Harger: Bellevue just cut property crime by 33%. Seattle should study every word of this report
Feb 27, 2026, 9:23 AM
Bellevue Police Officer Ramseur swearing in to begin her Bellevue specific training. (Photo courtesy of Bellevue Police Department)
(Photo courtesy of Bellevue Police Department)
I read a report Friday morning that almost looked like a typo.
In 2025, property crime in Bellevue didn’t just go down. It plummeted by 33%. Think about that. One-third of the thefts, break-ins, and burglaries just evaporated. Overall, crime dropped 27%.
In this region? In this political climate? A 33% drop in property crime is a unicorn. And somebody caught one. Giddyup.
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This isn’t magic. And it isn’t luck
Bellevue Police Chief Wendell Shirley calls it the P.I.E. philosophy. Prevention, Intervention, Enforcement. The E is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
During the holidays, Bellevue ran something called “Stop the Lift.” The Bellevue Police Department partnered with local stores, actual loss prevention working with actual cops, and made 157 arrests during the holiday season alone. Handcuffs. Booking photos. Consequences.
Look at the traffic numbers too. Officers issued 63% more tickets last year. If you’ve been treating the Bel-Red Road like a personal drag strip, or driving a car modified to sound like a shotgun blast at 2 a.m., Bellevue is done with you. The department even formed the Eastside Safe Streets Task Force with Issaquah, Kirkland, and Redmond. The Eastside is quietly building a wall of accountability.
Meanwhile, Seattle is still holding community forums to discuss the root causes of why someone walked out of a Target with a cart full of laundry detergent.
Criminals do a cost-benefit analysis. Bellevue changed the math
Here’s what people in Olympia and Seattle City Hall seem perpetually surprised by: criminals aren’t stupid. They do a cost-benefit analysis every single time. Steal in Seattle, you might get a lecture. Steal in Bellevue, you get a booking photo. So they stay west of the lake. The math isn’t complicated.
I talked about this after the Issaquah Police Department ran its shoplifting sting over the holidays. The thieves were genuinely shocked that they were actually being arrested. Because in so many places around here, they wouldn’t be. Issaquah changed the math. Bellevue changed the math. The results followed.
Safe streets are an economic engine. Amazon already knows this
This connects to something bigger than public safety.
Amazon knows this. The companies crossing Lake Washington to set up offices in Bellevue know this. Safety is an economic engine. When you drop crime by 33%, you don’t just get safer neighborhoods. You get full office buildings. You get businesses that stay. You get workers who don’t do a threat assessment before lunch.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson should pin this report to the wall of her office. Frame it, even.
Bellevue ran the experiment. Here are the results: enforce the law and people stop breaking it. Fund the enforcement, run the stings, issue the tickets, make the arrests.
We get what we tolerate. Bellevue decided to tolerate a lot less.
The numbers don’t lie.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
