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.

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In 2007, the Department of Corrections embarked on a transformation in the way it releases offenders to the community. Ordered by the State Legislature to stop “dumping” felons into Tacoma, Spokane, and other pockets of urbanity in the state, DOC was mandated to send prisoners back to their “county of origin” — the place of their first felony conviction.

There are some exceptions, mainly if victims are uneasy about an offenders’ return to the community. But they can also go to another county if they have family or “other sponsoring persons or organizations that will support the offender.”

In 2012, about three out of every four inmates whose first felony was in Kitsap come back here after prison, according to DOC statistics.

While they’re coming back to Kitsap, it appears they’re increasingly concentrated in Bremerton. But corrections officials say that clustering actually serves public safety best.

To search and find out where every offender went home to in 2012 — and if they deviated from their county of origin — follow this link.

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Three new Bremerton police officers were sworn in Wednesday, a shot in the arm toward the department’s staffing levels. 

At its height in the mid-2000s, the department had 66 fully commissioned officers, but budget cuts in recent years took that level down into the low 50s. That has meant reductions in investigations and overtime for patrol officers, who attempt to keep up with the city’s 911 call volume.

The three officers sworn in, along with another new hire and a position yet to be filled, will bring the department back up to 57 fully commissioned officers, according to Bremerton Police Chief Steve Strachan.

Here’s the three latest hires:

Beau Ayers, a graduate of Ohio University, formerly worked as a police officer in Nelsonville, Ohio and with the US Border Patrol before coming to Bremerton.

Joeseph Corey, a South Kitsap High School class of 1998 grad, served five years in the army as a police officer in South Korea, at Fort Lewis and in Iraq. He was most recently a Department of Defense police officer at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Christopher Faidley, who grew up in Seattle, graduated from Whitman College in 2009. He enlisted in the National Guard in 2011 and has also worked for an electrical contractor and for Microsoft providing security.

The three have graduated from the state’s law enforcement academy and are currently training with veteran officers in the department for the next four months.

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“Everything that anyone ever posted to the Internet is true.”

Said no one, ever.

Yes, we all know inaccuracies litter the information superhighway. But one of the World Wide Web’s most inaccurate rumors about Bremerton is that it is against the law to shuck peanuts on city streets. We see it pop up on social media sites every few weeks, and it is proclaimed to be accurate on several websites pertaining to “dumb laws.”

Bottom line: There is no truth to it whatsoever.

After seeing it so many times, I decided to investigate the city’s code in an effort to determine its veracity.

Nothing there I could find.

I checked with Mark Koontz, Bremerton’s assistant city attorney, who agreed that there is just no such thing on the books.

“There’s no truth to that,” he said.

If you shuck your peanuts onto the city street, that could be considered littering, Koontz added.

But that would apply to anywhere with a littering code. And the websites are quite specific: you shall not shuck peanuts on the streets of our fine city.

Perhaps it had been a law in the past, only to be repealed?

I consulted Bill Broughton, prominent area lawyer and one time the city’s attorney in the 1980s. He’d never heard of such a thing.

“That’s a new one on me,” he said. “We did set a goal of repealing antiquated laws when I was there but I do not remember this one.”

I turned to Russell Warren, one of Bremerton’s sharpest minds when it comes to area history. He hadn’t heard of it either.

I even emailed some of the purveyors of websites which purport the law to be the truth.

I heard back from one — Andy Powell at dumblaws.com — who said he was looking into the source. Other web sites never responded.

So far, I have been unable to find a single source of the perceived law. My hope is to debunk it officially. So I humbly ask for your help, dear readers, on this journey.

I would love to hear from any of you who knows where it may have come from. Drop a line below, or send me an email at jfarley@kitsapsun.com.

One of the most intriguing parts of the mystery is the idea peanuts would be singled out as unlawful to shuck. Perhaps an odd vendetta against the bean by an anti-peanut former mayor?

Regardless, I stand firm in the belief the law is hogwash.

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