Tagged: Tacoma

Tacoma city officials knew they had a gang problem, and a survey published this week has brought out new worries.

The survey, called The Tacoma Gang Project, found 651 active gang members and associates within the city. The survey also uncovered that gang recruitment happens as early as middle school. North of Tacoma, King County reports 10,000 gang members within 140 active criminal street gangs and an increase of 165 percent in gang related crimes.

“There is lots of gang activity up and down the I-5 corridor,” said King County Councilman Reagan Dunn.

TACOMA, Wash. — Tacoma police are investigating a motorcycle club whose parties twice have ended in shooting deaths during the past eight months.

If you live anywhere in the Puget Sound region you probably pay a small sales tax to support mental health services. The main exception is in Pierce County.

That may change, at least within Tacoma city limits.

A proposal in front of the Tacoma City Council would raise the sales tax by 1/10th of a percent, or a penny per $10 purchase. That’s the same as residents pay in King, Snohomish, Thurston and many other counties. The revenue would be dedicated to a broad array of services to assist people with serious mental illness or drug abuse problems.

In the mid-1990's, gang activity in Tacoma's Hilltop neighborhood was at an all time high. The area had become notorious for drug deals, assaults, and drive-by shootings. Gangs often recruited from schools - all the way down through the elementary grades.

It took a lot of effort by the police and community groups to turn the neighborhood around. One of the organizations that's made a difference is Hilltop Artists. It started out in those high-crime days by convincing kids who were attracted to "danger" to swap gang banging for another dangerous activity: glassblowing.

TACOMA, Wash. — After 15 years as an NFL quarterback, Jon Kitna hopes to return to his old high school in Tacoma as a coach.

TACOMA, Wash. — An alert Washington state teenager likely prevented an accident when he woke up a sleeping bus driver who had nodded off at the wheel while entering an Interstate 5 onramp in Tacoma.

A surveillance camera on the school bus recorded 17-year-old Emmanuel Williams jump from his seat and rush to the front of the bus after seeing the driver's head go down.

TACOMA, Wash. — A trucker was changing a flat tire Thursday morning on Interstate 5 south of Tacoma when he saw a woman in her underwear crawl over the guardrail from a swamp near the Nisqually River.

Soon after downgrading the credit rating of the United States, Standard & Poor’s has taken the city of Tacoma’s rating down a notch from AAA to AA+ on debt it has issued that is backed by the federal government, according to a report in the Puget Sound Business Journal.

More than two-hundred workers who lost their jobs when the "Nalley Valley" canning plant in Tacoma closed last month are now eligible for special retraining through the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Program.

The newly unemployed, consider it a victory.