MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake has its share of issues with violent crime, but it’s dealing with those issues surprisingly well, Moses Lake Police Chief Dave Sands told the Moses Lake City Council last week in a special study session before the council’s regular meeting.

“I understand we're a system and I'm not going to lie to you, there are parts of the system that are not working their best,” Sands said. “You have the enforcement side of the criminal justice system, you have the court side and the corrections side, and all of us are dealing with different things that affect how that system works.”

Sands compared violent crime statistics from Moses Lake with those of three other Washington cities: Walla Walla, Wenatchee and Des Moines, a suburb of Seattle. All three cities have higher populations than Moses Lake, according to the 2020 census, by anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 people, but their police forces are similarly sized. Sands’ numbers counted total offenses considered Group A offenses under the federal National Incident-Based Reporting System for those cities between 2018 and 2022, the latest year for which figures were available. Group A offenses include not just violent crimes but thefts, burglaries, drug offenses and sex offenses, among others. 

Moses Lake averaged 2,079 Group A offenses per year over that five-year period, according to the data Sands submitted, compared to 2,202 for Wenatchee, 2,352 for Walla Walla and 2,155 for Des Moines. Individual years showed fluctuation; Moses Lake’s offenses reached a low point of 1,686 in 2019, then rose steadily thereafter, while Walla Walla started at 2,819 in 2018 and dropped to 1,751 in 2021, then bounced back to 2,387 in 2022.

“We have ebb and flow depending on the year,” Sands said. “These can be affected by X-factors such as systemic stress ... or societal issues, which may be legislative decisions that are outside of our control.”

Sands then broke out two particular categories of offenses for closer examination: aggravated assault and robbery. Because Washington state doesn’t actually have a charge called “aggravated assault,” Sands explained, he defined it as any felony assault.

Moses Lake averaged 79.8 aggravated assaults per year over the five years, according to Sands’ figures, more than any of the other three cities, but came in second to Des Moines when it came to robberies, 18.2 per year compared to 42.8.

Those numbers only tell part of the story, Sands told the council.

“Really what we look at is clearance rates,” Sands said. “Are we putting people away? Are we holding them accountable?”

An offense is considered cleared when at least one person has been arrested, charged and turned over to the court for prosecution, according to the FBI’s website, although it can also be cleared if the offender has been identified and located and enough evidence is gathered for a conviction, but outside circumstances prevent the actual arrest and prosecution. 

Moses Lake Police Department had the highest clearance rate among the sampled cities almost every year, Sands’ data showed, ranging from reaching 56.5% in 2019 and never dropping below 38%. Wenatchee’s numbers were comparable to Moses Lake’s, while Walla Walla stayed mostly in the lower 30s and Des Moines ranged from 17.8% to 26.4%.

Figures for 2023 won’t be available until around June, Sands told the council, but he had worked out some preliminary figures for the current year, based on two particular categories of offenses: assault with a weapon and weapons offenses. The two seem like the same thing, but they fall under separate dispatch codes, Sands explained.

“Assault with a  weapon requires further action besides just having a weapon,” Sands explained. “A weapon offense may be just possession of a weapon, possession of an illegal knife, possession of brass knuckles, or something like that.”

In 2023 so far, Sands said, there have been 31 events classed as assault with a weapon, including drive-by shootings, brandishing, non-domestic violence felony assaults with a weapon and homicide. Those figures did not include domestic assaults or neighbor disputes, he said. They concentrated on situations where violence committed in a public place affected uninvolved people.

Twenty-four of those were cleared, Sands said, a clearance rate of more than 76%, and 30-plus people were arrested.

“If we can clear it, then we're putting people responsible behind bars and that is the ultimate goal once violence happens,” he said.

Moses Lake Police also handled 37 instances of unlawful possession of firearms, Sands said.

“These are incidents where you have a proactive approach, “ Sands explained. “Officers in a traffic stop observe somebody with a gun and it’s treated that way usually after a search warrant, to a street encounter with a gang member, to our proactive team doing the warrants and discovering guns. These are being taken off of gang members, they’re being taken off drug dealers. drug dealer … I did include in this number some of the guns that were taken off of domestic violence suspects because I have no idea what their intent was with that gun.”

Sands pointed out that there have only been two homicides that have gone unsolved in Moses Lake’s history, and only one since 1992.

“So then how are we doing this?” Sands said. “How do we have what I consider a very high clearance rate for violent crimes?”

A good example, he said, was the homicide shooting near Montlake Park in Moses Lake on Nov. 12 in which one person was killed and two others injured by gunfire. 

“In that instance, we had full response literally as the smoke was wafting out of the air,” Sands said.

“We got a large number of people there to control the scene. We had a sergeant, who has a lot of off-site investigative experience himself, who took over the scene and started working, keeping people moving. Patrol officers jumped on a Flock camera system and started utilizing technology to figure out if we could find a suspect, or if we had anywhere to point to. I think within a couple of hours we had a (suspect’s) car in our custody.”

MLPD officers arrested four suspects in the shooting four days later. 

Violent crime isn’t new in Moses Lake, Sands told the council, nor has it risen sharply in recent years, even if it may seem that way. His first full year with the MLPD was in 1993, he said, so he compiled statistics for that year to compare to 2022. There were two homicides in 1993 and two in 2022, he said, but 1993 saw 20 cases of rape compared to 11 in 2022, and there were 132 felony assaults compared to 100 in 2022. Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Census, the population of Moses Lake has more than doubled, from 11,235 in 1990 to an estimated 25,888 in 2022, which means the number of crimes per 1,000 people was 120.7 in 1993 and only 96 in 2022.

“Your officers are working hard for their community, with over 20,000 calls for service,” he said, “That does not include the officer messages, that doesn't include the follow up on those, it doesn't include a lot of things … And then we can't show what we prevent through controls and proactive work. As an example, we have the drive-by shooting and homicide on Loop (Drive in July). We put officers out on the road in areas (where) we fully anticipated having some retaliatory shootings, and we kept them there and they did traffic stops. At the scene there were unmarked cars and marked cars, because we wanted to make it known that we're not gonna deal with this again, you're gonna stop that for now. And while I can't say that we prevented any homicides, we did prevent additional problems, because we fully expected to see some more shootings out of that. We really did, just by the scope of it, the number of people involved, we fully expected to see some stuff.”

“What can we do as a community to help?” asked Council Member Mark Fancher after Sands’ presentation was finished.

“You know, it's cliche almost: if you see something, say something,” Sands said. “You'd be amazed at the number of people that don't call … Really, please, make the call. Call when it's happening, even if it seems like nothing. Worst case, you're getting an extra drive-by from an officer in the area. That's not a horrible thing.”

At bottom, Sands said, it’s important to remember the reality behind the statistics.

“There's people tied to every one of those numbers,” Sands said. “Everyone who's ever worked a homicide case has seen the danger, the anguish and sadness that comes from the victim's family.”

Joel Martin may be reached at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.