Speaking to a friendly audience at the We Heart Seattle-sponsored “Great Debate” at the Washington Athletic Club, Mayor Bruce Harrell was cheerful and expansive as he complained about the healthy department, talked about how “cool” it would be to project an interactive AI version of MLK on a downtown wall, and suggested he’d be open to prohibiting protesters from wearing masks.
An SPD operation that involved a stakeout to catch shoplifters at a Marshall’s discount store in West Seattle cost the city thousands of dollars‚ including pay for the 10 officers involved in the sting, and netted low-priced merchandise like knit beanies, children’s shoes, and two sweatshirts—the highest-value items, at $30 each). Police made five shoplifting arrests.
This week’s special guest on Seattle Nice, Purpose Dignity Action’s Director of Outreach and Special Initiatives Nichole AleThis Week On PubliCola: October 18, 2025xander, spoke with us about the work PDA’s CoLEAD program is doing with drug users at a longtime “hot spot” in the Chinatown International District.
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Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget is unsustainable and relies heavily on fiscal sleight-of-hand to come up with a balanced budget in 2026, a city council staff analysis concluded These tricks include relying on a one-time $141 million fund balance left over from 2025, which won’t be there to balance the budget next year; funding programs that will be necessary long-term with one-time resources, and assuming a $10 million “underspend” every year in the future,.
One of many new spends in the budget is $800,000 to implement unspecified new AI software at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections that, the city believes, will speed up permitting times by pre-checking applications and automating some functions currently provided by city employees.
Mothers who lost their sons to gun violence told PubliCola they felt ignored and disrespected by Mayor Bruce Harrell, who they accused of exploiting their tragedies for political points. Several described a healing circle where Harrell turned out to be a special guest, but left early after a verbal clash with one of the women, telling the group “I didn’t even want to come here.”
Harrell’s proposed budget for the police department includes more than $3 million in annual costs for (yet another) recruiting firm that has created (yet another) series of high-octane, macho ads; meanwhile, it fails to fund a staffer to advance recruitment of women, on the grounds that SPD doesn’t have enough money.
Meanwhile, Harrell’s budget uses the JumpStart payroll tax—originally earmarked for affordable housing, Green New Deal programs, and equitable development—for policing at next year’s World Cup games and the expansion of CCTV surveillance cameras into the Stadium District.
A new mailer from the pro-Harrell PAC headed up by his deputy mayor, Tim Burgess, sent out a condescending, misleading mailer featuring his opponent Katie Wilson’s resume as of 2015, when it went back to 2006 and included jobs at a bakery and as resident manager of an apartment building. The flip side featured Harrell’s resume, which revealed that he hasn’t applied for a job since 1990 at the latest.
Controversial cop promoted, then demoted, by new police chief, Harrell says he has a plan for addressing food deserts and potential federal troop invasion, and more.
On this week’s podcast, we discussed Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposal to ban restrictive covenants that limit the size of grocery stores and pharmacies. Harrell pitched theas one solution to the problem of “food deserts”—areas with few grocery stores (or pharmacies) where residents have to travel long distances to get basic items—but how impactful would it really be?
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes quietly removed the East Precinct’s gay acting commander, Doug Raguso, and placed a newly promoted captain, Mike Tietjen, in charge. Tietjen was at the center of two high-profile incidents during protests against police violence in 2020, including one in which he was reprimanded for failing to report fellow officers for harassing a trans woman while he was in the car.
In a guest op/ed, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci made the case for considering a light rail alternative that would reduce the cost of the over-budget Ballard-to-West-Seattle light rail extension by running all three rail lines through the existing downtown tunnel, rather than digging an entirely new one.
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Two stories in Wednesday’s Afternoon Fizz: First, Mayor Bruce Harrell introduced two executive orders that, he said, will help protect Seattle against federal troops by banning face masks and training police and city employees on how to respond to ICE. Also, the SPD promotions Barnes announced internally last month include a new captain whose controversial remarks about sex workers were one of the reasons he was demoted in 2019.
Two days after PubliCola exclusively reported that Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes had promoted controversial police lieutenant Michael Tietjen to captain and put him in charge of Capitol Hill’s East Precinct, Barnes announced internally that he was removing Tietjen and appointing a new commander for the precinct. In his email to command staff, Barnes blamed others for the decision.
