
By Erica C. Barnett
Capping off a year of renewed focus on low-level street crime such as shoplifting, the Seattle Police Department announced just before the new year that it had arrested 11 “prolific shoplifters” in an operation targeting downtown retail theft, booking eight of them into the downtown jail.
In a post on the department’s blog, SPD described a carefully orchestrated operation in which officers worked with security staff at three stores to identify prolific thieves and apprehend them after they “gather[ed] items like clothing, makeup, food, and liquor, and then walk[ed] out of the store with no attempt to pay.”
SPD declined to provide police reports for the arrests, and information about the eight bookings hasn’t shown up yet in the Seattle Municipal Court’s public portal. However, the department did post images of the recovered goods, which included beer, ice cream, sandwiches, lip gloss, and toilet paper. With the exception of a case of beer and what looks like two sample bottles of cologne, none of the items appear to be worth more than several dollars.
Of the three people with multiple prior arrests or charges, two were deemed incompetent to stand trial in the past because of mental illness, including one whose history of paranoid, delusional outbursts, attributed to schizophrenia in court documents, is described at length in police reports.
Indeed, while the SPD post makes it sound like police targeted some of the city’s worst offenders, our review of the court history of the eight booked offenders shows that most of them have scant criminal records or well-documented histories of mental illness and addiction—conditions that aren’t addressed by sending people to jail for a night or taking them to trial. At least two people on the list have been declared incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness in the past. None appear to be on the city’s “prolific offenders” list.
SPD released three of the suspects without booking them, and booked the remaining eight into jail; the department provided the names of those eight to PubliCola in response to a request.
Of the eight, one—as SPD noted in its post—had several outstanding warrants and faced additional charges, including possession of auto theft tools.
Among the remaining seven, only three have been charged with, or arrested for, more than one misdemeanor in Seattle in the past, according to court records—an extremely minimal definition of “prolific.” The remaining four had either zero or just one prior case in Seattle Municipal Court records, which go back decades.
Of the three people with multiple prior arrests or charges, two were deemed incompetent to stand trial in the past because of mental illness, including one whose history of paranoid, delusional outbursts, attributed to schizophrenia in court documents, is described at length in police reports.
Almost every person who was booked into jail as part of this highly publicized operation was released within a day, and City Attorney Ann Davison’s office declined to file charges in seven of the 11 cases.
In other words: The great holiday Retail Theft Operation of 2022 was a bit of a bust.
Because SPD, and Mayor Bruce Harrell, have placed such an emphasis on the need to prosecute people who engage in frequent shoplifting from downtown stores (a practice that, as we’ve documented, can be prosecuted as “organized retail theft” even if the person is stealing something for their personal use), it’s worth taking a closer look at the cases in which the city previously arrested or charged the people picked up last month for other misdemeanors.
The only clear-cut case of a “prolific offender,” the Northgate Target shoplifter, was arrested repeatedly for stealing clothes, including 10 incidents in 2020. In the December bust, SPD picked him up for taking $51 worth of items from a downtown Bartell drug store, including pens, two sodas, and a notebook.
According to court records, the man had been referred to community court for several of his previous cases, but didn’t follow through; in a mental health evaluation in 2020, he acknowledged a history of drug abuse and claimed he was having auditory hallucinations, but was found competent to stand trial.
The other two cases involve people whose mental health issues and struggles with addiction were well documented. In one, the court referred an alleged serial shoplifter to mental health court; the man, who is homeless and reported daily drug use and heavy drinking, was recently found incompetent to stand trial in several cases and referred for a mental health evaluation. All but one of those cases involved shoplifting from downtown stores; the other was an alleged assault at the downtown library in 2016.
A spokeswoman for SPD noted that officers don’t always arrest people identified as shoplifters by store security guards. It’s also true that security guards don’t always call police when they witness or confront someone shoplifting, so the number of arrests doesn’t represent the actual number of shoplifting incidents.
