The Mountlake Terrace Police Department presented its combined first- and second-quarter 2025 report on Aug. 28, telling council that calls for service and traffic stops increased compared with 2024 while certain citations fell, several training and program initiatives advanced, and the department is pursuing additional hires.

Police Chief Pete Cull and Commander Scott King reviewed goals and statistics and emphasized community-oriented programs including an embedded social worker, the Cops and Clergy outreach program, unmanned aircraft operations and a traffic officer driving recent increases in traffic enforcement.

"Traffic stops were up first and second quarter, and this is likely due to the addition of our traffic officer," Commander King said. The department also reported fewer formal citations for some offenses after a local policy change to avoid criminal charges for driving while suspended (third degree) in favor of infractions intended to reduce court costs and public-defender expenses.

Statistics and programs reported
- Calls for service: up in first and second quarters compared with the same periods in 2024.
- Traffic stops and traffic infractions: increased (department attributed this in part to the new traffic officer).
- Citations: down (the department said it is issuing infractions instead of criminal citations for some driving-while-suspended third-degree cases to reduce court and defender costs).
- DUIs: modest increases reported in the first and second quarters.
- Domestic-violence reports: the department reported decreases compared with the prior year (a roughly 9% drop in Q1 and roughly 20% in Q2 from 2024 figures shown by the department).
- Training and certifications: officers completed forensic evidence and use-of-force instructor courses; a drug recognition expert (DRE) certification was added; two officers completed unmanned aircraft system (UAS) pilot training and are licensed UAS pilots.
- Community work: the BlueBridge Alliance partnership and officer outreach (examples included providing coats and assisting stranded motorists) were highlighted.

Records, property and animal control
The records unit processed 646 cases, 53 collisions and 308 public-disclosure requests in the first quarter and 604 cases, 44 collisions and 172 public-disclosure requests in the second quarter according to the slides. Property-room processing and destructions were reported; the transcript lists 282 items processed in the first quarter and 195 processed in the second quarter with 242 items destroyed in Q1 and 531 in Q2. Animal-control processed seven cases in each quarter.

Council questions and requests for context
Council members asked for more multi-year trend data and clearer context tying quarterly fluctuations to staffing levels, special events and new transit patterns. Council member Mary Murray and others pressed for clearer explanations of the demographic slides showing infractions and arrests by race; Commander King and Chief Cull cautioned against drawing conclusions from those charts alone because many contacts involve non-residents and small absolute counts can produce large percentage swings. "Those demographics reflect only the city of Mountlake Terrace...a good high percentage of people we give tickets to, arrest, or take any action are not residents of the city," Commander King said.

Council members requested the department include several items in future reports: longer multi‑year charts (to show trends beyond a single year), brief explanatory notes for notable spikes or drops, and an annual complaint breakdown (including bias-related complaints) as part of accreditation reporting. Chief Cull said the department maintains complaint tracking for accreditation and will provide complaint counts and expand multi-year trend reporting in future presentations.

Public-safety programs and next steps
The department noted ongoing participation in regional task forces, continuation of EBike patrols and the embedded social-worker program, and an upcoming community presentation of the Cops and Clergy program. Chief Cull and commanders emphasized recruitment progress; the department said conditional offers and background investigations were underway to increase authorized staffing.

Ending: Council thanked department leadership for the report, requested expanded trend charts and contextual annotations in future quarter reports, and asked for follow-up materials about community-facing programs and SpiderTech/BlueBridge feedback metrics.