A recent review of court records showed that two people have been jailed, so far, for violating orders to “stay out” of designated “drug areas.” The city’s new drug diversion alternative, implemented by City Attorney Ann Davison, does not include mandatory services, and a recent review by the county public defender’s office showed that almost no one who used this alternative ended up in treatment.
Since the city reinstated an old law allowing judges to banish people from certain areas if they’re accused of violating Seattle’s drug laws, two people have been arrested and jailed for violating Stay Out of Drug Area orders. The first case involved a woman who was originally arrested in Westlake Park in downtown Seattle after police looked into her open bag and saw a container with white powder inside; after spending almost two weeks in jail, she was banned from the central business district. Six weeks later, she was arrested again when police saw her in the area.
The second person accused of violating their SODA order was a man who was arrested twice within four days, both last month, for smoking crack in Belltown. He was banished from the Belltown SODA area but didn’t leave; instead, he was arrested again two days later when police saw him in the same area.
Both were referred into a “drug prosecution alternative” proposed by City Attorney Ann Davison to replace Community Court—an alternative to prosecution that Davison unilaterally ended. in 2023. (Public drug use and simple possession weren’t misdemeanors in Seattle until the city passed a law in 2023 enabling Davison to prosecute these cases.) At the time, Davison argued that community court was a failure, in part, because many people didn’t show up for their first court appearances.
Davison’s new “alternative” court option requires people to get assessed for substance use disorder—a step that’s arguably unnecessary for most of the people prosecuted for using drugs in public, since the Venn Diagram of people who use drugs on the street and those with addiction are basically concentric circles—and to stay out of trouble for 60 days. People can also choose to opt in to services at the court’s community resource center when they get their assessment.
A recent report from the King County Department of Public Defense, which provides attorneys to indigent defendants, found that just six of more than 200 misdemeanor drug cases Davison’s office filed between January and August of this year resulted in a defendant completing treatment or receiving a court order compelling them into treatment. As with community court, more than half of the defendants Davison prosecuted for drug use or possession failed to show up in court and had bench warrants issued for their arrest.
Tim Robinson, a spokesman for Davison’s office, said the drug prosecution alternative “connects the defendant to a meaningful drug evaluation and referrals to service providers” at the resource center.
Robinson noted the city attorney’s office doesn’t offer the drug prosecution alternative to everyone; people office considers “repeat prolific defendants” are ineligible, as are people who have been through the alternative process before. In contrast, “Community Court was mandatory for a wide variety of crimes, even for prolific repeat defendants,” Robinson said.
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One problem with Davison’s new alternative, critics have argued, is that it eliminates the mandatory services that were an integral part of community court and replaces those services with the threat of arrest, jail, and prosecution. For people with severe substance use disorders who don’t have a way of using drugs indoors and out of sight, this creates a ticking clock to avoid arrest, but doesn’t guarantee (or require) services that could help them stop using drugs.
PubliCola found eight cases over the past month in which Davison’s office referred defendants to the alternative court process. All of these cases are still open. In each case, the person arrested stayed in jail at least overnight; the woman who was arrested in Westlake Park for violating her SODA order was jailed for 13 days in July, when she was initially arrested, and another night in October, when she was found inside the downtown SODA area. Seattle pays King County a one-time fee of $279 for every misdemeanor jail booking, plus a daily fee of $386 for every day the person remains in jail.
When Seattle Municipal Court Judge Damon Shadid proposed a compromise alternative after Davison eliminated community court, he suggested eliminating this “Phase 1” engagement and jumping straight to Phases 2 and 3, plus a new fourth phase—a concrete appointment with a service provider, followed by short-term and long-term engagement phases that could include housing, treatment, and ongoing case management.
Instead, Davison kept Phase 1—requiring defendants to go to the resource center for an assessment—and eliminated all the other phases, replacing the carrot of services with the stick of arrest, prosecution, and potential jail time.
Robinson said Davison “continues to be optimistic that it can be an effective public safety tool that will create meaningful opportunities for positive impact on the lives of those who struggle with addiction.”
Davison is up for reelection in November. Her opponent, Erika Evans, got 56 percent of the vote to Davison’s 33 percent.
A crowd gathers outside Ross Dress for Less at Third and Pike in downtown Seattle. In addition to policing “hot spots” like this one, some officials and advocates have argued for forcing people who consume drugs in public into locked treatment facilities.