The second involves a man court records describe as schizophrenic. The man had been arrested, most recently, in August, after neighbors called the police when he was “standing in the street and screaming” in a “possible mental crisis,” according to police reports. Officers who responded to that call arrested the man for subsequently walking out of a nearby drug store with three board games. His criminal history included many arrests for harassing and attacking members of his family, who lived nearby, when he was “off his medication” and using drugs.
Asked to comment on the downtown arrests and the details of specific suspects’ legal histories, a spokeswoman for SPD noted that SPD doesn’t always arrest people identified as shoplifters by store security guards, so some of the people could been repeat offenders without being arrested. Additionally, security guards don’t always call police when they witness or confront someone shoplifting.
“The Retail Theft Operation was conducted to assist in identifying prolific offenders, but also deter shoplifting in the stores overall,” the SPD spokeswoman said. “Detectives, Officers and Loss Prevention teams often contact suspects, who have shoplifted liquor or other items multiple times, but may not arrest these suspects for various reasons. Most often the contact is reported as a terry stop, shoplift or trespass by officers.”
The City Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment about their charging decisions.
Fred Meyer has 100s of customers each hour and 100s per day. 10 people shoplifting could easily boost $3500.00 worth.
At 10 dollars or less a theft? Each person coming in and stealing an average of 35 separate times? No. That’s simply ludicrous.
Why does Erika seem to be in favor of criminal acts?
I don’t read it that way. I read the article as possibly saying that the city/county need more mental health and other social (cough, housing, cough) services, which may be more cost effective. How much do we pay WA and Seattle in income taxes again? (and Real Estate taxes are not really that high compared to the rest of the country).
There are no State income taxes.
The future of stores is walk up windows with clerks who fetch you your item, or delivery for everything. It’s sad to lose public space like this, but that’s an effective way to avert crime.
I like the Cosco model were only members get to shop…. no homeless shoppers there. I think Seattle will have lots of “members only” businesses in the near future. We’re a rich city made up lots of “haves” and “have-nots” Why should the “haves” ever need to rub shoulders with the “have nots”? The crazy thing a Seattle is it’s chock full of bleedin’ heart Liberals with Cosco cards…and the idea of other “members only” businesses would be highly appealing to them. A “neighborhood” Queen Anne gastro-pub only open to those “members” in the neighborhood? Yes please! How Northwest!! For a utility bill with the right address on it, (and a $200 annual membership fee) you are guaranteed a table on Friday night. Let the riffraff wait in line elsewhere. Remember, it’s all about separating yourself from the herd!
Google says it costs $424/day to keep someone in King Co jail…..I wonder how much the stolen merchandise cost compared … The price of punishment I guess…Your tax dollars at work..
Tho it does keep a lot of cops, guards, lawyers and judges employed…huh?
Regardless of any amount involve a person should be put behind bars. They’ll realize that your serious about it. Be more strict on how you lay out your law here in Seattle. Hopefully it’ll be a safe place to stroll around the downtown area – “drug, crime & theft free” environment.
OK. How do we pay for all these added jails, and police (who don’t cost the city money in lawsuits)? Jail the shoplifters, who do you let out (because the city will lose any lawsuit in an overcrowded prison lawsuit? So, who do you let out: pick one or more: Car thieves, burglars, drug dealers, etc?
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Downtown Seattle is a safe place to stroll around today. No additional “strictness” is necessary.
It costs a lot. During the pandemic stores in Seattle were getting shoplifted of as much as $3500 per day! This increases insurance costs, cost to hire added security and to put in locking cabinets for alcohol and other expensive products. All this cost is passed to the public in the form of inflation – higher prices. It’s why Seattle’s cost of living is so high.
I’m not sure the math pans out there. As the SPD admits, most shoplifted items are incredibly cheap, and each act is rarely many items. Assuming 10 dollars total per theft, that would be 350 acts in a day or roughly once every four minutes. I’m not sure many of these stores even average a customer every four minutes, and a shoplifter that often is patently ridiculous.
what’s sort of sad also is that some residential drug rehabilitation programs actually are more expensive than prison on a monthly basis. Seattle downtown hotel rooms can be $300/day too. Everything is really expensive.