Pierce County Sheriff’s office says armed robberies almost doubled

Pierce County has seen an increase of 96% in armed robberies between Jan. and Sept., according to Sgt. Darren Moss.

Speaking to KIRO Newsradio on the Gee and Ursula Show, Moss said, “We’re up 96% compared to the last five years in the same timeframe. Anything above a 5% increase is high.”

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Moss speculated that the increase in crime may have something to do with the lower number of law enforcement. But, he also said that there has been a surge in hiring the past few months in the Pierce County Sheriff’s office.

“We actually had a big increase over the last three months,” Moss said. “We were able to hire 22 patrol deputies. But we’ve only hired two corrections deputies so far in the last three months.”

Moss said that he believed the incentives the Sheriff’s office is offering has helped in hiring. “We have a recruiter out in Kansas recruiting at a military base out there, Fort Leavenworth. We’re trying our best to get our jail numbers back up.”

Moss said that it was important to practice proactive policing. “When you look at the broken windows theory, if you address the small things, big things can’t happen. If I arrest you for your outstanding warrants, or for a lower level crime and you sit in jail for a night, maybe I just prevented a burglary from occurring that night. Or maybe not that I stopped somebody who was in a stolen vehicle. Maybe I prevented that person from committing a crime that night.

“But it’s we’re still having a high amount of crime.” Moss added that the kind of crime Pierce County is seeing are the ones Sheriff deputies can book people for. “We catch these crooks, they go to jail, and they sit in jail till they go to trial. So it’s not a it’s not a matter of the jail being closed, it’s a matter of people, I guess, are taking advantage of the lower number in law enforcement and then the high increase in just crimes that we have to respond to.”