By Susan Collins
When big cities struggle with visible addiction, one solution that inevitably resurfaces is forcing people into treatment. In 2019’s “Seattle Is Dying,” locking people up for public drug use on an abandoned prison island was pitched as “an answer waiting for the right question.” And lawmakers across the nation are echoing this call. Forcing people into facilities where they can “get the help they won’t get themselves” seems to offer a mix of toughness, benevolence, and moral imperative that garners mass appeal.
I am not a politician or a pundit. I am seven years sober and have spent 30 years working in addiction treatment and research. Within my family and during my workday, I see that communities need safety, and people need more support. The status quo is unacceptable.
That’s why Dr. Keith Humphrey’s New York Times op-ed, in which he asserts, “Forced treatment isn’t horrific. It’s a relief,” shocked me and many of my colleagues. Words matter. When echoed by lawmakers, they shape policy and public perception. And the public relies on experts to present the science carefully, especially when people are at their most vulnerable.
In his piece, Humphreys conflates various forms of “pressure” to get people into treatment, suggesting that there is little difference between involuntary treatment, “pressure” from friends and family, and mandated treatment imposed by a court. We need to be clear: Involuntary treatment, which some politicians and advocacy groups in Seattle have expressed interest in expanding, is not the same as these other, less coercive methods. Unfortunately, confusion around these concepts is being repeated by other scientists and journalists as well.
In the US, involuntary treatment is civil commitment, without consent, to treatment in a locked facility. Mandated treatment is different. It entails choices, albeit difficult ones, to engage in treatment and other milestones to avoid penalties, like incarceration or loss of child custody. Both involuntary treatment and mandated treatment are formal means of coercion. Neither is the same as “pressure” from family members. Blurring these types of coercion—as Humphreys’ op/ed did—confuses the science, makes it harder to make rational decisions about public policy, and takes the larger conversation off track.
Another unhelpful trope is that internal motivation to stop harmful alcohol and drug use is “rare” among people actively using substances. At least half of Americans with significant drug and alcohol problems have internal motivation so high they recover without formal treatment, much less “forced treatment.” Motivation is also dynamic; one-fifth of those who appear to have low motivation achieve recovery within months. Even brief voluntary interventions can strengthen motivation and spark change. In our own work with people with severe alcohol use disorder, internal motivation was surprisingly high and more strongly predicted positive outcomes than treatment attendance.
Humphreys also makes sizeable mistakes in quoting and interpreting the research on the efficacy of involuntary treatment and introduces red herrings around ideal comparison groups that obfuscate the scientific realities. For example, Humphreys’ desired “no treatment” control conditions are often not ethically viable and even cruel in the context of a randomized controlled trial in which people are experiencing severe symptoms. Arguably, voluntary treatment control conditions are more accurate “real world” comparison groups in randomized controlled trials because they represent the “system as usual” offerings – even with their gaps and problems.
When civil liberties are at stake, scientists cannot be careless. Fortunately, some colleagues have been meaningfully pushing back because the public deserves accurate information about involuntary treatment and its effects.
Decades of research on involuntary treatment are strikingly consistent and negative:
After careful review of involuntary treatment studies, none show definitively positive findings— they’re only null or negative.
A concerning number of studies show patients experience severe harms after involuntary treatment—including high rates of relapse, re-arrest, and overdose death after release.
The larger research landscape reveals a gradient in which less coercive treatments are less harmful and more effective in creating safe, sustainable change than more coercive treatments.
Confident about this clear evidence, I was recently asked to share it with an audience that included state lawmakers. I assumed we would be on the same page. We weren’t. Upon reflection, I wondered if high-level research data fails to respond to the felt need for on-the-ground solutions in one’s own community. There is an understandable urgency to do something.
Our sense of urgency should open doors to more voluntary, evidence-based solutions, not more coercion. But many find those doors are locked or hard to locate. My well-resourced colleague had to send her child out of state for timely treatment. In my own clinic, administrative rules and bottlenecks block people from directly seeking care with me. And colleagues across the US have shared that treatment for substance use disorders is never made a priority, “because it doesn’t make money.”
So, from the research and my own clinical experience, I know the system isn’t working. Fortunately, decades of research and listening to people who use substances have generated evidence-based, voluntary solutions that are consistent with SAMHSA’s recovery framework. These must be funded and supported:
Lower-barrier and community-based efforts—hotlines, self-help books, mHealth, mutual-help groups (12-step and SMART Recovery, among others), harm-reduction outreach and support—can help people curb harm and build recovery while staying in their communities.
