SPOKANE, Wash. — A new initiative rolled out by Mayor Lisa Brown and law enforcement agencies hopes to ensure people feel safer in downtown Spokane. A month in, officers say they are seeing a slight decrease in violent crimes downtown.
The CORE Plan, a short term pilot program, aims to tackle key challenges faced downtown. It focuses on increasing police presence, alternative response efforts, and offering more housing resources for those experiencing homelessness.
“A whole host of community partnerships and city departments were involved in this,” said Spokane Police Chief Kevin Hall.
Spokane Police (SPD) said that in the 30 days of this plan, there were fewer assaults compared to the same time frame last year.
SPD notes while downtown represents a small portion of the city’s geographic area, it accounts for a disproportionate number of crimes. This plan centralizes efforts.
“We feel the best way possible to move forward is to look at this holistically, as an all government, all community problem solving initiative as opposed to just a police problem,” Chief Hall said. “It’s going to take all of us to address this complex social problem that affects Spokane.”
As part of the plan, four additional officers have been deployed to downtown for ten hours a day. It also includes more presence of SPD’s Behavioral Health Unit and Spokane Fire Department’s Behavioral Response Unit (BRU).
Spokane Fire Chief Julie O’Berg said the focus over the past four weeks has been more visibility in the downtown core.
“Their primary mission is to divert away from emergency rooms when possible. So if they can medically clear someone and rather direct them into the appropriate treatment, whether it’s alcohol, opioid or mental health needs,” Chief O’Berg said.
Chief O’Berg said since many patients BRU deals with are treatment resistant, it can be hard to see improvements in this short period of time.
While violent crimes went down across the city, crisis calls continued to rise.
The city hopes coordination across different agencies will help create a more effective way of addressing safety in Spokane.
The CORE plan has been extended an additional week. After that, Mayor Brown and public safety chiefs will analyze what future efforts would look like.
COPYRIGHT 2024 BY KXLY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
