Following the implementation of a position focused on prosecuting retail theft crimes, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office reported that retail theft filings increased.
According to a King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, in 2025, the office filed 142 retail theft cases through June — two and a half times the average through June across the past four years.
According to the office, while case filing can fluctuate year-to-year for a variety of reasons, the jump in filing appears to correspond with the creation of the KCPAO’s Retail Crimes Deputy Prosecuting Attorney position in 2022.
Filings also spiked in the first half of 2025 due to a temporary second retail crimes deputy prosecuting attorney position, the office reported. A grant created by the Washington State Legislature and administered by the Washington State Department of Commerce and the Washington Organized Retail Crime Association funded this position.
King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion said retail crime can involve organized retail theft, tens of thousands of dollars of losses and physical assaults on workers. Manion said that the temporary resources made a significant difference in terms of bringing accountability for retail crime, according to a press release from the office..
“While the KCPAO has always prosecuted retail crimes as part of its general felony prosecution practice, in June of 2021, a specific Deputy Prosecuting Attorney was dedicated to working full time on these cases. In 2022, the KCPAO filed 157 felony retail crime cases compared to 52 in 2021,” according to the office. “The KCPAO saw similar rates of retail crime prosecution sustained in the years that followed with 105 retail crime cases filed in 2023, 121 in 2024, and 142 in 2025 (through June). These cases often involve multiple co-defendants and/or multiple incidents per defendant.”
KCPAO spokesperson Douglas Wagoner said that, according to available data, the increase in filings since 2021 is due to having more prosecutors dedicated to the work, not an increase in retail crime referrals.
Wagoner said the report shows that when policymakers invest in prosecutors, it makes a difference in the KCPAO’s ability to bring more accountability for criminal behavior in the community.
According to a press release from the office, Manion has made improving quality of life conditions for King County residents and small businesses a priority, citing that she created a new Economic Crimes and Wage Theft Division. According to the press release, Manion created the Economic Crimes and Wage Theft Division to provide a unified focus and approach to economic crime cases and to bring greater accountability to those who commit them, and that economic crimes include retail crimes.
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