Category: Drugs

Addiction, Drugs, King County

County Councilmember Dembowski Wants to Defund Successful Harm Reduction Program
Source: ADAI, University of Washington

By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this month, King County Council budget chair Rod Dembowski quietly slipped an amendment into a nearly 400-page supplemental budget proposal that would prohibit the county from spending any money buying or distributing safer smoking supplies, such as pipes and foil, to drug users.

The county’s public health department only runs one needle exchange, where drug users can also access services and treatment medication, but the county distributes supplies to nonprofits that provide similar services, making the potential impact far more significant than the small amount—around $14,000— the county has spent so far this year on pipes and smoking supplies.

King County Public Health (KCPH) estimates that staff distribute safer smoking supplies at the downtown needle exchange for 15 to 20 hours a week, “translating to an estimated $83,000 annually for staff time,” according to KCPH spokeswoman Sharon Bogan. “During these interactions, staff are also connecting individuals with tools to prevent overdose, offering connections to treatment, and addressing client needs,” Bogan said.

King County hands out some of these supplies at its own needle exchange, downtown, and also distributes them to other organizations, including the Hepatitis Education Project and the People’s Harm Reducation Alliance.

Dembowski did not respond to several requests for an interview.

Opponents of harm-reduction approaches, such needle exchanges and the distribution of overdose reversal drugs, argue that making drug use safer merely “enables” drug users to stay addicted. The Trump administration has aggressively rejected harm reduction in favor of punitive approaches, including in recent policy guidance for federal shelter and housing funds.

King County, however, has long embraced harm reduction, which reduces the spread of infectious diseases like HIV and attracts drug users who would not otherwise come in contact with health care and treatment providers. The downtown needle exchange, for example, provides treatment referrals and “warm hand-offs” to the Pathways treatment clinic located in the same location; refers people to detox and medication-assisted treatment; provides case management and connections to housing, food and shelter; and hands out the overdose reversal drug Narcan, among other services.

“Distributing pipes and foil allows Public Health to build trust among people who use drugs. By building this trust, we can reduce preventable deaths, interrupt the spread of infectious diseases, and serve as a bridge to treatment and recovery,” Public Health’s Bogan said. “Discontinuing pipe and foil distribution means that we will lose our connections to people in our community who use smoking supplies and do not inject and who rely on our services.”

Source: ADAI, University of Washington

Caleb Banta-Green, a research professor at the University of Washington’s Addictions, Drugs, & Alcohol Institute (ADAI). said he “was saddened and surprised to see King County do something that appears to be following in the footsteps of the federal government’s really ill-informed approach.” When politicians actually visit harm reduction programs in person, he said, they often change their minds, “because it’s not just giving things to people. It is health promoting and it is literally about engagement and helping people.”

A survey ADAI conducted last year found that in 2025, opiate and meth users overwhelmingly switched from injecting drugs to smoking them, a change (compared to ADAI’s 2015 survey) that corresponded with a dramatic reduction in people showing up at sites that provided clean needles.

In King County, the reduction in injection drug consumption led to a reduction from 25,000 annual visits, or “encounters,” with the public needle exchange program to a low of 12,000 in 2022. After the county began handing out pipes and foil, that number rebounded, from 20,000 in 2023 to 60,000 in 2025, according to the county’s public health department.

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“There has been a dramatic shift in a decade from heroin to fentanyl, and from injecting to smokin—that is how people are consuming substances, and if we want to keep providing public health services for people who consume substances, we have to be adapting to that,” Banta-Green said.

Smoking from dirty or broken pipes, or using cheap, thin foil as a smoking surface, both pose their own safety risks, such as facial wounds and burns—making it a good idea for drug users to replace pipes and only use thick, high-quality foil. But coming in for safer supplies has another benefit, ADAI’s research found: It keeps people from injecting drugs, which is much riskier and can lead to abscesses, infections, and collapsed veins.

