By Erica C. Barnett

Let Everyone Advance With Dignity (LEAD), a program that diverts people who commit low-level crimes away from the criminal legal system, was touted by supporters of a new law criminalizing public drug use as an all-purpose response to concerns that the new law would clog local jails and courts with people who need social services, not punishment. LEAD, a program of Purpose Dignity Action (formerly the Public Defender Association), provides case management and referrals to resources, including housing and addiction treatment.

But the law, which stipulates that police should use diversion as a first resort, didn’t come with any additional funding, and Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget slightly cut funding for the program rather than increasing it, which meant that if LEAD was going to be the conduit for all drug arrest referrals, it would need to stop taking new clients through avenues other than arrests, such as referrals from community members—a zero-sum game, because the total amount of diversion LEAD could provide in Seattle would remain about the same.

For years, LEAD worked purposefully to expand its scope so that clients could enter the program through many avenues, not just arrests. By moving back to an arrest-first approach, LEAD—which originally stood for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion—will effectively be returning to its roots.

Already, LEAD has limited community referrals to three areas of the city—Third Avenue downtown, the Rainier Valley, and the Chinatown/International District. “So what this means, effectively, is that if you are a community partner in Ballard, U District, Aurora, SoDo, the East Precinct, or West Seattle, and you’re identifying a totally appropriate LEAD candidate who we could probably help with, we’re saying no and we’re routinely blanket denying those,” PDA co-director Lisa Daugaard told the City Council’s public safety committee earlier this week. ” And of course, that’s having a depressing effect on people’s interest in making referrals, because it’s pointless” outside the three focus areas.

Without additional funding from the city or state—which funds LEAD programs in other parts of the state but has never funded LEAD in Seattle—LEAD will have to stop taking all new referrals sometime between April and May, when they’ll max out their capacity at 1,060 clients. “Right now, we’re controlling our capacity issue by denying community referrals, but we will not even be able to continue to accept police referrals—even arrest diversions that are called for by the ordinance and called for by the SPD policy—by late spring.”

Referrals to LEAD spiked in late October, when the new drug law went into effect. On that date, the Seattle Police Department swept through the area around 12th and Jackson—a favored spot for high-profile, camera-friendly SPD operations—and arrested 25 people on drug charges, jailing 10 of them on outstanding felony warrants that had nothing to do with the drug law. (Police touted these arrests but did not explain why they needed an unrelated misdemeanor law to arrest people for pre-existing felonies). The one-day operation led to a brief spike in LEAD referrals, Daugaard said, and any future operations will have a similar effect.

City attorney Ann Davison talked tough about arrests when she first proposed the new law earlier this year, while making vague comments about “treatment.” However, if SPD began arresting people en masse for using drugs in public, there would be little point, since the downtown jail doesn’t have the capacity to book people on low-level drug cases, and the city attorney’s office doesn’t have the capacity to prosecute them all.