By Erica C. Barnett
Sandeep and I sat down with new Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans and Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion founder Lisa Daugaard on this week’s episode to talk about changes Evans is making to the way the city handles low-level drug cases.
Under Evans’ Republican predecessor, Ann Davison, people arrested for simple drug possession or using in public were either jailed and prosecuted or sent to a “drug prosecution alternative” where they have to get an assessment to confirm they have an addiction and stay out of trouble for six month.
Evans directed her prosecutors to go back to the pre-Davison policy of reviewing people’s cases to see if they’re eligible for LEAD, the city’s pre-filing diversion program. In response to this reasonable directive, Police Chief Shon Barnes told his officers that going forward, officers had to refer every drug case to LEAD—an overstatement that led to a right-wing media freakout when police guild director Mike Solan claimed Mayor Katie Wilson had ordered an end to all drug arrests.
Evans and Daugaard set the record straight, explaining what LEAD does, who it’s for, and how they believe this policy shift will actually help people addicted to fentanyl who use in public—which, they both reminded is, is encoded in the 2023 “Blake fix” law that empowered the city attorney to prosecute minor drug cases in the first place.
“What we’re doing is not anything inconsistent with what the law has already recommended for our office to be doing,” Evans told us. “But nothing’s off the table. If someone is not making meaningful progress with LEAD or in diversion, then we do reserve the right to do traditional prosecution.”
We also discussed ICE’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis and what the city can do if Trump sends masked shock troops to Seattle. And we asked Daugaard, who co-founded Purpose Dignity Action and started LEAD, why she’s taking a leave of absence to work inside the Wilson administration.
How can the record be accurately clarified when there appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how the program actually operates? The statement that, “Under Evans’ Republican predecessor, Ann Davison, people arrested for simple drug possession or using in public were either jailed and prosecuted or sent to a ‘drug prosecution alternative’ where they have to obtain an assessment to confirm they have an addiction and remain law-abiding for six months,” is inaccurate.
Participants are not required to obtain an assessment to confirm that they have an addiction. In practice, many individuals explicitly state that they do not identify as having an addiction, despite long-term substance use and chronic homelessness. The intake and assessment process focuses on understanding an individual’s current circumstances, life goals, hardships, and barriers. However, without a requirement to engage in and complete meaningful, evidence-based, life-changing services, the practical impact of this process is limited.
This raises a critical question: what is accomplished by a diversion program that requires an intake and assessment if there is no mandate to participate in treatment or supportive services that could lead to real and sustained change?
Great interview! I wish Lisa would have talked more about CoLEAD and the funding solutions necessary to increase capacity. I think most Seattle voters would support a city tax to help eliminate street-level minor offenses in a humane way that gets at the root of the criminal behavior rather than simply cycle people through the jails/prisons and back onto the street.
They are not getting to the root of the problem and that is the main problem. No accountability at housing in Seattle or in many of these diversion programs. Clients opt into LEAD, continue drug use, continue to get arrested and half the time the LEAD case manager is not even in contact with the client. The people I’ve seen successful in LEAD are the ones that want to change. If you obtain housing, continue the same behavior, don’t address mental health and trauma from childhood then nothing changes. If you don’t change people places and things nothings changes.