PAUL SCHRAG: CLEANER AND SLIGHTLY SAFE, MAYBE >>>

It’s been almost a year since city officials announced their intention to clean up Tacoma neighborhoods and cut crime within the city by 50 percent under an aggressive new program called Safe & Clean. Let’s just say it. They didn’t hit 50 percent crime reduction. But they did manage to mobilize dozens of citizen/city staff teams, who have cleaned up nearly 250 tons of trash in Tacoma neighborhoods. And prostitution is down 77 percent. Car theft is down more than 20 percent. But overall, crime is either down 5 percent, or up 1.5 percent, depending on which data set you’re looking at.

Read my Safe & Clean report on the Weekly Volcano Web site.