More than half of violent crimes in Washington state are going unsolved.
That sobering data point, shared with state lawmakers Thursday, comes as violent crime has dropped but remains far ahead of pre-pandemic figures.
Police in Washington solved just 44% of reported violent crimes last year, said Marshall Clement, director of the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center. That amounts to solving 62% of homicides, 51% of aggravated assaults, 31% of robberies and just 25% of rapes.
“How low can this rate go before the entire criminal justice system is rendered useless?” Clement told a state House panel. “Nothing else in our criminal justice can even happen, rehabilitation, deterrence, incapacitation, unless we have a system that actually solves the majority of violent crime.”
Before the pandemic, Washington slightly outpaced the national average in its clearance rate for reported violent crime. Like the rest of the country, the percentage of cases Washington authorities were solving dropped during the pandemic, and has gradually rebounded since.
Still, since 2022, over 49,000 violent crimes remain unsolved in Washington, including more than 400 homicides, nearly 29,000 aggravated assaults, almost 7,000 rapes and over 13,000 robberies, said Clement, citing FBI data.
Police departments in Seattle, Tacoma, Kent and Auburn are among those with particularly low clearance rates, defined as the percentage of crimes for which an arrest has been made, not necessarily a criminal conviction.
Washington isn’t alone. Half of states have slipped in their clearance rates since 2019. Nationwide, solve rates have been dropping consistently for over half a century.
After years of rising crime since the pandemic, Washington saw some declines last year. Murders statewide dropped nearly 19% from 2023, with a total of 312 people killed, but that figure is still more than 50% higher than 2019, according to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
Robberies were down 16%, creeping closer to 2019 levels. Meanwhile, a yearslong rise in assaults since the pandemic slowed but didn’t abate.
And preliminary figures show those drops continuing in 2025.
Routinely not solving violent crimes creates a cycle of distrust in law enforcement that causes people to no longer cooperate with police, thus exacerbating the issue, Clement said. And people who commit crimes may feel emboldened to do more if they think they can get away with it.
It’s up to the state to step in and help solve the problem, Clement said.
“This is not something local law enforcement can do alone,” he told the House Community Safety Committee. “It’s not something that state police can do or prosecutors can do alone. This is going to require leadership from you all to really make this a priority and to focus resources on improving these outcomes.”
Hiring difficulties
It’s not just about throwing money at the problem. While law enforcement expenses statewide have risen, better clearance rates haven’t come. And Washington continues to lag the rest of the country in police staffing. This contributes to longer response times, which leads to lower clearance rates, said Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst.
Asher called for creativity in using police resources to free up time to focus on these unsolved investigations. For example, New Orleans hired a civilian contractor to respond to car crashes that don’t cause injuries, so officers don’t have to.
“This isn’t the 1990s, it’s much harder to hire officers in 2025 than it was 30 years ago,” Asher told the committee. “So we need to think outside the box.”
After much strife, lawmakers this year approved a new $100 million grant program to boost police hiring. But the money can go for more than officers, like peer counselors, behavioral health personnel, crisis intervention training, emergency management planning and community assistance programs, among other spending options.
House Community Safety Committee Chair Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, said he’d like to see more of that money go toward criminal investigations, as opposed to patrol. He thinks that would increase solve rates.
“I’m going to be making noise about that,” he said.
At this stage, it’s unclear if that would mean less state funding for the other spending ideas progressive lawmakers pushed to avoid the money solely going toward hiring more cops.
“It’s all embryonic in its formulation right now,” Goodman said after the hearing.
To access the grants, cities and counties need to either implement a new 0.1% sales tax for public safety or have already imposed a similar tax. They also need to follow state model policies as well as collect and report use-of-force data.
None of the $100 million has been spent yet.
This story was originally published in the Washington State Standard.
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