percent increase in vandalism calls between those years. Officers recorded a 75 percent spike in vehicle prowl calls and a 52 percent rise in theft calls.
Vancouver police responded to 22 percent fewer DUI calls, but McElvain said that could be because there have been fewer patrol officers on the streets.
Law enforcement officials also took aim at police reform legislation passed last year, particularly House Bill 1310, which limits when officers can use force and how much. Both McElvain and Atkins said it “handcuffs” them from doing their jobs if someone flees and officers don’t yet have probable cause to arrest the person.
State Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, said the Legislature is working on new bills to clarify confusion from the reforms. Still, Goodman said HB 1310 was important to creating a statewide standard for police force.
“This is responding not to some vague idea but to some really unfortunate circumstances, not just across the country and in Minneapolis and so forth but here in our own state, in a number of different places where particularly people from marginalized communities have unfortunately lost their lives in interactions with the police,” Goodman said during the town hall. “And we listened to the families of those communities and responded to that. Now it’s a question of balancing.”
source: https://www.columbian.com/news/2022/jan/13/clark-county-law-enforcement-officials-discuss-rising-property-crime-at-town-hall/
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.