The Burien City Council advanced a zoning change during its meeting last night that would allow a tiny house village on a piece of property owned by Seattle City Light. The zoning rule, as amended by the council, will allow future transitional housing only on properties between one and two acres, and will cap the size of such housing at 30 residents—a change that cuts the potential size of the long-planned tiny house village by half.
Before voting for the zoning change, Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling complained at length about the “previous council” and King County, which has offered $1 million to fund the project, saying that the proposal “was thrown at us” by the county with no room for dissent.
“What we have the ability to do here is amend that ridiculous process that happened last year from the county,” Schilling said. “We are making decisions about the future of land use in the city of Burien, not just for this one singular project, which was not organically decided by our planning commission or our city council. It was something that was shoved to us by the county without any flexibility. So we have an opportunity here to reverse the process.”
The council voted 6-1 (with Stephanie Mora dissenting) to place the rezone on next week’s consent agenda, after a public comment period in which two veteran Burien police officers denounced City Manager Adolfo Bailon and the council for demanding the removal of longtime Burien Police Chief Ted Boe. Boe works for the King County Sheriff’s Office, which provides police services to the city under a contract; Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall recently sued the city after the council banned sleeping or “living” outdoors 24 hours a day.
Boe provided a statement supporting the lawsuit, which claims the ban violates the 8th and 14th Amendments, and has not been enforcing the law.
Both officers who spoke said they were speaking on their own accord and did not tell Boe they planned to testify on his behalf.
“Icannotsitbackandletonemanbeinsulted,demeanedandvilifiedforissuesthatareclearlyfailuresbythecitygovernmentforthelastseveralyears,” Officer Mark Hayden told the council. A second officer, Henry McLauchlan, said that if the city ousts Boe, it will result in an officer exodus to “more supportive organizations within the county. … Nobody, except the least senior deputies and sergeants, will be forced to work a place that does not support constitutional policing.”
Schilling has claimed repeatedly (including a meeting of the council majority that apparently violated the state Open Public Meetings Act last week) that Boe could simply choose to “enforce the parts of the ordinance” that ban unsheltered people from occupying public space during the day. (In city manager-council governments like Burien’s, the council picks one of their members to serve as mayor every two years, and the city manager serves as the executive.)
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In fact, the total ban the council passed last year “repeal[s] and replace[s]” the older law. Boe has no legal authority to enforce a law that doesn’t exist, even if the council later regrets repealing it.
Schilling also claimed, during an interview on KIRO Radio, that the city never stopped paying the King County Sheriff’s Office for its services (as Bailon, in fact, directed city staff to do in response to the lawsuit earlier this year). “Theonlypartthatwe’renotpayingthemforisthepartthatthey’renotenforcing,” Schilling said, referring to the homeless ban. “So we’renotpayingforthatelementofitbecausethey’renotdoingtheirjob.”
A spokesman for the sheriff’s office, Captain Cory Stanton, said the office has not billed Burien yet for the first half of 2024, so there is no way to know yet whether they plan to pay their bills for police service, and how much. “The fact is, we’re going still provide [police] services to the city of Burien, and if they don’t pay, that’s a conversation the command staff will have to have,” Stanton said.
It’s unclear how long the tiny house village will be able to stay at the City Light property, assuming the council approves it next week. The city has delayed approval of the project, which includes a $1 million no-strings contribution from King County, for most of the last year. PubliCola has reached out to City Light for more information about how long the property will be available and will update this post when we hear back.
Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon sent a letter to King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall this week demanding a replacement for Burien Police Chief Ted Boe, whose “actions,” Bailon wrote, “no longer represent the City of Burien best interests, vision, and goals, in a manner that supports trust between the City and King County Sheriff’s Office.”
The sheriff’s office provides officers, including Chief Boe, who serve as the city’s police force through a contract with the county.
Last month, Cole-Tindall sued Burien over its total ban on “camping” in the city, calling the ban unconstitutional. Burien responded by countersuing the sheriff’s office, alleging breach of contract—an ironic claim, given that Bailon responded to the county’s lawsuit by directing city employees to stop paying the sheriff’s office for the services it provides under the same contract.
In his letter, Bailon accused Boe of violating a portion of an agreement between the city and county that says the police chief will act “in a manner that supports and maintains trust” with the city, and another that says “Police Chiefs are expected to represent the City’s point of view, consider City needs in carrying out their duties and advocate on behalf of their City similar to other City departmental directors.” Effectively, Bailon is saying Boe has an obligation to enforce a law he and his actual employer, the Sheriff’s Office, believe is illegal.
