As the city continues to grapple with its high crime rate, Tacoma City Council has taken a couple steps to address it. Meanwhile, businesses keep getting hit with vandalism and cope with the effects of homeless encampments nearby. 

Last week, Mayor Victoria Woodards announced the availability of $300,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding to establish a Window Replacement Grant Program to  offset costs incurred for businesses to replace their broken windows. To qualify, businesses must be located within the Tacoma city limits and have no more than 15 full-time equivalent employees. 

Applications are being accepted now at MakeItTacoma.com.  R ecipients will be chosen through a random lottery and will be notified on April 6.  Questions can be directed to [email protected]  or (253) 591-5208. 

The city has also addressed the need for more officers on the city’s police force. Last week the city council passed a recruitment incentive to help the department hire vetted police officers from other jurisdictions to fill 53 current vacancies. T he recruitment incentive structure will provide lateral police officers $10,000 upon commission, $7,500 upon completion of probation and $7,500 a year after the completion of probation.

City Manager Elizabeth Pauli called the vacancies at Tacoma PD "unprecedented.”

"Our hope is that with this incentive for lateral hires, it will be more competitive in the hiring process. Our hope in regard to focusing on lateral hires is that they can start working sooner than new recruits,” she said.

The city council’s plan with incentives is in keeping with what new Tacoma Police Chief Avery Moore also has in mind to build the police force back up – to hire currently serving officers from other jurisdictions so that they could start work much sooner in Tacoma while new recruits go through the lengthier training process. New hires can take 12-18 months to complete training and get on the job, while lateral hires can cut this period down to six months.

Improvements to law and order in the city can’t come soon enough for local businesses. Tacoma’s iconic Brown & Haley has been long coping with numerous issues related to homeless campers and street crime. David Armstrong, senior vice president of operations at Brown & Haley, sent an email to Pauli, Woodards, Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier and other elected officials that burning tires under the 26th Street bridge homeless camp has forced him to  send office personnel home because of toxic fumes coming into their building.

Fires are consistently lit beneath the 705 overpass as well spite a partial clean up last month and a fence installed. While some of these fires are being used as a source of warmth for those living outdoors, t enants and staff at the Armour building on East 26th Street say the fires pose a real danger and sent an email to the city manager about conditions at encampment next to their parking lot.  

" There is an increasing population in this area and fires are continual. There is a hole in the fence, and they have cut the gate lock on the other side, so people are using this parking lot as a passageway.   One staff member has had their catalytic converter stolen.   People are scared to work late or come in early...which impacts both our bottom line and our interest to remain in the city as a small business.”

Ammar Mannaa owns Sluggo Brewing & Tap Kitchen at 409 E. 26th St. Last week in broad daylight, thieves lifted the folding metal gate he had installed for security and accessed the property. They returned 24 hours later to steal his outdoor propane heater.

  Last year, the Clean Team removed 2,340 graffiti tags downtown.

"We left the heater out because it’s gated and I thought it was impossible for anybody to lift it,” Mannaa said. "It takes a lot of force to do that, and somebody slid under it. They did it at like 9:30 (a.m.) in front of everyone and nobody said anything. This is what amazes me in this city now. It’s really bad.

"I’m worried that next time they’re going to break the door. We cannot just keep going like this. I worry too much now.” 

Some business owners are also expressing frustration with security they’re paying for through the Downtown Tacoma Partnership. Two security officers on bicycle, contracted through Pierce County Security, cover the boundary from South 23rd Street up to 6th Avenue and over to Fawcett Avenue. The officers are not armed but rather observe and use verbal persuasive tactics to address incidents like trespassing or disruptive behavior. If necessary, they will report incidents to police. 

"Our goal every day is to be on every one of those streets at least once a day,” said the Partnership’s Executive Director David Schroedel. "That allows us to identify if something went wrong to identifying locations where maybe graffiti or tagging popped up that the Clean Team can take care of. If there is broken glass, we can get it cleaned up and obviously just to make ourselves visible.”

The Partnership also runs a two-officer on-call shift 24/7 with a single-person car patrol on call during graveyard hours Sunday-Thursday, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The partnership’s 2021 annual report shows that its Safety Team made 1,983 community responses ranging from transient activity to disturbances and property damage. Its Clean Team removed 2,340 graffiti tags from buildings and 117,000 pounds of debris from downtown.  

City business owners are assessed a property tax for the service, $1.6 million for the coming year. Of this, $700,000 will go to safety services, which includes the Partnership’s contract with Pierce County Security and paying the Tacoma Police Department to provide additional support as needed; and $530,000 for the Clean Team’s graffiti removal, street sweeping and pressure washing. The rest goes to administration and marketing costs.

Mark Bardwil, who co-owns the Old City Hall annex, is one of the business owners the Tacoma Weekly spoke to about his satisfaction with the Partnership’s effectiveness. 

"I was happy with it, but I literally have not seen them. I can’t tell you the last time I saw them in this area,” he said. 

"The BIA has been horrible the last two years,” said another business owner who asked not to be named. "They do not patrol downtown during the graveyard shift when all the mischief happens. We are not getting services promised. This needs to change. It is the Wild West out there.”

Schroedel said police staffing issues and what the police are allowed to do under the law contribute significantly to how the Downtown Tacoma Partnership can respond to safety and criminal incidents.

"All of those are coming together to look very different in how we respond to things,” he said, adding that  the Partnership does not have the budget to add additional security team members.

"We currently spend about 45% of our budget on safety services. To add 50% more officers would increase our total budget by over 20% and that would be a big jump for a lot of property owners downtown. We’d have to justify it too.”

In 2018, property owners voted on whether the Partnership should be renewed, for it to expand its footprint by about 40 percent, and to increase the level of service to provide 24/7 on-call service.

"We had 99.7% of the property owners who voted say yes,” Schroedel said. "I’m pretty proud of that. We had 74% turnout in that petition so I feel like it’s a pretty representative sample and a real endorsement of the work we’re doing.”