Law Enforcement Response

How is King County doing?

The King County Sheriff's Office provides police services for all unincorporated King County. The Sheriff's Office is a contract provider for a variety of communities and agencies offering a wide range of quality police services. These contracts include Metro Transit, Sound Transit, Muckleshoot Tribe, and 12 of the 39 cities in King County. Each of these jurisdictions has different crime trends, crime concerns, and local crime-fighting strategies.

Including our contract client jurisdictions, King County as a whole saw decreases in many crime categories from 2007 to 2008. Additionally, the 10-year average annual change for many of these crimes is also showing a downward trend. However, slow and declining economic times can often have a negative impact on crime, with crime even increasing and changing that trend. The Sheriff's Office continues to plan for and monitor this in 2009 and beyond.

What else influences these indicators?

Crime is influenced by several overlapping environmental factors at the neighborhood, city and regional level, including economic, social, built (physical) and service environments. Working together and in tandem with individual choices and behavior, these environmental factors all influence the prevalence of crime in King County.

The economic environment includes the commercial businesses and organizations that provide residents with employment and their government with a healthy tax base with which to provide services. The social environment describes the presence or absence of interpersonal relationships, groups or networks that provide support solidarity, and a sense of belonging for residents, including institutions such as churches, neighborhood watches, and community organizing efforts. The built (physical) environment includes parks, sidewalks, clean streets and healthy housing. Finally, the service environment includes the presence or absence of adequate schools, public transportation, healthcare facilities and other services that allow residents to live healthy and productive lives.

What role does King County government play?

The Sheriff's Office is the chief law enforcement agency in King County, and provides Regional and local police services to all of the unincorporated area, and has nearly 50 contracts for police services to various municipalities and state agencies in King County. The Sheriff's Office functions vary widely to meet the differing needs of communities, as well as legal mandates.