In his declaration, Boe laid out some of his concerns with Bailon’s, who he said repeatedly demanded that Boe “redeploy resources away from other public safety matters such as 911 calls and to address several non-criminal aspects of camping. … He also made repeated calls to 911 to redirect patrol resources away” from actual emergencies—at least 45 last year, as PubliCola recently reported.
In her response dismissing Bailon’s request, Cole-Tindall noted that just “two hours prior to Bailon’s letter, Burien was given detailed statistics on the first three months of 2024 that demonstrate the high level of police service in Burien,” including an uptick in arrests for drug-related crimes and an overall reduction in both violent and property crime since last year. In February, Cole-Tindall continued, city council members lauded Boe for his “excellent” performance.
By demanding Boe’s removal, Cole-Tindall continued, Bailon appeared to be retaliating against Boe for statements he made as part of the sheriff’s lawsuit against the city. In his declaration, Boe laid out some of his concerns with Bailon’s, who he said repeatedly demanded that Boe “redeploy resources away from other public safety matters such as 911 calls and to address several non-criminal aspects of camping. … He also made repeated calls to 911 to redirect patrol resources away” from actual emergencies—at least 45 last year, as PubliCola recently reported.
“State law prohibits any local government from retaliating against a person for raising concerns with the constitutionality of government action,” Cole-Tindall wrote. “King County cannot be party to retaliatory action against the chief.”
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Boe’s statement notes that until the city council hired Bailon, “I had limited challenges in addressing the unhoused persons living in Burien. I worked collaboratively with the City Manager who was not focused on addressing homelessness as a crime.” But once Bailon arrived, Boe said, “the approach to unhoused persons began to shift,” as Bailon began asking the department to arrest unsheltered people rather than working with service providers like REACH to find shelter and services.
Bailon unilaterally canceled the city’s contract with REACH, which is funded with federal ARPA dollars, earlier this year. He is reportedly working toward a new contract that would replace REACH with The More We Love, a controversial group that until recently advertised “sweeps” at a rate of $515 for each homeless person they remove from a site. (The city’s contract was with Discover Burien, a downtown business group that led its own encampment sweep last year, because The More We Love was unable to get the required insurance.) It’s unclear whether The More We Love meets federal requirements for ARPA funds. Continue reading “Burien City Manager Demands Removal of Police Chief Who Won’t Arrest People for Being Homeless”→
After police cracked down on people hanging out and using drugs at the corner of 12th and Jackson, they moved a block away. Photo: Andrew Engelson
Editor’s note: This post has been updated to include additional quotes from Lisa Daugaard, the director of Purpose Dignity Action, which runs the city’s largest diversion program, LEAD.
By Andrew Engelson
In the six months since Seattle enacted a controversial law making public drug use and possession a gross misdemeanor, City Attorney Ann Davison’s office has filed charges against 17 people for violations of the law, which criminalizes the use or possession of drugs other than cannabis. That’s a tiny percentage of about 300 arrests police have made since the new law went into effect in October.
And while advocates for diversion—a strategythat involves enrolling people in services in lieu of charges—say the low charging rate is a good thing, the city’s main diversion program is perpetually underfunded and has had to shift strategies to take on so many new clients from arrests.
SPD has been arresting hundreds of people under the new law, though the number of monthly arrests has recently been on a steady decline.According to Seattle Police Department data, arrests spiked during a highly-publicized series of stings in October and peaked in January. The number of monthly misdemeanor drug arrests has dropped significantly since then, with just 20 arrests in March and six in the first 11 days of April.
City Council President Sara Nelson and City Attorney Ann Davison touted the new law as a way to reduce public use of fentanyl and meth. But so far, it doesn’t seem to have made more than superficial changes to the level of drug use in two of the most visible hot spots in the city: Third Avenue downtown, and 12th and Jackson in the International District. According to SPD data, about two-thirds of arrests under the law were in SPD beats that encompass those two areas of the city.
Of the 17 people the city attorney’s office has charged, about half failed to appear for court hearings–a strong indicator that they were living without shelter. People who are homeless or struggle with mental illness often have trouble making court appearances, and this can result in a reinforcing cycle of interaction with the criminal justice system and lack of shelter.
