Harger: Seattle had 74 homicides in all of 2023. This past June, it had zero, the first murder-free month since 1970

The headline caught up with me Thursday, somewhere past Stevens Pass, as I rolled into Leavenworth for a holiday camping trip.

For the first time since 1970, the City of Seattle went the entire month of June without a single homicide.

1970. Boeing was shedding jobs by the tens of thousands, gas ran about 36 cents a gallon, and I wouldn’t be born for another five years.

That’s excellent news. Encouraging news. The kind of news that earns a toast at the campfire, and it got one.

Nobody woke up on June 1 and decided to stop, though. Something changed. And what changed is worth walking through, because it points straight at what this city should do next.

Chief Shon Barnes making Seattle police officers get out of their cars

Police Chief Shon Barnes talked to KOMO about the milestone, and what jumped out at me was how boring his explanation was.

“That’s why we encourage officers to get out of their cars, talk to people, and build relationships with business owners,” Barnes said.

Officers. Out of their cars. Talking to people.

Crazy, I know.

In 95% of the country, none of that is controversial. It’s just called policing. In Seattle, not that long ago, saying it out loud at a city council meeting got you treated like you’d proposed bringing back the stockade. The city spent years running the opposite experiment, driving officers out the door and daring the rest to stay. The results came in monthly, and they were grim. In 2023, Seattle recorded 74 homicides, the worst year on the books.

This year, through June, the count stands at 15.

Now the department is rebuilding, hiring faster than it has in years, and the chief is saying plainly that visible, adequately staffed policing works (I’ll explain “adequately staffed” in a moment). He’s not taking his cues from the loudest voices on the fringes, either.

That might be the most encouraging sentence of the summer.

Seattle police are solving 72% of homicides, above the national clearance rate

Seattle is catching the people who do it, too. The city’s homicide clearance rate, the share of cases closed by arrest or otherwise, is 72%, according to the department, well above the national rate of about 60%.

“People are being held accountable,” Barnes said. “They are going to jail for taking someone’s life. That resonates with people. There is a deterrent effect where people may think twice before committing a homicide.”

In other words, when killers know they have a greater chance of getting caught, fewer people kill. Barnes credits his detectives and the public safety cameras feeding the city’s Real Time Crime Center. Whatever the exact mix, catching killers at a rate well above the national average is the unglamorous work that never trends online and absolutely shows up in the body count.

Or in June’s case, the lack of one.

Aurora Avenue drew FBI patrols during the World Cup

Much of the credit for June belongs to the World Cup, and we should say so plainly. It’s the reason our departments are “adequately staffed” in my view. The tournament pulled a wave of federal money and manpower into the region for security, and you could see where it landed. FBI agents ran emphasis patrols on Aurora Avenue. Federal help backed up SWAT calls on routine cases around the region. More badges, watching more corners, more of the time.

When the games kicked off at Lumen Field on June 15, the city flooded downtown and Pioneer Square with officers supporting the tournament, plus regional mutual aid, and outreach workers reported more encampment sweeps than they’d seen in years.

Barnes says fans keep coming up to him with photos they took with his officers. Visitors from countries where you avoid the police are treating Seattle cops like part of the attraction.

Think of the month as a sneak preview of what staffing back near normal could feel like, instead of the depleted levels the department has been scraping along at. Seattle got to watch it happen in June rather than argue about whether it could.

Seattle’s murder-free month is a small sample, and it still counts

The statisticians will have their say, and they should. One month is a small sample. Homicides are falling in big cities across the country, so Seattle is partly riding a national wave. A quiet stretch can be luck. And the month wasn’t spotless underneath, either. The city’s last homicide before June was a 17-year-old boy, shot, investigators say, by a 13-year-old in south Seattle. Two kids. Nobody should read June and decide the work is done.

All fair.

But Seattle has had 55 Junes since 1970. Plenty of them landed in good national years, calm stretches, boom times. Not one came up empty. When something happens for the first time in more than half a century, right as you change how you police the city, “coincidence” starts to sound like the theory doing the heavy lifting.

The World Cup leaves town, and Seattle’s police-hiring choice begins

The tournament packs up this week, and the federal help drives home with it. What Seattle keeps is up to Seattle.

We already got a preview of that part. The streak didn’t survive the tournament. Seattle’s first July homicide came on the Fourth, in Lake City, while the World Cup crowds were still downtown.

So the choices start now. The city council says the money is there to hire more officers. Good. I’ll take the council at its word. Do it. Fill the academy classes, pay a competitive wage, and get more good cops on the corners.

And while you’re at it, try the thing the last few councils couldn’t bring themselves to do. Tell those officers you support them. Tell them they’re a needed part of this community, that the work they do keeps the rest of us safe. Say it out loud, at the meeting, on the record. For too many years, these officers have been told that they are the bad guys. That city leaders viewed them with disdain and were looking to fire half the department.

Safe streets come from good cops who respect the community and respect the law, working for a city that has their back. Seattle just felt what that combination buys. It went 55 years between Junes like this one.

The council found the money for more officers. Now it needs to find the nerve to hire them. To keep them. And to thank them.

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