Voters may get Crime Check

Spokane County commissioners are poised today to ask voters for a sales tax increase making it easier for citizens to communicate with law enforcement officers and for police agencies to communicate with one another.

The proposed one-tenth-of-a-percent sales tax increase would restore the Crime Check system for reporting crimes and seeking help in situations that don’t warrant calling 911. It also would replace the radio system that serves all police and fire departments in the county.

The round-the-clock Crime Check reporting system was eliminated at the end of 2004 because one of its primary sponsors, the city of Spokane, could no longer afford its share of the costs.

Since then, a scaled-down Spokane Crime Reporting Center has taken reports – but not requests for service – 12 hours a day on weekdays and for nine hours on Saturdays. The result has been a 50 percent reduction in crime reports, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said in June.

Knezovich wasn’t available for comment Monday, but various county officials said he has been instrumental in persuading county commissioners to consider placing a state-authorized sales-tax before voters in November.

Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick also was unavailable Monday, but Maj. Gill Moberly said city police support the proposal.

“Chief Kirkpatrick and Sheriff Knezovich are working closely,” Moberly said.

Spokane County Commissioner Todd Mielke said police and fire departments throughout the county would benefit. Crime Check would handle nonemergency calls for all law enforcement agencies in the county, and a new radio system would improve communications among agencies.

The Federal Communications Commission has directed local governments to move their emergency radio transmitters to a higher frequency band, Mielke said.

Also, he said, “A lot of our system is old and you can’t get parts for it. There are dead spots, and there are some locations where agencies can’t talk to each other.”

A new system would improve agencies’ “interoperability” with data transmission as well as voice communication, Moberly said. For example, he said, one agency might quickly disseminate photographs to another’s officers in the field.

Police cruisers already have onboard computers, but officers are limited to suspect photos they download at the station before beginning their shifts, Moberly said.

Mielke said a new backbone communications system – not counting equipment assigned to individual officers – might cost $41 million to $43 million. Running Crime Check on a round-the-clock basis could cost about $1.8 million a year.

The current system costs about $720,000 a year, according to Knezovich.

Marshall Farnell, the county’s chief executive officer, said the proposed sales tax increase would generate about $7 million a year.

Commissioners could use it to repay bonds they might issue to finance a new communications system, Mielke said.

He said he thinks Commissioners Mark Richard and Bonnie Mager will join him in supporting the sales tax measure when they take up the issue this afternoon, which will be their last opportunity to place it on November’s general election ballot.

But Mielke said he hadn’t decided whether he wants a sunset clause. Commissioners have been scrambling for information and expect another staff report today, he said.

A previous group of commissioners placed a five-year limit on a 0.1 percent criminal justice sales tax that voters approved in 2004. That tax, which supports general law enforcement and judicial expenses throughout the county, will remain in effect at least through 2009.

State law requires 60 percent of that money to go to the county government while the remainder is divided among cities on a per-capita basis. The proposed new tax would be administered entirely by county officials but could be used only for law enforcement communications.

Mielke anticipates asking voters to renew the general criminal justice tax when it expires in 2009.

If Crime Check is restored, Mielke hopes it will resume use of the telephone number that was magnetically posted on Spokane refrigerators for generations: 456-2233.

“I grew up in a law enforcement family, and that number was ingrained in all of us,” said Mielke, whose father was a Spokane police officer.

So many people kept calling the number after it was reassigned, that the number’s new owner soon asked the telephone company to take it back, according to Martha Lou Wheatley-Billeter, the county’s public information officer.

After that, the number was set aside in case public officials want it back.

Mielke said a common complaint at last week’s National Night Out Against Crime neighborhood meetings was that people don’t know the new Spokane Crime Reporting Center number.

“I don’t know it either,” Mielke said. “That’s the problem.”

For the record, it’s (509) 532-9266.