TACOMA, Wash. — Over the past several months, KING 5 has reported on an alarming trend in Western Washington: a huge spike in crimes committed by juveniles.
No juvenile crime has spiked more than car thefts, and law enforcement experts say that’s leading to an increase in more serious crimes committed by kids.
The stolen cars are being used in armed robberies and smash-and-grab burglaries.
“They find a soft target, and they just keep going until they can’t anymore,” co-owner of Hashtag Cannabis Logan Bowers said.
Bowers’ shop in old town Redmond has been hit by burglars five times in the last year.
In many smash-and-grab cases, surveillance video shows groups of people scurry into a shop to pick off product and look for cash. Law enforcement said more often than you’d think, kids are behind the masks.
Every time it is crushing to a small business.
“Every time probably $30,000 to $40,000 worth of damage to the building,” Bowers said. “So, you know we're probably around $200,000 worth of damage at this point in the last year alone.”
The cars that ripped through this dispensary are part of a trend around Western Washington.
In King County, compared to 2019, juvenile felony charges for car thefts were twice as high in 2023. The numbers are even more extreme in Pierce County. Compared to 2019, car thefts by kids more than tripled in 2023, and this year prosecutor’s office data shows the numbers are on track to have even more.
Sgt. Darren Moss of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement experts said to pull off more serious crimes, you often have to start with a car.
“It's the start of any other crime that you're going think of,” Moss said. “That's the first step.”
Police officials said recent laws are contributing to the increase in car thefts - like the 2021 police pursuit law that only allowed officers to initiate a chase if they had reasonable suspicion of a violent crime. Kids knew it was easier to get away with stealing a car.
That law was reversed this summer.
A law that’s still on the books doesn't allow minors to be questioned without an attorney. It was passed to protect youth from coercive police tactics.
Law enforcement said the outcome is a lack of accountability.
“What we're seeing is that we're not necessarily getting to address the lower-level crimes, and it's leading to an increase in our violent crimes continuously,” Moss said.
At Hashtag Cannabis, Bowers is frustrated for several reasons. He owns two other dispensaries but said his Redmond location is the only one that keeps on getting broken into. He said it’s because the city won’t allow him to put up bollards to protect his business.
“Prevention is the best way to keep these kids from being tempted to do these dumb crimes, because they're not profitable. The people who are recruiting them don't care what happens to these kids. If we can remove the profit incentive, then we remove the incentive for people to coerce, encourage or recruit kids to commit crimes,” Bowers said.
“I think what the pandemic did was create all these siloes,” Antonio McLemore with Tacoma Parks said.
McLemore runs a community center that serves kids and teens in Tacoma’s Eastside.
This summer he told us since 2020 he’s seen more kids lose their connection to school and sports. He’s watched some of the most vulnerable stray to crime.
“When young people were faced with adversity, they went back to the skills they learned in their trauma informed spaces. This is what we’re seeing in our communities. Young people that weren’t equipped for the world we’re now in,” McLemore said. “It can’t just be the city’s job. It can’t just be the teacher’s job. It can’t just be the family’s job. We really need each other.”
“Overall auto theft is down,” Moss said. “But why are more kids stealing cars today than we've had, you know, five years ago?”
Law enforcement has made strides to stop it. There’s been a number of arrests of so-called “Kia Boyz”. A group of young people leveraged a design flaw in Kias and Hyundais and then made car theft popular by posting the videos on TikTok.
“We've taken a lot of the big players out... Just five people can change the entire statistics for the whole county,” Moss said.
Meanwhile, victims of these crimes, like Hashtag Cannabis are still dealing with significant losses, anxiety and questions about how to stop the fallout.
“My staff feels it. We feel it. There's many nights where I can't fall asleep. I wake up at 3 a.m. and have to look to see, like, is everything ok? Because I'm like, well, maybe this will be the night that I'm driving to Redmond again to sweep up glass,” Bowers said.