Davison’s office has motioned to remove municipal judge Pooja Vaddadi from hearing eight of the 17 drug cases. Since March, Davison has directed city attorneys to challenge judge Vaddadi from hearing any criminal cases, charging that the judge, a former public defender, has a “regular pattern of biased rulings.”
Seattle Municipal Court Judge Damon Shadid told PubliCola he’s seen about a dozen cases in his court related to the new drug law. “Anecdotally, from my own courtroom, I can tell you that I have a zero percent appearance rate so far for people charged under the new drug statute,” he said.
According to municipal court records, the average time between an arrest under the new drug law and when the city attorney files charges is about 70 days; more than half of the people charged under the new law waited 90 days or more for Davison’s office to file charges. This is in sharp contrast to Davison’s promise, in 2022, to decide whether to file charges in all criminal cases within five business days after her office receives a referral from the police department.
“If charges aren’t filed right away, then it is very difficult to find a homeless person and get them to come to court,” Shadid said. “My suspicion is that the vast majority of people charged with [possession or public use] are homeless and that’s why we’re seeing such a low appearance rate in court.”
In about half the arrests under the new drug law, police referred drug users to the LEAD diversion program, which connects people with case management, harm reduction, and other services.
Lisa Daugaard, the director of Purpose Dignity Action, which runs LEAD, says she welcomes the emphasis on diversion. “It’s completely appropriate for the city attorney to defer filing while LEAD case managers are working with people to complete diversion intake, and that’s what the ordinance calls for,” Daugaard said. “No one should criticize prosecutors for actively encouraging pre-filing diversion efforts, when those are demonstrated to be the most effective response to severe substance use disorder.”
However, taking on post-arrest referrals has required LEAD to stop taking referrals from other sources—effectively shifting its referral strategy away from community-based referrals, which don’t require an arrest, to post-arrest referrals for people caught violating the new law. Although LEAD has received more funding from state and federal sources in the meantime, that funding is not related to the new law and the city itself did not increase LEAD funding as part of its shift to arrest-based diversion. Over the past several years, LEAD (which used to stand for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) has moved toward community referrals, which don’t require people to choose diversion while in handcuffs.
The increase in SPD interactions put a strain on LEAD’s limited resources. To address this, during the recent legislative session, the supplemental budget included a $2.5 million boost to Seattle and King county’s LEAD program, in budget line items sponsored by Rep. Darya Farivar and Sen. Rebecca Saldaña. Combined with another $3.5 million in one-time funds, that’s enough to enable LEAD to do some community referrals, in addition to referrals resulting from arrests, this year. However, Daugaard said, the PDA is “reluctant to overextend on community referrals until there is a more sustainable plan for scaling beyond this year.”
“We are one of numerous community-based case management providers,” Daugaard said. “So it’s a collective response but it needs to have a stable, sustained funding stream. It’s an approach that almost everyone knows is the right approach. But you can’t go year to year, constantly on the verge of cutting it off.”
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Tim Robinson, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said the time it takes to review a case and file charges “is dependent on many factors, one of which is waiting for toxicology lab results.” The State Patrol’s toxicology lab has been plagued with delays (usually associated with DUI cases) but opened a new center last year to address the backlog.
Robinson said the city attorney’s office has a backlog of about 800 cases for all criminal cases awaiting a decision to file, including drug use, theft, DUI, domestic violence, and other misdemeanors. He said the city attorney’s office is currently reviewing whether to charge in 81 cases and 14 cases are awaiting toxicology reports.
In the 17 cases the city attorney has charged, arrest reports show that they almost universally involve suspected fentanyl or meth use, and include descriptions such as one in an officer’s report that mentions “lighters, foil, and pipes, tubular objects that they were holding near the foil.”
Currently, no one arrested under the drug law is being booked into jail. King County’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention still has in place a pandemic-era moratorium on booking most people accused of non-violent misdemeanors. Robinson said that while those arrested aren’t able to be booked, “They may be booked into jail if they have also committed a companion crime (e.g. burglary while possessing drugs, etc.).”
Larry Jefferson, director of the state Office of Public Defense, testifies at the state bar association’s board of governors on Friday.
By Erica C. Barnett
The Washington State Bar Association’s governing board adopted new standards for public defenders last week that could dramatically reduce caseloads for defense attorneys and other staff at the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD), which represents indigent people accused of crimes.
