The yearly tabulation of crime stats, courtesy of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, is out. The Crime in Washington 2012 report is chock-full of trends, some good and some bad. Here’s some of those that caught my eye initially:
- There is a murder every 2.5 days in Washington state. And the number of people murdered has gone up from 159 in 2011 to 203 in 2012 (That’s a 27 percent increase).
- Crime occurred most frequently in the state in September; it occurred the least in February.
- Property crimes: $205,931,711 in property was stolen in 2012; of that, law enforcement recovered $16,931,651.
- Though it is now legal for an adult 21 and older in Washington state to possess up to an ounce of pot, police in Washington seized 762,809 grams of pot in 2012. By comparison, the two next highest drugs seized were meth (25,418 grams) and heroin (24,824).
- Arrests: 155,916 people were arrested in Washington in 2012. Of those, 30,924 were between 20 and 24 years old, making it the age group with the greatest quantity of arrests.
- Of all those arrests, almost a fifth — 18.5 percent — were for DUI.
To read the full report for yourself, click here. I’ll be dissecting our local numbers for a story at kitsapsun.com in the days ahead.
