After three years of severely limiting police pursuit authority amongst skyrocketing car thefts and highway fatalities, Washington Senate has FINALLY voted to restore police pursuit authority. If the State House does the same thing, our police will once again be able to pursue car thieves, reckless drivers, burglars, and others causing increased mayhem in our cities.

The Senate voted to enact Citizens Initiative 2113.  If the Senate and the House both choose to enact the initiative, then it will become law.  The Governor does not need to sign an initiative adopted by both the House and Senate.  If the House chooses to reject it, then it will go to the voters.

The vote was 36 voting yes, to 13 voting no.  Renton’s own 11th district Senator, Bob Hasegawa,  was amongst the 27 percent voting “no”.

Please encourage our State House Representatives to vote “yes” on this important safety bill and make it law.

Representative Steve Bergquist, Steve.Bergquist@leg.wa.gov

Representative David Hackney, David.Hackney@leg.wa.gov

See my previous blog entry for more background on this topic, including the 500% increase in Renton car thefts that has occured after the police pursuit restrictions went into effect.

More information on review of this initiative in the legislature, including voting and hearing records, can be found here.

Everyone in Renton who’s frustrated with our escalating crime rates should watch the above brief video in which Senator Mark Mullet (D, 5th District, Issaquah) makes an impactful speech in yesterday’s State Senate debate on police pursuit.  Senator Mullet brings honor and intelligence to this debate, and specifically expresses the needs of our city even though he only has a small part of Renton in a corner of his district.  Senator Mullet deserves Renton’s gratitude.

Thanks in part to Senator Mullet’s critical support and his compelling speech to the full chamber, the State senate surprised many of us by getting SB 5352 approved in the full chamber (26 to 23) after it had languished in committee for many weeks.  This bill will now go back to the House, where the legislators had just buried their own version of the bill the day before.  They would ordinarily now consider this Senate bill (unless opponents devise a way to procedurally bury it), and Renton officials and residents should encourage them to pass it.

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In my previous three entries I covered the catastrophic additional loss of life on Washington’s roads and highways since the pandemic reduced traffic enforcement, and then just when things were getting better a new Police non-pursuit law curtailed traffic enforcement of our state’s deadliest drivers.

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Renton police process an abandoned stolen car in April 2023

Yesterday’s calls to 911 Valley Com included nine stolen vehicles in Renton and nine abandoned vehicles in Renton.  Cars are increasingly stolen and used for crimes, and then dumped in damaged condition. (Police are typically not allowed to pursue them under our state’s 2021 pursuit law, RCW 10.116.060.)

Updated: the following day there were TEN car thefts; see bottom of article 

Last spring I shared Renton’s official police crime statistics report, and noted that the average rate of stolen cars in March 2023 had crept up to five per day, a 70 percent increase over the year prior.

Yesterday I looked at Valley Communications 911 call activity, and noticed there were nine vehicles reported stolen in Renton in a single day.  I also noticed that at the same time there were nine calls about abandoned vehicles, some of which were likely stolen in previous days or weeks.  Valley Com only publishes the last 24-hours of calls, and I have not been tracking the statistics daily, so I can’t say if this is a one-day anomaly or a new higher trend. But in either case, it’s nine people or families in Renton that sadly lost their cars in one day.   Each stolen car is a financial and emotional setback for Renton residents, and for those with little margin in their schedules it can create a major disruption in their lives.

Renton Police are doing all they can to fight this trend.  But the high rate of car thefts in Washington has been facilitated by the state police pursuit law, which has created an incentive for criminals to use stolen cars to commit burglaries and other crimes.  Under laws put in place in 2021, police cannot initiate pursuit of burglary suspects in a car, so if the car is stolen and untraceable the suspects may never be apprehended.  Stolen cars have become Washington State’s get-out-of-jail-free card.

Under the 2021 law, drivers in stolen cars can also drive recklessly without fear of being pursued, which has contributed to more fatal car crashes than we’ve seen in decades.  This bleak trend has tragically reversed years of positive safety trends from highway and vehicle safety improvements. The legislature made some small improvements to the law in 2023, but it still contributes to crime and highway safety problems.  The latest data shows this year is worse than last.

This does not mean high-speed pursuits should be authorized in every situation.  We should return to the better-designed and very thorough policies we had in Renton prior to the 2021 laws.  These pursuit policies were continuously adjusted based on real experience from our officers and the community, and they served us well in Renton. I and other Renton elected officials had an oversight role in making steady improvements, balancing the needs of road safety and law enforcement.

Even though the legislature is not currently in session, it’s helpful to keep your representatives informed about your feelings on these issues year-round. Courteous emails from the heart are the most effective. Let them know your personal concerns, and any personal impacts you’ve experienced.   Now is a good time to write to them; they are between sessions and probably receiving fewer emails, and may have more time to focus on yours.

