By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison has accelerated filings of misdemeanor drug possession cases during the last few months of her term, more than quadrupling drug prosecutions from an average of 4 a week between mid-June and mid-September to 16.4 a week between mid-September and December 15.
The city attorney also prosecuted more people for public drug use, increasing prosecutions from virtually none between June and September (an average of 0.5 a day) to 3.5 a day between mid-September and December 15, a seven-fold increase.
The Seattle Municipal Court compiled the numbers for violations of the city’s recently passed drug laws, which made it a misdemeanor to possess any amount of an illegal drug in public, at PubliCola’s request.
The city council passed the law, which empowered the city attorney to prosecute people for drug possession and use for the first time in the city’s history, in 2023. The following year, they passed a companion bill that reinstated special “Stay Out of Drug Area” banishment zones for people accused of violating the new drug laws, a tactic dating back to the early 1990s that the city had long abandoned as ineffective.
Earlier this year, Davison replaced Community Court, which she unilaterally ended in 2023, with a “drug prosecution alternative” that allows people arrested under the new drug laws to have their charges dismissed if they do an assessment to confirm their addiction and don’t get arrested again.
A spokesman for Davison’s office, Tim Robinson, said the spike in filings is “simply a matter of an increase in referrals” by the Seattle Police Department—when police arrest more people for misdemeanor drug violations, they file more charges.
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“When our review and filing unit reviews the referrals, they determine if there are sufficient legal grounds to move the case forward,” Robinson said. “This includes whether or not the alleged conduct violates a specific law and if the evidence supports the elements of the alleged offense. An individual involved in a case is referred to the Drug Prosecution Alternative whenever possible.”
However, the decision to file charges is discretionary, not automatic; the entire premise of the LEAD program, which diverts people involved in the criminal justice system away from prosecution, is that services are more effective than jail.
Incoming city attorney Erika Evans, who defeated Davision by a margin of 34 points in November, said diversion to treatment and services, not prosecution, “should be the default response for people dealing with substance use disorder.”
“Traditional prosecution should only be considered after meaningful attempts at diversion and support have not been successful,” Evans said. “When diversion alone is not working, I believe a community court model for people dealing with substance use disorder can provide accountability for progress while still keeping treatment and services at the center.”
As PubliCola has reported, the overwhelming majority of people arrested for violating Seattle’s drug laws end up cycling through the system without actually getting any kind of treatment.
“I am skeptical of any drug alternative program that relies primarily on increased charging rather than meaningful diversion,” Evans said. “When I take office, I look forward to working closely with the courts, the mayor, DPD, and our office to transform the current model into one that follows the law’s legislative intent, uses public dollars responsibly, and actually helps people get out of this cycle, not deeper into it.”
