After four people were wounded in two separate shootings in Spokane last weekend, civic leaders looked to Police Chief Craig Meidl for answers to the city’s apparent rise in gun violence.
Finding those solutions will take a community effort, as evidenced by a new task force Meidl is helping put together at Mayor Nadine Woodward’s request.
"I think there's a small number of chronic offenders who are committing the majority of quality of life crimes, the business property crimes, the car thefts and car prowlings and all those kinds of things, and we need to go after that," Woodward told The Spokesman-Review.
There were 40 shootings in Spokane in the first three months of 2022, according to the Spokane Police Department, on pace to eclipse the 151 shootings recorded last year. Eighteen of those 40 were classified as drive-by shootings, up from 10 over the same time period last year.
Spokane Police recorded 91 shootings in 2020 and 52 in 2019.
On Saturday, three people were seriously injured during a reported drive-by shooting near Lucky’s Pub. Another man was shot twice in a separate shooting on East Queen Avenue. Another man was shot and killed early Tuesday morning in north Spokane.