The 12-1 vote could also have implications for public defense departments around the state, DPD director Anita Khandelwal says, because the state Supreme Court—which adopts rules that counties across the state must follow—asked the bar association’s Council on Public Defense to come up with these recommendations to respond to the statewide public defender shortage.
“We’ve seen a high rate of attrition and burnout, because the caseloads… are too high,” Khandelwal said. “And what happens is people leave is that the same cases get concentrated onto a smaller number of people. It’s basically like we’re in a death spiral.”
The new rules would have a more immediate impact in King County, according to DPD, because King County operates under its own unique rules: Under the King County Code, public defenders are required to follow the standards the WSBA adopts.
According to DPD director Anita Khandelwal, that means the county must either hire enough attorneys—along with support staff like paralegals, social workers, and investigators—to meet the new standards or invest in alternatives to prosecution and incarceration, reducing caseloads by reducing the number of cases.
“I think we have a chicken and egg problem here. I recognize that there’s a shortage of attorneys, but I think that shortage of attorneys is in part due to the fact that this work is impossible.”—King County DPD supervising attorney Michael Schueler
The guidelines, which would also change the requirements for attorneys to qualify for various types of cases (felonies that carry sentences of life without parole, for instance), include a phasing-in period that ends in 2027.
One criticism of the old standards, which have not changed significantly since they were adopted in the 1970s, is that they don’t distinguish between different types of crimes—treating murder, for instance, as if it’s no more complex than a car theft. The new standards no longer dictate a maximum caseload for each broad category of crime; instead, they use a formula that weighs each type of case separately; on average, the new formula would give attorneys about twice as much time to work on each case.
King County Executive Dow Constantine was alarmed enough about the proposed new rules that his general counsel, David Hackett, took the unusual step of sending a letter urging the bar association’s governing board not to adopt the new recommendations. Doing so before the state supreme court can issue its own statewide guidelines, Hackett wrote, would “contradict a standing court rule”—specifically, the current state guidelines for public defense attorneys. Khandelwal says there is no contradiction, because the state standards set a ceiling, not a floor, on cases.
Under the current WSBA standards, each public defense attorney is expected to handle as many as 150 felony cases or as many as 400 misdemeanor cases a year—a workload that would work out to as little as 11 hours per felony, or 4.5 hours per misdemeanor, if attorneys didn’t work overtime. “That’s obviously absurd,” Khandelwal said. “If you were charged with a misdemeanor, you would want an attorney who’s going to spend more than four and a half hours on your case.”
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As it is, high caseloads are leading to an epidemic of burnout among public defenders, and leaving some jurisdictions with so few attorneys that people are languishing in jail for months waiting for a lawyer.
During the WSBA hearing last week, a steady stream of attorneys described the impacts severe overwork has had on their ability to spend time with their families and adequately represent their clients. Larry Jefferson, director of the state’s Office of Public Defense, said his family reacted with shock when he spent a Sunday at home when he was a public defender, because he was rarely able to take even one day off “An normal week for public defenders 60 to 80 hours of work, and [that’s when] they’re not doing a trial. So these standards represent us taking the best step forward to making sure that people get adequate assistance of counsel.”
Kitsap County prosecutor Chad Enright was the lone voice of opposition at Friday’s hearing, calling the standards “frankly comical” in light of the ongoing shortage of public defense attorneys across the state. His “friends in public defense,” Enright said, had two theories. The first was that the new standards are “designed to create chaos” in the hope of creating a new state agency to oversee public defense. The second was that by lowering the number of people public defenders can represent, defense attorneys are hoping to turn the current defense attorney shortage into a crisis, forcing prosecutors to dismiss some charges and effectively “decriminalizing” certain crimes.
Responding to those claims, King County DPD supervising attorney Michael Schueler said, “I think we have a chicken and egg problem here. I recognize that there’s a shortage of attorneys, but I think that shortage of attorneys is in part due to the fact that this work is impossible.” Last year, Schueler’s client D’Andre Glaspy was found not guilty of murdering his girlfriend’s two-year-old son after languishing behind bars, unable to pay bail, from 2017 to 2023—a situation Schueler attributed to the crippling caseloads he was working under during those years.
“These caseloads are crippling. It is an impossible task to sit down with a client and tell them, ‘I can’t work on your case effectively and quickly,'” Schueler said.
