Seattle Police held a news conference on Tuesday afternoon to discuss a rise in gang and gun violence in 2015. As of Mid-August, this year has seen nearly 60 more shots fired reports than last year.
Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O' Toole said the majority of the shootings and murders are tied to gangs.
"Most of the violence we've seen, most of the shots fired we've seen, most of the homicide we've seen are related to ongoing gang activity," O' Toole said. "There's a very small number of people causing a large number of problems."
Chief O' Toole spoke of a murder in early where a young man was shot and killed while talking on the phone with his mother. That murder was gang related. Sunday morning near the International District there was a murder of a man in his vehicle. That was gang related.
"In a lot of these incidents yesterday's victim is tomorrow's shooter or vice versa," O' Toole said.
To solve the spike Seattle police are taking a number of strategic steps. They now are mapping crime numbers overnight to see where problems are happening so they can send proper enforcement to the places with problems. In recent weeks they've also started meeting once to twice a week with neighboring Sheriff's and Police Departments as well as with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
"The cooperation I think is unprecedented", Chief O' Toole said. "We're really working hard to do an analytical analysis to do a predictive approach to do get to the next shooting before it happens."
"This is not just a Seattle problem, this is not just a Kent problem, this is a regional problem and we need to harness our resources, we need to harness our collective efforts head on," O' Toole said.
Seattle police hope this targeted and strategic approach will help them cut down on gun and gang violence in Seattle and the neighboring cities.
