Suzanne Mittleider works in downtown Spokane, but she doesn't like spending time there.
"Once we leave for work, we don't come back," says Mittleider, who co-owns Litho Art Printers on Lincoln Street next to the railroad viaduct.
Mittleider has worked at the print shop for 24 years, but she says it's only over the past two or so years things have really taken a downward turn.
Mittleider describes a constant torrent of problems. Drug use in the loading dock. Screaming in the street. The smell of urine and feces in the morning. Graffiti, needles and 11 smashed car windows in a single day. Mittleider knows people who avoid downtown entirely. If she could afford to move her business out of the area, she would.
"Is 'shithole' too strong a word?" Mittleider says.
Concern over the state of crime and public safety in downtown Spokane seems to ebb and flow every few years. It was a big issue in 2019, when Mayor Nadine Woodward campaigned on a promise to clean up downtown, and local developer Larry Stone released "Curing Spokane" — a 17-minute video that framed the downtown core as plagued with drugs and crime.
In recent months, the debate over public safety in downtown Spokane has picked back up — driven in part by a series of high-profile assaults and announcements from several frustrated business owners who say they're being driven out of the central city by rising property crime.
During her State of the City address last week, Woodward highlighted downtown public safety as a top priority, promising a "a law and order approach" and a new ordinance to prevent drug use in public places.
Earlier this month, Spokane City Council members floated the idea of moving City Hall out of downtown to save money on office space.
But to many downtown business owners, the idea carried a clear subtext.
"All of a sudden the whole message got flipped to 'You're fleeing downtown,'" says Council member Lori Kinnear.
Kinnear insists the proposal was purely financial and notes that the proposed new location — in Spokane's East Central neighborhood — isn't exactly a "cradle of safety" either.
Still, the optics weren't ideal.
"If we've got to live like this, you can stay," Mittleider says of the City Hall move. "You can deal with it."
After the backlash, council members released a statement saying they had heard the feedback and understood the symbolic importance of City Hall's downtown location. Even if the decision didn't really have anything to do with public safety, perception matters.
BROKEN WINDOWS
The data paints a complicated picture of public safety in downtown Spokane.
A review of crime statistics from 2017 to 2022 shows that property crimes are way up in the city's center, but crimes against people — like assaults, sex crimes, robbery, harassment and homicides — are down.
Notably, these stats show that both property crime and crimes against people were at their lowest in 2020, during the height of the pandemic. The number of reported crimes against people increased slightly in 2021 and 2022, but was still well below historic highs and seems to be on an overall downward trend. The downtown precinct reported 1,017 crimes against people last year — a significant decrease from a high of 1,355 in 2017.
Property crimes, on the other hand, saw a huge spike. The number of property crimes jumped from 3,876 in 2021 to 4,987 in 2022. The previous high was 4,505 incidents in 2019. Police spokesperson Julie Humphreys says many of the recent incidents involved car thefts and break-ins.
The numbers might not show an increase in violent crime, but when it comes to public safety, perception is arguably just as important, Humphreys says. Smashed car windows and sidewalk drug use aren't categorized as "violent" crimes, but seeing those things while walking down the street can make people feel unsafe.
As the pandemic recedes, cities across the country have been working — with mixed results — to draw businesses, tourists and office workers back to downtown cores. Creating a welcoming downtown that feels safe is key to that goal, says Emilie Cameron, president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership.
For small businesses, the costs of vandalism can be debilitating — a broken window can cost as much as $4,000, Cameron says.
"A lot of people, when you think of property it can be easy to dismiss as 'Oh, it's just property,'" Cameron says. "But you have to think about the bigger picture more holistically."
When someone smashed the window of Auntie's Bookstore in 2021, owner John Waite took to Facebook, asking that people buy extra books and merchandise at the store to help pay for the replacement window.
Today, Waite is hesitant to go into detail about his businesses' recent experiences with public safety downtown. He says he's tired of business owners' frustrations being used as political ammo by politicians on both sides of the aisle.
"All I would say to people is that it's not something I like to talk about because it's politically charged," Waite says. "And frankly, no one in politics or safety is really doing anything about it."
CRACKING DOWN
The Spokane Police Department says it's working on it.
In early January, the department doubled the number of officers stationed downtown as part of a larger patrol reorganization. Humphreys says the force also adjusted the hours officers work in an effort to better cover the overnight hours that tend to be troublesome.
Recent changes in Spokane laws have also allowed police to take a tougher approach downtown. In September, police resumed downtown enforcement of the city's sit-lie ordinance, which prohibits sitting or lying on a public sidewalk. The city also updated its illegal camping ordinance to stop people from camping under downtown viaducts and within three blocks of any congregate shelter.
"That helps, that moves people along," says Humphreys. "You need to show up to court and find another place to get some services, you can't just live on the streets."
During a 12-day period in January, police arrested 77 people downtown for violations — mainly sit-lie, trespass and illegal camping.
The results won't be visible in the crime data immediately, but overall things are improving, Humphreys says.
"Frankly, no one in politics or safety is really doing anything about it."
SECOND AND DIVISION
Downtown Spokane's problems are especially visible at the intersection of Second Avenue and Division Street.
There used to be a Starbucks on one corner, but the company closed it last fall, citing concerns about safety for employees and customers. Across the street, there's Redemption Church. In January, church leadership announced that they were moving out of downtown because of rising crime and insurance costs stemming from repeatedly broken windows. On the southeast corner is La Quinta Inn, bordered by an imposing steel fence.
And then there's the 7-Eleven, which has long been plagued by drug use and property crime.
Over the past four weeks, Humphreys says police have been treating the intersection as a "priority mission area" — doing regular patrols and interacting with the people hanging outside the gas station. Humphreys says it's made a big difference. She points to a video the department released last week highlighting the department's work in the area. The video features an interview with 7-Eleven owner Alex Momand, saying the increased police presence was working and scaring off many of the drug dealers.
Momand said the same thing on Monday, that the area is getting better.
Outside the store, a group of about six people with backpacks were hanging out and blasting music from a loudspeaker on wheels. They said they'd noticed the increased police presence in recent weeks but weren't all that concerned about it. The group took off a few moments later when a police officer pulled into the parking lot and blasted his patrol car horn. The officer knew some of the people by name and stopped one pair to inquire about a warrant.
In Spokane, talk of rising crime is often connected, directly or otherwise, to the region's rise in homelessness.
The connection between crime and extreme poverty is complicated. While some business owners are quick to conflate the two, others — like John Allen, who owns the Vino! wine store downtown — push back on the idea that people living outside are making the city less safe.
"There's an uneasiness about people that are relatively unfamiliar," Allen says. "And I think that the higher you live on the income scale, the more creepy those people look."
Allen doesn't think downtown Spokane has become any more dangerous. His business sometimes has people come in who are clearly unwell, but Allen says he's mostly been able to avoid issues. Every city has unsavory characters, Allen says, adding that "it's part of the fabric of life we've created for ourselves.
"When we abandon the people who are on the bottom rung... it's no surprise they might be angry," Allen says. ♦
