Murders Increase On West Side Numbers Up In Seattle, Bellevue And Tacoma, But Law Enforcement Officials Don’t See Trend Associated Press

Homicides increased in Seattle, Bellevue and Tacoma in 1997 over 1996, but police officials cautioned that one year does not a trend make.

Spot checks this week found the number of homicides was generally down in most of America’s largest cities.

But Seattle has had 48 murders so far this year, up from 37 last year. Bellevue had a record nine murders - its highest for the decade - and up from three last year. In Tacoma, 26 people were killed, up from 21 last year.

Spokane had 11 slayings through the end of November, down from 15 last year. But that doesn’t count deaths in Spokane County. Police in the county and city are investigating the slayings of seven women found in and around the city since last summer as possible serial killings.

In Seattle, “Even though murders are up from last year, overall, if you look at the last five to 10 years, it’s gone down 20 percent,” police spokeswoman Carmen Best said Monday.

She said domestic violence intervention and decreasing gang violence have brought down the number of homicides in Seattle since 1994, when murders peaked at 69.

She called this year’s increase a natural fluctuation.

In Bellevue, which had an average of two to three killings a year until 1997, police said two multiple-murder cases skewed the annual total. A family of four was slain in January and, in June, a man killed his wife and two boys, then committed suicide.

“If you take the two of those (cases) away, we were left with two (homicides), which would have been a more normal number for us,” said Bellevue police spokesman Mike Johnson.

In Tacoma, police spokesman Jim Mattheis declined to speculate on the increase.

“I’m not a big believer in annual statistics,” he said. “There are too many variables. You have to look at a five-year or 10-year trend to really know what crime is doing.”