King County Deputy Prosecutor Nicole Lawson
Chris Daniels, KOMO News Senior Reporter, ran a story about King County prosecutors and the Seattle City Attorney’s Office’s claims of their progress in reducing organized retail theft.
King County Deputy Prosecutor Nicole Lawson claims her department has charged 75 cases since August, with 509 theft or attempted theft charges overall—about three per day.
“It’s not to be tolerated,” said Lawson to KOMO News about the effort, part of the Attorney General’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force which launched last year to combine resources to tackle the issue.
“The hope is that with increased coordination between the law enforcement partners, the retailers, myself, the city attorney’s office, and the AG’s Task Force, we can create a message that organized retail theft is something that we take very seriously,” Lawson said.
President of the Washington Retail Association, Renee Sunde, told KOMO, “There has been good progress, most notably defined through the Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison’s release of the High Utilizer Initiative’s report. The report revealed a 57% drop in high-utilizer criminal referrals and over 750 police referrals averted. The partnerships between Seattle Police and the King County Prosecuting attorney’s office have been critical in supporting this effort.”