Justice-system diversion and sustained case management helps people experiencing homelessness move toward permanent supportive housing, recovery support, treatment, and jobs.
Voluntary, evidence-based treatments for alcohol and substanceuse should be supported in both in-person and telehealth modalities. Access should be easy, timely, affordable, and aligned with patients’ values, culture, and needs.
Patients need systemic solutions to ensure they don’t fall through the cracks. They tell us they need solutions to bigger problems beyond substance use. These include managing co-occurring trauma, psychiatric disorders and medical problems, finding affordable housing or permanent supportive housing, and getting work.
Even if all those options are adequately funded, coercive measures might still be necessary. But even in locked facilities, involuntary treatment should provide patient advocates and offer the least-restrictive evidence-based care possible. On release, patients should have immediate access to the voluntary recovery support listed above. Too often, community health workers fight to secure treatment, only to see patients discharged within days to no support at all.
I agree with Humphreys and many in the field that more US-based evaluation of involuntary treatment is needed. Washington State is one of the few that requires reporting on the outcomes of involuntary treatment. Early results are more promising than elsewhere, but critical data gaps remain, including data on overdose and death upon release.
And in the meantime, more states should publish evaluations of their existing systems, tracking long-term recovery, overdose, and cost, as well as qualitative accounts of patients’ experiences in their own words. At the very moment when some federal data systems are being scaled back or shut down, independent state-level reporting is all the more essential. Without rigorous, transparent data, we cannot judge whether coercive treatments deliver benefit or cause harm.
We cannot afford carelessness in our conversations shaping policy. Once we sort through the definitions of our terms and exhaustively examine the research, it is clear that involuntary treatment should remain a rare, last-resort option for life-threatening crises. It cannot substitute for a fully funded spectrum of voluntary care or become a shortcut for bottlenecks, underfunding, or political point-scoring.
History may not repeat, but it rhymes. From institutionalization to the mass incarceration of the costly and failed War on Drugs, coercive solutions always promised a utopian safety they did not deliver. The siren song of “forced treatment” expansion as a broad-based solution may sound like a “relief,” but it is more likely to bring harm to patients and, ultimately, fail communities.
Susan E. Collins, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and co-director of the HaRRT Center. She is a professor in the University of Washington School of Medicine’s’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, an adjunct professor at the UW Department of Psychology, and an adjoint professor at Washington State University’s Department of Psychology
The views in this article are her personal views and not that of UW Medicine or Washington State University.
From the website of the King County Quality of Life Coalition
By Erica C. Barnett
Editor’s note: This post has been updated with comments from initiative backer Saul Spady and reposted.
Saul Spady—Dick’s Burgers scion, anti-tax election activist (twice over), and KIRO radio fill-in host—has filed an initiative that would criminalize “unauthorized camping and storage of personal property” in unincorporated King County. The proposal, which Spady has dubbed “the Compassionate Public Safety Act,” would make sleeping outdoors or “storing” property in public a misdemeanor; similar to the total sleeping ban in Burien, the initiative would give police power to arrest people who fall asleep in public.
The ballot language, approved by the King County Prosecutor’s Office, says the measure “would not be enforced when overnight shelter is unavailable,” then lists exceptions to that rule that would allow police to make arrests if they determine the person sleeping “poses a substantial danger to any person, an immediate threat and/or risk of harm to public health or safety, or a disruption to vital government services.”
“I think camping bans are part of promoting better policy, which is a commitment to saying, in our community, we would much rather you go to shelter or rehab or housing,” Spady told PubliCola on Wednesday. “This is supposed to put the fire underneath [elected officials] to open those shelter beds and partner with [groups like] LEAD or The More We Love or Mary’s Place to create a more direct solution.”
The carveouts in the proposed ballot measure are similar to the exemptions included in Seattle’s official policy on encampments, which guarantees unsheltered people 72 hours’ notice before a sweep unless they or their belongings constitute an “immediate hazard or obstruction.”
For years, the city has interpreted that exemption very broadly to allow sweeps of tents in public spaces, including parks, sidewalks, and planting strips—basically, anywhere housed people might complain about the presence of homeless people.
