And his Marysville Police Department almost did, at least in the most crime-ridden area downtown.

“That’s nothing to sneeze at,” Mayor Jon Nehring said at the City Council meeting Jan. 12. He added that even though downtown makes up just 1/20th of the city, is previously was responsible for 20 percent of crime.

Smith said the actual drop was 19.6 percent, “just a gnat’s hair away.”

The chief said one “area where we were plagued” to keep from reaching the overall goal was thefts, which were up 25 percent. As an example, he mentioned that the Kohl’s here ranks No. 1 in shoplifting in its entire chain.

The mayor said theft will be a focus point in 2015, but the stores need to play a role in that.

“We can’t have an officer at every big box store in town,” Nehring said.

Other than thefts, crime was down 8 percent overall within the city limits.

Smith added that a new property crime unit has been formed with two officers from the sheriff’s office and one each from Marysville and Lake Stevens. Their goal is an 8 percent reduction in those crimes.

Also discussed at the meeting was a new online crime reporting system. Smith said having that is hard for him because his philosophy has always been “No call is too small.”

Operations Cmdr. Jeff Goldman explained the new system’s goal is to reduce paperwork for officers so they can spend more time on the streets.

Victims of minor crimes can go online and fill out a report so they can have an incident number for insurance purposes.

Goldman said people should only fill out the online report if “there is no suspect, no witness, no evidence and no follow-up is needed.”

On the website it gives guidelines on what types of crimes should be filed. There is a safety net if someone files who really shouldn’t. A light-duty officer double checks the information before emailing an incident case number back to the victim within 72 hours.

“It’s one size fits all,” Goldman said.

Goldman said some “bugs need to be worked out” so the county had a soft opening of its usage Dec. 5 and has had 44 filers. The county had a soft opening Sept. 1 and has had 1,400 participants.

Goldman said there are many advantages to the system. It eases the workload for public documents. It gives residents more options to improve customer service. And crimes that may go unreported because they “didn’t want to bother you guys,” will now be known.

In other police news at the council meeting, Community Development Director Gloria Hirashima said two lawsuits filed against them have been settled in their favor.

One that was against custody officers has been dismissed. And a jury found in favor of police in a suit against their handling of an arrest after a disturbance.