At needle exchange sites that didn’t offer smoking supplies, participants were far more likely to have injected drugs (70 percent) than at sites that offered smoking supplies (35 percent), according to the survey. At those same sites, 83 percent of participants said they would “like to get free, clean pipes or foils to smoke opioids, cocaine, or meth,” and 75 percent of the people who injected drugs but were interested safer smoking supplies said they would “inject less often”  if smoking supplies were available.

“All of the evidence points to the same thing, which is when you make smoking supplies available, people will inject less, and if you take smoking supplies away, people will start injecting more,” Banta-Green said.

The county council is scheduled to vote on the full supplemental budget next Tuesday.

City Council, Drugs, Police

SPD Chief Questions Whether LEAD Diversion Program is “Meeting Expectations”
“Mark43 Recorded Diversion” refers to all completed referrals police made through arrests; LEAD also gets some referrals that don’t come from SPD.

Barnes allowed that LEAD was better than “no diversion at all,” while Councilmember Rivera said the city has already “thrown a lot” of money at the program.

By Erica C. Barnett

Police Chief Shon Barnes questioned the value of LEAD, the city’s main criminal justice diversion program, at a city council committee on Monday—saying the program could not, on its own, “deliver the level of order, safety and visible presence that residents, businesses and visitors believe should be indicative of a major US city.” For 15 years, LEAD has provided services as an alternative to arrest and incarceration; the model, which includes long-term case management, harm reduction, and connections to housing and treatment, has been replicated around the country and is considered a best practice for minimizing people’s involvement in the criminal legal system.

Since 2023, police have had the power to arrest and charge people with a gross misdemeanor for possessing or drugs or using them in public. That year, a new state law made drug use or possession a gross misdemeanor, rather than a felony, in response to a 2021 state supreme court decision called State v. Blake that overturned existing laws that classified possession and public use as felony crimes.

Between 2024 and 2025, according to a staff presentation during the council’s public safety committee on Tuesday,  LEAD diversions for people arrested for possession or public use declined almost 37 percent—from 173 to 109—while charges filed by police officers more than doubled and attempted jail bookings increased by 191 percent. (This number includes both jail bookings and people the jail declined to book because of medical and other issues). Misdemeanor drug use and possession cases made up just under half of all drug arrests.

This is not the outcome local leaders said they hoped for when they adopted the law in 2023. In an executive order that accompanied the new law, then-mayor Bruce Harrell directed SPD to adopt a policy that directed officers to divert drug users into LEAD or other programs whenever possible, rather than arresting them. That policy says, “When an arrest is warranted, sworn employees should prioritize diversion in lieu of booking.”

In general, the numbers show, police have continued to routinely arrest and book people using drugs in public rather than sending them to LEAD.

Both the new law and the executive order gave individual police officers the ultimate authority to decide whether to arrest someone or refer them to LEAD, based partly on whether they decide a person is posing a “threat of harm” to anyone in the public. (LEAD can also take referrals after an arrest).

The way SPD’s policy defines a threat of harm gives police a lot of discretion to decide whether they think someone is causing harm. But it specifies that any time a person is using drugs near a bus or rail stop, school, or park, a threat of “harm will be presumed.”

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes said the list was almost too expansive. “A very important policy decision will have to be made whether or not officers can [arrest] people using drugs” when they witness it, “and whether or not we can make that arrest without having to go through the checklist,” Barnes said.

Barnes and acting Assistant Chief Rob Brown told the committee that they respected LEAD and planned to continue diverting people to the program. In “many cases,” Barnes said, LEAD “is better than having what we’ve always done, which is no intervention at all. But it’s also important to be clear-eyed about what the program can and cannot accomplish and whether it’s meeting the expectations of the people who live, work and visit the city.”

 

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LEAD was started in Belltown in 2011 and has expanded in size and scope many times since, so it’s inaccurate to say that the city has “always” done “no intervention at all.” Barnes, previously police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, was appointed chief by Harrell last year.