In his letter, Constantine’s general counsel Hackett warned that adopting the new standards could create “practical problems of adequate legislative funding from the state to fund the new caseloads and the daunting question of whether there are enough defense attorneys to staff the caseloads proposed.” The county is currently facing a $100 million two-year budget shortfall; DPD’s annual budget is currently around $170 million.
Khandelwal argues that the new standards don’t necessarily require the county to increase spending on attorneys.
“It doesn’t have to be a budget question,” she said. “The three-year implementation phase for the standards is also an opportunity to ramp up alternative programming for the next three years, so that we are using our criminal legal system for fewer things.”
Constantine’s office has not yet responded to questions about Hackett’s letter or the impact the new standards will have on the county’s public defense department.
1. City attorney Ann Davison made two significant announcements via late-afternoon press release on Friday. First, she announced that the city’s criminal division chief, Natalie Walton-Anderson—whose last day was Friday—has issued a “standing affidavit of prejudice” against Seattle Municipal Judge Pooja Vaddadi disqualifying her from hearing criminal cases brought by the city attorney’s office.
The affidavit is a kind of peremptory challenge, similar to the challenges attorneys can make to disqualify jurors at at trial; in addition to the standing order, the city attorney’s office has to file an individual challenge in every case they want removed from Vaddadi’s courtroom.
In an internal memo about Vaddadi, Walton-Anderson said she often reversed other judges’ findings of probable cause or failed to find probable cause “in situations where, clearly, probable cause exists,” releasing people accused of DUI and domestic violence without considering their criminal history or the severity of the offense.
Additionally, Walton-Anderson said in a statement, “The resounding input from attorneys that have appeared in her courtroom is that her decisions demonstrate a complete lack of understanding, or perhaps even intentional disregard, of the evidence rules, even on basic issues.”
Vaddadi worked as a public defender for 10 months before challenging then-presiding judge Adam Eisenberg in 2022.
Filing a blanket affidavit of prejudice against a sitting judge is essentially the nuclear option, which is one reason the city attorney’s office hasn’t exercised it in recent memory. Pete Holmes, the former city attorney, considered filing one against Ed McKenna, a politically conservative former judge whom Holmes accused of violating the rules of judicial conduct, but didn’t—reportedly because it would be an extraordinary act against a separately elected official. The King County Department of Public Defense, however, did, arguing that McKenna was biased against defendants and disqualifying him from cases repeatedly during his final two years in office.
The blanket affidavit isn’t technically permanent, since the city attorney’s office could just stop filing individual affidavits, but it will force the court to move Vaddadi to an assignment that doesn’t involve deciding criminal cases, like hearing challenges to traffic infractions. We have reached out to Vaddadi, the city attorney’s office, and municipal court presiding Judge Faye Chess, and will post an update when there’s more to report.
2. Also on Friday evening, Davison announced that her office will be issuing a traffic ticket to Kevin Dave, the officer who struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk while driving 74 miles an hour—three times the speed limit. The infraction, second-degree negligent driving, carries a fine of up to $5,000. The city attorney will not file criminal misdemeanor charges against Dave.
Last week, as PubliCola reported, the King County Prosecutor’s Office announced that it would not file vehicular homicide charges against Dave because he was responding to a “legitimate, life-threatening call” as he sped down Dexter Avenue. That call was an “overdose” to which the police later said Dave was responding “as a paramedic,” suggesting he had to get there right away. However, as we reported last year, the caller was awake, lucid, and standing outside his apartment building as he told 911 operators he was afraid he had taken too much cocaine.
County prosecutors also said the fact that Kandula stepped into the crosswalk while Dave gunned his SUV in her direction could serve as a defense at trial, where Dave’s attorneys could argue it was a “superseding cause” that contributed to Kandula’s death. In its legal analysis, the county prosecutor’s office noted that the standard of proof for reckless driving—”willful or wanton disregard” for safety—is higher than the requirement for vehicular homicide, which only requires that a person is driving in a “reckless manner.”
Last year, City Attorney Ann Davison’s office pursued charges against 30 men accused of “sexual exploitation,” or patronizing a sex worker. Most people charged with this misdemeanor are men of color, and many are immigrants; of the 30 prosecuted la required a court interpreter.
