SEQUIM — This city saw a 26 percent rise in serious crime — which includes violent crimes and property crimes — in 2007, Sequim Police Chief Robert Spinks reported this week.
The influx of people, housing and commercial development are driving the crime rate up, Spinks wrote in his annual report.
Some 20,000 people use Sequim’s streets, stores — and police force, he said.
When presenting the 2007 report to the Sequim City Council on Monday, Sequim Police Sgt. Sheri Crain emphasized that the rise in serious offenses is largely due to increasing thefts and burglaries, not to violent crime.
“We shouldn’t freak out about this,” Crain said.
There were 65 burglaries and 301 thefts reported in Sequim last year, “and the vast majority of those are drug-related: somebody trying to feed their habit.”
There were, however, three rapes and 110 assaults reported in the town in 2007.
Sequim has become a retail center, a magnet for retirees — and hence attracts thieves and other criminals bent on taking advantage of vulnerable people, Spinks has said.
“Over 4,000 new dwelling units permitted, planned or breaking ground within the city . . . [and] commercial growth continues to arrive,” Spinks wrote, listing a planned movie theater and resort at John Wayne Marina among the projects coming to town.
The 10-screen cineplex, slated for Washington Street and Rhodefer Road, has been held up by a dispute between property owners.
But if and when it is built, Spinks wrote, it will bring a quarter million people a year into town.
