Murder numbers dropped dramatically across the nation in 2024

Jan 11, 2025

Seattle News:

First, SPD interim Chief Sue Rahr decided to fire Kevin Dave, the officer who hit and killed Jaahnavi Kandula two years ago. You can read all about it in my article for The Urbanist.

The Seattle Times is suing SPD for alleged public record violations. This is great news, as it is intensely difficult to get public records from SPD, and Seattle Times is a local outlet with deep enough pockets to fund a lawsuit to try to address the issue.

The Mayor’s Office sent out a press release celebrating 2024 as the first year SPD has hired more officers than it lost…by one. Given Dave was then immediately fired at the start of 2025, they pretty much broke even. It’s also worth noting that an increase in the number of applications to become an SPD officer does not necessarily translate into a higher number of officers who are ultimately hired. In fact, before he left, former Chief Adrian Diaz mentioned at a committee meeting that the department often has to reject lateral applications because the candidates aren’t suitable for SPD.

Next week there will be a public safety committee meeting on Tuesday, 1/14 at 9:30am. The sole item on the agenda is the less lethal weapons legislation first discussed in December. There are ten proposed amendments to the base bill, and a committee vote is expected. There will be public comment at the beginning of the meeting.

King County, WA State, and U.S. News:

The King County assessor, John Wilson, who is now running for King County Executive against King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay, was accused of stalking and harassment by his domestic partner and now-fianceé.

In spite of a significant state budget deficit, Governor-elect Bob Ferguson wants to find $100 million over the next biennium to provide grants to local municipalities to hire more police officers. The idea of helping hire more officers has bipartisan support, but there is an open question as to where exactly the money will come from. I’ll have more about the state budget situation and legislative priorities for this session coming soon at The Urbanist.

Nationally, murders and other violent crime have dropped dramatically. The New York Times looked at data through October 2024 and reported that “if the drop in murders continued at the same rate for the rest of the year, 2024 had the largest percent decrease — nearly 16 percent — ever recorded nationwide.”

Other violent crimes also fell, as did overall property crime. These latest numbers suggest what I’ve been suggesting for some time already: namely, that the Covid-19 pandemic and the chaos it wrought was a root cause for the higher crime numbers we saw nationally from 2021-2023.

Data analyst Jeff Asher also wrote about this trend, saying, “America’s crime trends in 2024 were remarkably positive with an enormous decline in murder, a continued small but steady decline in violent crime, and a sizable decline in motor vehicle theft on the heels of several years of surges. The nation’s murder rate has largely erased the post-COVID surge and was roughly around or [at] 2019’s level while reported violent and property crime were likely amongst the lowest rates recorded since the 1960s and 1970s.”

Notes from the Emerald City

Murder numbers dropped dramatically across the nation in 2024

Seattle News:

King County, WA State, and U.S. News:

Recent Headlines: