Killings Up, Places Stay the Same For Yakima County in 2009

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Story Published: Dec 14, 2009 at 7:26 PM PDT

By Peter Bukowski

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18 people killed in Yakima County last year with 23 and rising in 2009. A trip along I-82 takes you down the county's corridor of killings.

"We want the deputies to not follow dots on a map of where crimes occurred, but to concentrate on the people that we know are involved in the activity as a lifestyle," says Yakima County Sheriff Ken Iwrin.

Whether violence and gangs originate in Yakima or somewhere else in the valley, plenty of gang-bangers and violent offenders wind up in Yakima at Department of Corrections. But the court is reactive and doesn't have the resources to prevent these crimes before they happen.

YPD has been accused of poisoning surrounding areas by driving gangs out to places with even fewer resources to fight gangs.

Yakima Police Cheif Sam Granato insists he's focused on getting crime out of Yakima. "I said that four years ago. That was my intent to make gang activity and crime in Yakima not profitable and not a good place to do business. And if I drove them out of Yakima, that's my job. Displacement of crime is part of policing."

"The troubling thing about the gang violence is that it becomes a way of life with people and you have generation after generation," says Sheriff Irwin.

And once gangs have taken hold of a community, they don't just terrorize that neighborhood. They move all over.

"We see that a lot of that. They travel. We've had Wapato gang members involved in drive by shootings here and we've had gang-bangers from Yakima involved in crime in other parts of the county," Granato says.

Both YSO and YPD agree it's tough to blame the city of Yakima for the county's violent problem. However, in the end, this violence is really everyone's problem.

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