Brown, who was previously the commander of SPD’s South Precinct, said he was particularly interested in holding people accountable who engage in what he called “defiant” drug use—that is, drug use in highly visible places that make residents and customers “very uncomfortable.” These “defiant” users, Brown said, “feel like they’re entitled to consume. … I understand that [for] somebody who is an addict, that jail alone, by itself, is not necessarily going to help them get to moving beyond their addiction. But what I do want to see is behavior change for this type of defiant, open consumption.”

In a separate presentation, Purpose Dignity Action’s Lisa Daugaard, who launched LEAD in Belltown 15 years ago, said funding for the PDA-run program hit “a high-water mark” in 2022 and has been declining ever since, reducing LEAD’s capacity to take on new clients.

After a LEAD staffer described an analysis that showed people do better the longer people they stick with LEAD, Councilmember Maritza Rivera said she wasn’t convinced the program was doing enough to impact visible drug use and disorder. “I appreciate that it can take up to two years to get someone to accept services and get toward a path of recovery,” Rivera said, but businesses can’t wait that long to see improvements. “It taking two years to help someone get off of 12th and Jackson is not helping that small business be able to stay in business and stay open,” she said.

“I don’t mean any disrespect by this,” Rivera continued, “but everyone comes here and says, if we had more money, it would be different. … “You know, we have thrown a lot [of money at LEAD]—I mean, PDA gets $20 million from the city.”

“We’re in a budget deficit. So are there other things that we can do to address the problem? … Because I don’t know that we have more money that we can put into it.”

Last year, Rivera voted along with the rest of the council to increase the police department’s budget by $35 million, including millions for to expand SPD’s camera surveillance program into additional neighborhoods. That amount will grow this year even in he absence of new programs, as officers that received raises of 42 percent over the past five years get raises on top of their new higher salaries.

Drugs

New Drug Sensors Lead to Restroom Closures at Four Seattle Library Branches
Seattle’s Ballard branch library. Photo by Dennis Bratland, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-by-4.0 license.

By Erica C. Barnett

If you need to use the restrooms at the Lake City, Ballard, Capitol Hill, or International District libraries and find them closed, it may be thanks to new “air-quality sensors” that detect vapor from drugs that don’t set off regular smoke detectors, like fentanyl and meth, and alert staff to immediately close the restrooms down for at least 15 minutes or until the air quality improves to a minimum threshold level.

Library staff already have the authority to issue temporary or permanent bans for people who use drugs in the restrooms and other violations of the library’s code of conduct or the law.

According to Seattle Public Library spokeswoman Elisa Murray, SPL decided to start shutting down restrooms at certain branches in response to drug use as a way to protect patrons and staff.

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“Prior to implementing this technology, staff only became aware of unsafe conditions when fumes reached the service desks or when a patron comment prompted staff to enter the restrooms and detect smells, at which point they’re already risking exposure,” Murray said. “An alert allows the behavior to be interrupted as early as possible, and access to live data informs staff decisions about whether or not the restrooms should remain closed without exposing staff to harmful chemicals.”

King County has long advised that fentanyl “fumes” are generally harmless. “When someone smokes fentanyl, most of the drug has been filtered out by the user before there is secondhand smoke. It doesn’t just sort of float around,” Washington Poison Center medical director Scott Phillips said in a King County Public Health blog post in 2022. “There’s no real risk for the everyday person being exposed to secondhand opioid smoke.”

Despite this, Murray said library “staff have reported feeling sick from drug-related fumes, and we have had to close restrooms because of fumes related to drug activity. Air quality sensors help us maintain a safe and healthy environment for both staff and patrons.”

Murray said the library has received no complaints from patrons or staff about the restroom closures. Using or possessing drugs in public became a misdemeanor in 2023, and people accused of either offense can be banished from certain parts of the city even without a conviction.

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Crime, Drugs, podcasts

Seattle Nice: City Attorney and LEAD Founder Set the Record Straight on Drug Diversion

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.

Courts, Drugs, Mayor Wilson, Police

SPD Chief Sent Email Overstating New Drug Diversion Policy, Sparking False Narrative in Right-Wing Media
Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks at a press conference last year.