By Erica C. Barnett
Shortly before dark one evening last April, a young woman stood outside the Lowe’s hardware store at the corner of 125th and Aurora, looking for customers. Clutching a silver fanny pack, she stood alone near the entrance to the parking lot, dressed in eye-catching moon boots, a reddish cropped tank top, and a black skirt she later described as “a very, very short skirt that barely covered my rear.”
According to her later account, a young man driving a decades-old sedan honked his horn, made a U-turn, and pulled into the driveway of the parking lot, blocking traffic in his haste. After a quick negotiation, the woman later testified, the man said he would give her $80 for “quick sex,” prompting the woman—Seattle police officer Kortney North—to give a signal.
Within moments, the parking lot became a blur of activity, as teams of uniformed officers swooped in. Simultaneously, a detective driving a vehicle filled with other “decoys”—more female officers, also dressed up as sex workers—arrived to whisk North away. Four surveillance officers remained just out of sight, as did a second surveillance vehicle nearby. Once police had the man—we’ll call him James— in handcuffs, an officer drove him a nearby precinct, where still more officers awaited to process and release him.
A few weeks later, City Attorney Ann Davison’s office charged him with one misdemeanor count for soliciting a sex worker—a crime that carries a maximum of 90 days in jail, plus fines that can add up to several thousand dollars..
Most men charged with sexual exploitation—the city’s official term for soliciting a sex worker—end up agreeing to a deal with prosecutors. Last year, according to the Seattle Municipal Court, the city attorney’s office brought sexual exploitation charges against 30 individuals. Only one, James, insisted on his innocence.
And so, late last month, North found herself testifying before a jury as a witness for the prosecution in a courtroom on the 11th floor of the Seattle Municipal Court building in downtown Seattle.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a white, English-speaking client charged with this.”—Northwest Defenders attorney Virginia Branham
Because undercover officers don’t wear video cameras or carry recording devices—and don’t collect money from the men they target—the outcome of prostitution cases depends almost entirely on whose story the jury believes. Without tangible evidence proving that James was guilty, the prosecutors tried to tell a story about a hypothetical woman forced into sex work by circumstances beyond her control.
“Eighty dollars. That’s how much [he] thought sex with Officer North was worth that day,” assistant city prosecutor Alisa Smith said in her closing argument. “There is no question about what [was] going on. [He] was out to buy sex with … someone whose life circumstances had brought her to a place where she needed some quick cash.”
The jury took four hours to find James not guilty.
Criminalizing sex work is broadly unpopular; during jury selection, echoing national sentiment, 23 of 25 potential jurors said they didn’t think sex work should be illegal. But the city remains deeply invested in penalizing the practice—and pouring resources into prosecuting men who patronize sex workers.
Like James, most of the people prosecuted for patronizing prostitutes are men of color, and defense attorneys say many are immigrants—mostly Latino—who don’t speak English fluently or at all.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a white, English-speaking client charged with this,” Northwest Defenders attorney Virginia Branham, the supervising attorney on James’ case, said. “Often, with clients who are charged with [sexual exploitation], English is not their first language and they often have immigration issues, so this charge is not a good one for a client of be convicted of.”
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Publicly available police reports don’t usually indicate defendants’ race or immigration status, but it’s suggestive that a large majority of the men prosecuted for sexual exploitation last year had Hispanic, African, or Asian surnames, and that half requested an interpreter from the court. Because solicitation stings are based entirely on an officer’s claim that she made a verbal agreement to exchange sex for money, a defendant’s ability to understand what an officer is saying could be a strong argument against a guilty verdict—if any of those cases ever went to trial.
To understand why the city puts so much energy, effort, and money into chasing down men for a low-level misdemeanor that most people think should be legal, it’s helpful to know that under city law and SPD policy, sex work is virtually synonymous with human trafficking—one police source described women being sent around the country on a circuit, which—police argue—prevents women from developing ties or getting help.
This view is reflected in the language of the law itself; in 2015, then-city council member Bruce Harrell sponsored a bill, which passed unanimously, changing the crime of “patronizing a prostitute” to “sexual exploitation.”
The idea, backed strongly by then-city attorney Pete Holmes (who later vacated all outstanding charges against sex workers) was to focus on the demand side of the equation by focusing on the men buying sex rather than the people, mostly women, selling it. As Harrell summarized in 2015, “we will now refer to [solicitation] as a crime relative to sexual exploitation [because] that’s what actually occurs when people are being forced to use their bodies in the commerce of prostitution.”
