By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Bruce Harrell issued an executive order on Thursday providing direction to the Seattle Police Department as it develops policies to implement a recently passed law that makes public drug use, along with simple possession, a gross misdemeanor. The law also criminalizes simple drug possession and empowers the city attorney, Ann Davison, to prosecute drug cases. The new law does not apply to public use of alcohol or cannabis.
The order, which describes fentanyl use as a “health crisis,” says that “diversion and referral to services is the preferred response to public possession and use” in instances where police determine a drug user poses no potential harm to anyone else. But it also says that arrests may be appropriate when a drug user poses a “threat of harm to others,” then defines this potential “harm” broadly, to include any drug use that impacts “the ability of others to use shared public space.”
The drug law adopted last week defines “harm to others” in similarly expansive terms, asserting that “unchecked” drug use “in certain areas of the city” harms “businesses, transit riders, and people traveling to school, work, retail stores, or trying to enjoy the City’s parks and other public places.”
SPD is expected to issue its own guidelines to officers who will be implementing the law within the next few days.
The executive order, echoing the Harrell Administration’s earlier effort to prosecute “disorderly conduct” near transit stops on Third Ave., specifically notes that locations where drug use presents an “inherent impact on public safety and security” may include any location “in or within close proximity to a transit stop, rail station, or other transportation structure or facility.”
Harrell’s order is mostly suggestive rather than prescriptive. Officers who believe a person’s drug use inherently threatens those around them can decide, based on their training and “the totality of the circumstances,” to arrest a person or attempt to divert them to LEAD, the city’s primary diversion program. The number of arrests that officers will actually make is constrained by the booking capacity of the downtown jail, which is severely limited due to a shortage of guards.
The order also requires outreach providers that contract with the city to create a “by-name list” of every person “significantly affected by” the opioid crisis in downtown Seattle between the Denny Triangle and the stadiums south of the Chinatown/International District. (Since the new law and the rest of the executive order refers only to people using drugs in public, it’s safe to assume the list will exclude housed downtown residents who use addictive drugs indoors.)
Jamie Housen, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said the city “is not planning to collect a list of names or individual clients, but instead to use an approach that creates a baseline estimate of those using drugs and in need of treatment and services, so that we can measure those needs, changes over time, and if progress is occurring.”
Alison Eisinger, director of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, said the order released on Thursday “inappropriately uses a By-Name List,” which is supposed to be “a tool used by people who are offering focused engagement and have appropriate resources to connect people with.”
Providers that serve unsheltered people often create “by-name lists” of people living in a discrete area, such as an encampment, in order to keep track of them as part of a specific project. Recently, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority acknowledged that its own effort to create a “by-name list” of every unhoused person downtown, as part of the Partnership for Zero effort that recently folded, was unproductive, because people can and do move around.
Data on drug users from providers, including the number of drug users they’re serving downtown and the kinds of issues those individuals are facing, “will help determine how many individuals the City is trying to assist and to provide a better understanding of the underlying issues and facts addressed by this [order].” After 12 months, according to the order, the city will “conduct a follow-up assessment” and compare the two sets of data “to gauge the effectiveness of the strategies” in the order.
Council members who switched their votes on the drug law, a version of which failed back in June after Andrew Lewis decided to vote against it, said they were convinced to vote “yes,” in part, by the mayor’s promise to propose an executive order that would emphasize diversion over arrest. Before Harrell issued the order out on Thursday, Lewis said he expected that it would “provide clarification” on how the city will implement the new law. We’ve reached out to Lewis for comment on the order.
Where’s the end game on our current homeless drug problem?
I’m going to guess the current Seattle government doesn’t change things much with these policy changes because of financial reasons. Harrell just don’t have enough money to spend to bring about meaningful change.
Longer term (between 1-5 years) I think the GOP will control the Federal Government again and come up with a cost effective plan for dealing with homeless drug addicts nationwide. It’s costs less than $30,000 a head to lock up a druggie in a for-profit prison in Texas or Mississippi per year. So with a Local/Federal law enforcement joint operation, homeless drug addicts could be swept off the streets, changed with Federal crimes, sentenced to 6 1/2 years in the Federal joint (that’s a hard 5 with parole) and shipped out of State for a cost of $150K. Expand that $150k per person for 5 years to 5,000 druggies and for a total of 750 million dollars. That’s a good value for the City making 5,000 hardcore junkies “disappear” from Seattle. It’s way cheaper than funding the failing programs we have now, and it’s possible the State and Feds might help out with the cost.
Lock em’ up and lock em’ cheap is a solution. I wish there was another solution that wasn’t so mean spirited.
Have we reached the point where the US voters just quit giving a shit about the “personal rights” of the homeless and want the streets clean up? This wouldn’t be the first “war on drugs” and I doubt it will be the last. Back in the 80’s we locked up all the crackheads…. and the general public just didn’t care. We’re close to this breaking point again. Because the USA is a democracy, what Publicola readers think may not matter much. I think most people in Seattle would be glad homeless drug addicts just “disappear” to the Federal joint.
As far as homeless policy….. this means the days for finding a more humane policy solution are numbered. Seattle liberals and the homeless industrial complex absolutely need to find solutions and move the numbers or the Feds are rolling in with something much more draconian. I hope for best…. but honestly with outfits like the KCRHA…. the Feds are going to take control because the KCRHA isn’t capable of pouring piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.
Housing first is always cheaper than prison, for profit or not.
Housing might be more humane, or even the right thing to do, but prison is way cheaper than supported housing. There’s going to be point when the powers-that-be are just going to demand return on investment. The KCRHA and the whole Homeless Industrial Complex are paving the way for mass incarceration because currently they’re spending millions and millions… and things aren’t getting better. It’s 30 grand a year to make a drug addict disappear for year.
Is prison any worse than being hopeless addicted to fetty and living on the street? And at what point is the public so sick of homeless addict’s bullshit they no longer care?
As a life long Democrat, Marc Dones is the poster child for why people vote GOP.
“…defines this potential “harm” broadly, to include any drug use that impacts “the ability of others to use shared public space.”
“The drug law adopted last week defines “harm to others” in similarly expansive terms, asserting that “unchecked” drug use “in certain areas of the city” harms “businesses, transit riders, and people traveling to school, work, retail stores, or trying to enjoy the City’s parks and other public places.”
“specifically notes that locations where drug use presents an “inherent impact on public safety and security” may include any location “in or within close proximity to a transit stop, rail station, or other transportation structure or facility.”
Well, that automatically excludes pot, meth, and fentanyl. The latest reports showed no adverse effects from secondhand smoke with the latter two. But once again Harrell doesn’t let reality or science get in the way of his propaganda machine.
There wasn’t a paragraph above where my brain didn’t say a loud YIKES!
This “clarification” allows police to do whatever they want; it’s not their problem if the booking desk is too busy. And as Erica says, this isn’t going to affect housed people who use, everything about this discriminates against unhoused people.