The number of gunshots, shooting victims and fatalities in King County all increased in 2021 compared to the average over the previous four years, according to a new report from the county’s Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
The total number of shots fired in 2021 hit 1,405, up 26 percent over the four-year average from 2017 to 2020, while shooting victims increased by 56 percent over the same time period. There were 88 fatal shootings, a 64 percent increase. The figures do not include suicides, cases in which people shot themselves or cases in which people were shot by law enforcement.
The data included in the report comes from more than 20 agencies, but the majority of shots fired reports were reported from just eight: Seattle, Auburn, Des Moines, Federal Way, Kent, Renton, Tukwila and the King County Sheriff’s Office, which covers unincorporated King County and 16 contract cities.
Those eight agencies cover approximately 79 percent of the county’s overall population.
The majority of shooting victims and shots fired occurred outside Seattle, at 59 percent and 62 percent, respectively. Those percentages are slightly higher than the four-year average between 2017 and 2020, when 58 percent of victims and 60 percent of shots came from outside King County’s most populous city.
The 460 shooting victims reported in 2021 were disproportionately likely to identify as men (85 percent) and people of color (81 percent). Similar to previous years, 48 percent of fatal and non-fatal victims were Black.
The report builds on a midterm report released in the summer covering the first six months of 2021. Even at that point, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg told the South Seattle Emerald in July, gun violence in 2021 was up by a considerable measure.
“Right now, this is not normal,” Satterberg said at the time. “It is much higher than we’ve ever seen.”
The “Shots Fired” report came out of a King County Executive decision to adopt a public health approach to firearm violence in order to find ways to reduce injuries and deaths. In 2016, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and Public Health – Seattle & King County worked with seven county jurisdictions to collect information on the amount of gun violence in the area.
To do that, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office created the Crime Strategies Unit (CSU) to track illegal shootings. According to the project website, while homicides were traditionally tracked, incidents in which there were no victims or the victims did not die were not.
The county’s data is actually more detailed than the two-page report would suggest, allowing Satterberg’s office to identify people who haven’t yet become involved in gun violence either as a victim or a person accused of using a gun. People in proximity to gun violence are statistically more likely to become involved in it going forward.
The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office then sends their information about people in proximity to gun violence to community-based organizations so that they can engage with young people before they become involved in gun violence.
At the same time that the mid-year report came out in the summer of 2021, Seattle’s former mayor, Jenny Durkan, announced a $2 million investment over two years in the King County Regional Peacekeepers Collective pilot program. This program was aimed specifically at addressing the uptick in gun violence in the region. The county also announced a $1.47 million investment in gun violence prevention, including funds to bring on additional staff to get the collective off the ground.
“We know that violence is the result of many failed systems and societal disparities,” Durkan said in a release in July. “And because, in many instances, the government for decades shirked responsibility, we are called on at this moment to invest in resources to right the wrongs created by those failed systems.”
The Regional Peacekeepers Collective involves several community-based organizations, including Choose 180 and Community Passageways as well as the Harborview Medical Center. These organizations work to intervene before young people get involved in gun violence and conduct prevention efforts for younger siblings, among other services.
Ashley Archibald was the editor of Real Change through July 2023, and is now a communication specialist for Purpose. Dignity. Action.
Read more of the Feb. 2-8, 2022 issue.