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In a press release announcing the initiative and the creation of a new group called the Quality of Life Coalition earlier this month, initiative supporter and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said, “As an avowed independent and music fan, I know the world is coming to Seattle looking for the soul of our music scene and quite often they find graffiti, addiction and in-action [sic]. … [This is the first step toward making King County safe, livable, and worthy of our incredible cultural legacy I’m proud to be a part of.”
The Quality of Life Coalition also plans to propose an initiative that would force anyone who “commits three crimes linked to addiction, such as OD’ing, theft, or public drug use” (note: overdosing is not a crime) into mandatory six-month rehab, and one that would impose mandatory five-year jail sentences for any drug dealer who “is not an addict.”
Although Spady said service providers have told him there are more than enough available shelter beds for everyone experiencing homelessness in unincorporated King County, he added that the coalition’s long-term plans include “adding 2,500 short-term beds across the region.”
Spady acknowledged that it’s hard to discern which people selling drugs are addicts, versus “somebody who’s sober doing something that kills people,” but noted that a mandatory five-year minimum sentence for dealing drugs is less than the 10-year minimum proposed by the Trump administration.
Asked about the probably astronomical cost of funding mandatory long-term residential treatment for every person who overdoses or commits addiction-related misdemeanors three time, Spady argued that addiction, crime, and the cost to send firefighters to reverse overdoses create “costs to society that are spiraling. If you want the [reason] why I’m doing this, my fear is that Seattle is a lot closer to Detroit in the 80s and 90s than we think, and our magic economic spaceship that never runs out of money could break.”
The ideas Spady is proposing—three-strikes laws for overdoses, punishing public drug use through what amounts to involuntary commitment—may seem out of step with King County values. But they aren’t much different from the policy City Attorney Ann Davison endorsed toward drug users last year, saying that anyone who overdoses three times should be arrested and thrown in jail.
Spady’s group is collecting signatures now. They’ll need around 6,800 valid signatures to get the measure on a future ballot.
From the website of the King County Quality of Life Coalition
By Erica C. Barnett
Saul Spady—Dick’s Burgers scion, anti-tax election activist (twice over), and KIRO radio fill-in host—has filed an initiative that would criminalize “unauthorized camping and storage of personal property” in unincorporated King County. The proposal, which Spady has dubbed “the Compassionate Public Safety Act,” would make sleeping outdoors or “storing” property in public a misdemeanor; modeled after a similar total sleeping ban in Burien, the initiative would give police power to arrest people who fall asleep in public.
The ballot language, approved by the King County Prosecutor’s Office, says the measure “would not be enforced when overnight shelter is unavailable,” then lists exceptions to that rule that would allow police to make arrests if they determine the person sleeping “poses a substantial danger to any person, an immediate threat and/or risk of harm to public health or safety, or a disruption to vital government services.”
These carveouts are similar to the exemptions included in Seattle’s official policy on encampments, which guarantees unsheltered people 72 hours’ notice before a sweep unless they or their belongings constitute an “immediate hazard or obstruction.” For years, the city has interpreted that exemption very broadly to allow sweeps of tents in public spaces, including parks, sidewalks, and planting strips—basically, anywhere housed people might complain about the presence of homeless people.
PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you. CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.
Spady did not respond to a request for an interview. In a press release announcing the initiative and the creation of a new group called the Quality of Life Coalition earlier this month, initiative supporter and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said, “As an avowed independent and music fan, I know the world is coming to Seattle looking for the soul of our music scene and quite often they find graffiti, addiction and in-action [sic]. … [This is the first step toward making King County safe, livable, and worthy of our incredible cultural legacy I’m proud to be a part of.”
The Quality of Life Coalition also plans to propose an initiative that would force anyone who “commits three crimes linked to addiction, such as OD’ing, theft, or public drug use” (note: overdosing is not a crime) into mandatory six-month rehab, and one that would impose mandatory five-year jail sentences for any drug dealer who “is not an addict.”
Sounds nuts to you, maybe, even logistically impossible—how are dealers supposed to prove they’re addicted, exactly, and how would King County jails handle the influx of low-level dealers who’d get swept up in such a law? But it’s not much different from the policy City Attorney Ann Davison endorsed toward drug users last year, saying that anyone who overdoses three times should be arrested and thrown in jail. Spady’s group is collecting signatures now.
