SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane police continue to investigate a homicide in the Peaceful Valley area where a man's body was found bound and gagged.
According to the latest data from the Spokane Police Department (SPD), the city has seen 13 homicides this year, an 8% increase compared to this time last year.
Property crime is up nearly 24% across the city.
"I support more police officers," Mayor Woodward said. "I will tell you that something the chief talks about all the time, the two biggest challenges right now in the department are recruitment and retention."
Mayor Woodward and Chief Meidl held a telephone town hall Tuesday night as the mayor gets ready to share her proposed $1.2 billion budget for 2023 with city council members.
"A budget that invests in people," Woodward said. "People in our neighborhoods, people who need shelter and people who deliver the services that are critical to our city."
Woodward has said she would like to hire anywhere from 70 to 100 additional police officers in the future, but that's not something that can happen at the snap of a finger.
"Even if we had all the money in the world to hire 100 plus more officers, we wouldn't be able to do that over night." Woodward said.
Chief Meidl says right now, there's typically 115 officers assigned to patrol. They'll assign an additional 40 officers this January.
"We're also going to be going to a little bit of a different sector, breaking up how we divvy up our patrol sectors so the officers will have a smaller area to patrol," Meidl said. "Our hope is that we will reduce the commute time between calls as well. We anticipate that the community should see a difference in January because we are moving more of those patrol officers back into the field."
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