Shoreline saw an overall drop in reported crime in 2025 according to the city police department’s annual report, which was presented at Monday night’s city council meeting.

Property crimes dropped by 14% from 2024 to 2025 and violent crimes fell by 6.26%. Though “crimes against society” — drug, prostitution and weapons-law crimes — ticked up by more than 58%, Shoreline Police say that’s a sign of its Special Enforcement Team working properly.

“Those are actually things that are happening here in the City of Shoreline, and they are identifying them and putting them to a stop,” said Police Captain Neil Woodruff. “It’s not a sign of, hey, there’s more drug and narcotics offenses and more prostitution. It’s the fact that we have people out there that are identifying them and putting a stop to them.”

Like nearly half of the 30 cities in King County, Shoreline contracts with the King County Sheriff’s Office to provide police services — as in, the city’s police department.

Shoreline has pledged $36.5 million toward SPD in the current 2025-2026 biennial budget, representing 24.33% of the city’s total operating budget. That’s a 28.9% increase from 2023-2024’s budget for SPD, which was $28.3 million.

On a per capita basis, Shoreline effectively pays about $252 per resident, which is on the low end compared to many neighboring cities. According to data reported by The Interurban Canopy, Seattle ($732), Lynnwood ($531), Bothell ($418), Lake Forest Park ($414), Edmonds ($394) and Kirkland ($381) all pay more than Shoreline in per-capita police spending.

Property crimes, like motor vehicle theft, larceny, residential burglary and robbery, all fell from 2024 to 2025, with the biggest drop coming in commercial burglary. Commercial burglary fell from 184 reported crimes in 2024 down to 75 incidents in 2025 — a 59% decrease.

Violent crimes — termed as “crimes against persons” in federal reporting databases — dropped slightly as well. The total number of assault, homicide, manslaughter, human trafficking, kidnapping and sex crimes fell by 6.26% from 2024 to 2025.

Crimes against society — or breaking laws intended to stop certain activities — increased, as the city made a point of policing drug-related crime through its Special Emphasis Team. “With the team back at full staffing, it is expected that our enforcement stats would increase for drug and sex trafficking type activity,” said the city staff report.

Shoreline’s police service report is, essentially, a data dump building a narrative from the numbers. And those numbers look good to Shoreline Police Chief Tommy Collins and his staff.

Captain Brian Angelo was happy to report that average response times for violent and high-risk crimes — the highest-priority emergency calls — were the fastest they had been in three years, taking officers about 4 minutes to arrive. Response times also improved for lower-priority calls, per SPD data.

Among all of the positive data, Collins noted that SPD currently has nine vacant positions. The department’s officer vacancies have hovered around that figure — sometimes eight, sometimes 10, and at one point 13 openings in 2024 — for more than a year. Shoreline has budgeted for 53 total staff in 2025 and 2026, with 50 officers and 3 civilian staff members.

A major point of pain, Collins said, is traffic — and the community has let him know about it. “The number one complaint I get on my desk is traffic,” he told the council. “The thing is, I can’t actually expand anything without getting the calls for service, the 911 calls handled.”'

Being short-staffed has taken officers away from traffic enforcement this year. Since late January, Shoreline PD’s only dedicated traffic unit — which, among their duties, includes monitoring school zones — was redeployed to patrol, including responding to resident and business calls for help. The traffic unit, Angelo told the city council Monday, was brought into the city last year and has been key to enforcement. In 2025, 1,261 traffic citations were issued — the first time since 2020 that citations broke 1,000 in a year, and over 500 citations more than in 2024.

The cavalry is coming, though, Angelo told The Osprey. The officer is expected to return to traffic duty on April 21. Further, an officer within the city will move over to boost the traffic unit in June, focusing on DUI enforcement.

Shoreline is also asking KCSO to provide additional officers this summer during the FIFA World Cup. Seattle is scheduled to host six games at Lumen Field — four games in June, two in July — and Collins has requested 10 additional deputies for patrol in Shoreline, in addition to the department’s usual complement of officers.

The report also highlighted successes with the Regional Crisis Response Agency, commonly referred to as RCR (pronounced “racer”). In 2017, Shoreline became the first city in the region to launch a program giving officers training to de-escalate crises at scenes with behavioral health issues. The RCR was started in 2023 to help police departments from Shorline to Kenmore share information and resources.

In 2025, RCR responders — including officers and mental health experts — provided services to 562 people in Shorline, over 1,122 encounters.

Councilmember Chris Roberts was pleased with the program’s work, but asked if the police department could deploy mental health professionals to more calls. At a recent council dinner meeting — a public study session usually featuring reports from the city’s partner agencies — an RCR representative said it wasn’t being deployed to all of the calls its professionals would be suited for.

Collins hedged his answer.

“It’s call dependent. There’s calls for service that are absolutely appropriate for a mental health professional to go to, and there’s other calls for service that aren’t,” he said, like calls asking police to document a vehicle break-in. Further, Collins added, RCR was short-staffed for a “significant period” in 2025.

Roberts noted that it’d be helpful for the council to see an analysis of past calls that could have used RCR assistance. Collins said he’d get back to the council with that information.