Chief Shon Barnes apparently didn’t consult with LEAD or the city attorney’s office before telling police they should start referring every drug arrest to LEAD.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes sent a memo to officers last week directing them to refer most people caught using or possessing drugs in public to LEAD, the pre-booking diversion program that provides case management and other services to people accused of low-level criminal activity.

“Effective immediately, all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use will be diverted from prosecution to the LEAD program,” Barnes told officers in an internal email. “All instances of drug use or possession will be referred to Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD)—a program designed to redirect low-level offenders in King County from the criminal justice system into supportive social services.”

The announcement by Barnes appears to have been a dramatic overreaction to an internal memo from City Attorney Erika Evans directing her prosecutors to refer drug use and possession cases to an internal team to determine if they are eligible for LEAD. This represents a shift from the policy established by Evans’ predecessor, Ann Davison, who allowed people charged with misdemeanor possession or drug use to avoid charges by getting an addiction assessment and not getting arrested again for six months—the opposite of a therapeutic approach.

“The LEAD Liaison Team will assess previous attempts at engagement with the referred individual in consultation with LEAD,” Evans’ memo, which PubliCola received from her office, said. “If the referred individual has failed to demonstrate a sustained level or engagement with the LEAD program or has refused to engage with a LEAD case manager, the LEAD Liaison will assess the most suitable subsequent action in consultation with the Criminal Division Chief.”

Barnes responded to Evans’ memo by sending an email blast to all SPD officers saying that “Effective immediately, all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use will be diverted from prosecution to the LEAD program,” an inaccurate description of Evans’ directive to her staff. Barnes continued:

If an individual fails to comply with the LEAD program, traditional prosecutorial measures will apply. As you know, LEAD is a familiar alternative-to-arrest program that we have been utilizing for some time. This change aligns with Seattle City Ordinance 126896. Please note that this diversion does not apply to individuals who are ineligible for LEAD or to those arrested for selling or delivering controlled substances. User-quantity cases may be diverted; sell-and-deliver cases will not.

My expectation is that officers will continue to charge individuals for drug use or possession when appropriate-for example, when the activity occurs in public view or when probable cause for arrest is established.

The announcement quickly blew up thanks to an inaccurate story by KOMO, which reported—apparently without speaking to LEAD, Wilson’s office, Barnes, or Evans—that Wilson herself had “ordered officers to stop arresting people for open drug use.” (The origin of the accusation: Bombastic police union leader Mike Solan, who recently announced he won’t run for reelection). Right-wing social media accounts ran wild with the fake version of the story, forcing Wilson to issue a statement: “You’ll know when I announce a policy change, because I’ll announce a policy change.”

(Apparently, it didn’t help: Wilson was mobbed by TV cameras after Evans’ inauguration Monday afternoon at City Hall.)

In her statement, Wilson affirmed that her public safety policy includes “enforcement of the possession and public use ordinance in priority situations and ensuring that the LEAD framework and other effective responses to neighborhood hot spots are implemented with an appropriate level of urgency, sufficient resources, and a commitment to results.”

This, in effect, is what the city’s policy toward low-level drug crime was prior to 2023, when Davison and then-mayor Bruce Harrell pushed to change city law to empower SPD to start arresting people for simple drug possession and public use.

Although Barnes insisted that the policy hasn’t changed, he also referred to “this change” in the same email email. Many officers interpreted Barnes’ contradictory memo as a directive to no longer arrest people for drug use and simple possession but instead refer them straight to LEAD.

The police chief didn’t bother seeking information or feedback from the organization that runs LEAD, Purpose Dignity Action, before emailing officers about the change in policy, and he exaggerated the policy change by portraying as a kind of blanket amnesty for misdemeanor drug crime. Even if the PDA wanted to take on “all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use” they couldn’t afford to. LEAD had to stop taking community referrals into the program after the drug law passed in 2023, and a $5 million budget boost last year will only fund another 500 to 600 slots in the program this year.

