Gang-suppression unit gets council support

The Metropolitan King County Council honored slain sheriff's deputy Steve Cox twice Monday — first by renaming a park and then by supporting creation of a gang-suppression unit.

White Center Park will become Steve Cox Memorial Park, a name change proposed by the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council. Cox was president of the council in December when he was fatally shot in the line of duty by a man he was questioning about a shooting.

County Council members, citing the killer's gang membership at a time of increasing gang-related violence, also unanimously endorsed the re-establishment of an anti-gang unit in the Sheriff's Office.

Cox's mother, JoAn Cox, organized a campaign that gathered 5,500 signatures on a petition calling for the gang unit.

"I just felt that Steve would want me to do something," she said after the council vote. "We couldn't let this happen again to a public-safety officer."

Sheriff Sue Rahr, who commanded an earlier anti-gang unit before it was disbanded in 1996, gave JoAn Cox credit for the council's motion to make gang suppression a 2008 budget priority.

"She has demonstrated that a private citizen can move a government of this size. ... If it hadn't been for her efforts, I don't think we would be here today," Rahr said.

Rahr has proposed a gang unit consisting of two detectives and a sergeant — about one-third the size of her unit in the 1990s. Last week she told the council that the number of gang-related incidents rose from 41 in the first quarter of 2005 to 210 in the first quarter of this year.

The gang unit, which would cost an estimated $400,000, won't become a reality unless it is included in the 2008 budget. The council's action Monday sent a signal to County Executive Ron Sims that the council wants funding included in his budget proposal, which is to be released Oct. 15.

"Generally, we think it's a good thing," Sims' spokeswoman, Carolyn Duncan, said of the proposed gang-suppression unit. But she said she couldn't say whether it would be included in Sims' proposed budget.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com