In about eight years of representing defendants in such cases,” Branham countered, “I’ve never seen a case where there has been any link to sex trafficking.”
A spokesman for the city attorney’s office said there has not been any “greater emphasis on sex work” since Davison took office in 2022. “However, the City Attorney is very aware of the continuing problem and the tragic impact on women and girls who are preyed upon by criminals engaged in human trafficking,” he said.
Since taking office in 2022, Davison has emphasized the need to make filing decisions quickly so that cases involving serious misdemeanors, like driving under the influence and domestic violence, can take top priority. But a look at any weekly municipal court docket shows that many of those more serious cases are languishing.
Pursuing men who buy sex is time-consuming and expensive, although it’s surprisingly difficult to determine just how time-consuming and how expensive. SPD did not respond to questions about what its sting operations cost and how they operate, and a spokesman for Davison’s office said “there is not a cost tracking system in place for criminal trials.”
But with the median SPD employee making well over $150,000 —and with a three-day trial that required, at minimum, dozens of hours of preparation for both prosecutors and defense attorneys—it’s easy to see how the costs can add up. According to data from the city, in 2022, SPD arrested 28 people for “purchasing prostitution” on Aurora over the course of five operations. In 2023, that number was 41, in six operations. Those numbers were down significantly from 2019, when police arrested 87 people, and up dramatically compared to earlier in the decade, when SPD stings were aimed at sex workers, not their customers.
Testimony at the trial provided a closer look at the scale of these stings, which can involve as many as 20 officers. In addition, before going undercover, officers have to go through “decoy school”—a two-day training where they learn the “language” of sex work, act out various scenarios they might encounter, and practice hand signals to let observing officers know if they’re in distress and when it’s time to make an arrest.
“There was probably 10 pages of acronyms that we went over, just so that we would be familiar with those kinds of terms and not be thrown off if somebody approached us,” North said.
“The trial really highlighted the immense expense involved in these stings and the resources that are thrown at them, and I just can’t see what value they are getting,” said Branham, who, along with lead attorney Claire Beckett, worked on James’ defense over several months and appeared in court during all three days of his trial..
Since taking office in 2022, Davison has emphasized the need to make filing decisions quickly so that cases involving serious misdemeanors, like driving under the influence and domestic violence, can take top priority. But a look at any weekly municipal court docket shows that many of those more serious cases are languishing.
Last week, for example, the domestic violence arraignment calendar included six assault cases—cases in which women described being punched, beaten, and strangled by intimate partners—that sat around for 60 days or longer before Davison’s office filed charges. According to a 2017 report by the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the longer it takes to file charges in a domestic violence case, the less likely a victim is to cooperate with prosecutors, and the harder it becomes to track down witnesses; delay also “diminishes the quality of DV cases as its sends a message to victims and courts that the case is not a priority.”
DUI cases are also stacking up. Out of 14 cases on the docket for the first week of February, 11 involved cases from early 2022 for which the two-year statute of limitations was about to run out. Delays at the state toxicology lab, which examines blood samples in DUI cases, are only responsible for about half of this two-year delay, which has been consistent for much of the last year. With two years’ lag time, successful prosecutions are rare; in 10 of the 11 cases on last week’s docket, court records indicate the defendant could no longer be found.
Should the city be spending time, money, and court resources prosecuting men who pay for sex? The question is especially relevant at a time when both the police department and the city attorney’s office say they’re short-staffed and stretched thin.
At a time when SPD claims it doesn’t have enough officers to respond to 911 calls promptly, it’s worth looking at the sheer quantity of resources they pour into apprehending sex buyers on Aurora. At a time when the city attorney’s office says it’s having trouble staffing its criminal division with qualified attorneys, it’s worth questioning why they have chosen to use those scarce attorneys prosecuting men for buying sex, rather than the “serious” misdemeanors, like DUIs and domestic violence, that Davison has said are among her top priorities.
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By Erica C. Barnett
1. City attorney Ann Davison made two significant announcements via late-afternoon press release on Friday. First, she announced that the city’s criminal division chief, Natalie Walton-Anderson—whose last day was Friday—has issued a “standing affidavit of prejudice” against Seattle Municipal Judge Pooja Vaddadi disqualifying her from hearing criminal cases brought by the city attorney’s office.