Our 11th district State Legislators that represent most of Renton are:

Senator Bob Hasegawa, Bob.Hasegawa@leg.wa.gov

Representative Steve Bergquist, Steve.Bergquist@leg.wa.gov

Representative David Hackney, David.Hackney@leg.wa.gov

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Update on 9/23:  To see if the 9/21 data was a one-day anomaly or more of a trend, I checked data the next day.  There were TEN car thefts in Renton on that day.  Here is the data.

In my previous post I showed that our state’s traffic fatalities are up dramatically since Washington’s police non-pursuit law was implemented.  Highway fatality rates which had been getting better for decades went up across the US in 2020 due in large part to police choosing not to pull people over for unsafe driving during the pandemic.  As Covid concerns diminished, other states began rigorously enforcing driving laws again, and road safety started trending back to baseline. But Washington State implemented a new non-pursuit law, and our highway fatality rates are climbing faster than ever.  Deaths on our roads and highways are 37 percent higher than pre-pandemic, and climbing fast, representing a current excess death toll of 207 lives lost per year over the baseline.

Thank you to all of you who left comments on my blog post.  I also received many great comments and questions in a private facebook forum where I shared this post. I’ll respect others’ privacy by paraphrasing and bundling their questions, but because others may have the same questions, I will share my answers here. READ MORE »

A screenshot of the ValleyCom 911 dispatch log, showing steady Renton Police dispatches for stolen cars this morning

Renton cars are being stolen at record rates in Renton. Our Valley Comm dispatch center shows twenty-one vehicles stolen in the past 24 hours.  Many of these cars will be found extensively damaged and abandoned within days, having been used in commission of other crimes. Just one year ago I shared that Renton car thefts had increased 70% from the year prior, reaching 5 per day.  Today’s rate is a 420% increase over that high March 2023 average.

If this rate of vehicle theft were to continue, Renton would see 7665 vehicles stolen in the next year, representing about 10 percent of all our vehicles and $100-150 million dollars in vehicle damages. (This amount of money is approximately three times Renton’s entire annual police budget).  While the victims of the car theft suffer the most in these thefts, all Renton motorists will pay for this damage through higher insurance rates.

Many of these cars will be driven through the doors of local businesses, used in other burglaries and crimes, and driven recklessly through our city.  In most cases, Renton Police have been forbidden to stop them.  Unless officers see certain violent crimes being committed (and burglaries and reckless driving don’t count), the officers can’t pursue these vehicles under the 2021 Washington Police pursuit law.

There are some state legislators that somehow believe that having 21 cars stolen in Renton every night– driven recklessly through our city and crashed into our buildings– has made us safer because we are not put at risk by police chases any more.

As a scientist and engineer, I assure you these legislators are absolutely wrong about this.  Since passing the law in 2021, Washington’s highway fatalities have been skyrocketing to the highest levels in decades, not dropping as these legislators over-simplistically predicted.  Hundreds of additional state residents are being killed annually on our highways since the time the police were banned from pursuing stolen cars.  While other states are getting safer, Washington is getting far more dangerous.

While our fatalities skyrocket, we watch powerlessly as unlicensed juveniles increasingly race stolen cars for fun, and criminals drive any speed they like.  While the limitations on police chases have saved approximately three lives per year in Washington, this small gain is not nearly worth the hundreds of lives lost statewide, and the billions in statewide crime and damages.  Tragically for our next generation, these policies are also teaching some of our youth that crime pays more than going to school and learning job skills, curtailing their opportunities to build the fulfilling, healthy lives we all want for them.

Our State Legislators are reviewing the police pursuit legislation this coming week, and Renton residents are encouraged to let them know how you feel about letting our cars get stolen with impunity.  Also, tell them you want to be safe driving on our roads again, and you are getting tired of seeing the fronts of your favorite business covered in plywood.

You can email your legislators at the following addresses:

Senator Bob Hasegawa, Bob.Hasegawa@leg.wa.gov

Representative Steve Bergquist, Steve.Bergquist@leg.wa.gov

Representative David Hackney, David.Hackney@leg.wa.gov

These vehicle thefts all happened within minutes of each other. Valley Comm continuously updates the previous 24-hours of calls on it’s website, in this format.  It’s not possible for readers to sort by call type, so I’ve extracted 24 hours of vehicle theft data in the table below.

Below is the extract of auto-theft calls to 911 in the past 24 hours, including the partial address where each vehicle theft was reported.  (Note that there may be others: if a victim filed an online reporting instead of calling 911 to report their car stolen, it would not appear on this list.)

For more information on this topic, including links to additional source data, click here.