LEAD co-director Brandi McNeil said that’s “a significant number,” but it’s well “below the total number of people who would qualify and be appropriate candidates for LEAD. We will need to strategize with police, prosecutors, the Mayor, the Council, and County officials (our funders) to focus that capacity on high priority situations and individuals.”

LEAD tries to take on clients who are likely to benefit from their services, as opposed to everyone who has been accused of a particular misdemeanor. “Part of our job is to accurately forecast what capacity we will have, and to work with our partners to decide which, among the pool of people who chronically commit law violations related to behavioral health issues or poverty, should be prioritized for our available slots,” McNeil said.

Barnes also misstated the criteria for LEAD eligibility, saying people arrested for selling or delivering drugs are ineligible for the program; in fact, LEAD began as an effort to benefit this specific group of people, who were cycling through courts and jail without getting any assistance for the underlying issues that were causing them to earn a living through illegal means. LEAD still serves people accused of selling up to 7 grams of drugs, which means almost anyone involved in low-level drug sales is eligible for the program.

Finally, Barnes’ description of the conditions in which “officers will charge” people for public drug use are confusing and ambiguous: “Probable cause” is supposed to exist before officers make any arrest, and it’s unclear what distinction Barnes is making between “public drug use” and drug use that “occurs in public view.”

SPD did not respond to questions sent last week attempting to clarify what Barnes meant by these distinctions. However, they did send out an email to media in response to the right-wing blowback on Monday. “To be clear, nothing has changed when it comes to police continuing to make drug-related arrests in Seattle,” Barnes said in the statement (emphasis in original), adding that police will “continue to make arrests for drug-related charges if they have probable cause.”

 

Courts, Density, Drugs, Elections, Police

This Week on PubliCola: December 20, 2025
Like this, but bigger: The city council just approved eight-unit apartment buildings everywhere.

SPD Invites Cops to Evangelical Event, City Attorney Quadruples Drug Prosecutions, and More

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, December 15

SPD Invites Officers in “Officer Involved Shootings” to Attend Billy Graham Evangelical Ministry Retreat

In a department-wide email, the Seattle Police Department wellness team invited officers and their spouses to sign up for a retreat hosted by the Billy Graham Law Enforcement Ministry. The evangelist group, which espouses fundamental Christian views, is controversial: In 2021, then-chief Adrian Diaz rescinded an invite to a dinner hosted by the ministry. An SPD spokesperson said there was nothing unusual about the invitation—a sign, perhaps, of how much things have changed under Mayor Bruce Harrell and Chief Shon Barnes.

Tuesday, December 16

SPD Paid for New Executive to Stay at Four-Star Hotel for a Month

Lee Hunt, part of the cohort of new executive staff Police Chief Barnes brought in when he was hired last year, spent a month staying at the four-star Arctic Hotel last year on the city-s dime—a $6,300 expense SPD said was a normal part of a “relocation package” provided to all the new hires.

Unclear Whether New Contract Would Have Let Police Handle Auderer Case Internally

Besides boosting rookie officers’ pay to $126,000 after their first six months, the new Seattle Police Officers Guild contract allows sergeants to investigate minor misconduct, which has previously gone to the Office of Police Accountability, freeing OPA to spend more time on serious allegations. While the change was generally noncontroversial, the definition of “serious misconduct” appears to exclude professionalism—meaning that situations like ex-SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer’s “jokes” about the killing of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula by a speeding police officer might not see the light of day in the future.

Thursday, December 18

Drug Prosecutions Quadrupled In Final Months of City Attorney Ann Davison’s Term

City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican who lost to Erika Evans by 34 points this year, accelerated filings of misdemeanor drug possession cases during the last few months of her term, more than quadrupling prosecutions against people caught possessing drugs in public, generally homeless people with addiction. Private use and possession of illegal drugs has not been a policy priority for the police or Davison.

Friday, December 19

Seattle Council Approves Eight-Unit Apartment Buildings Everywhere

The latest 10-year update to the Seattle comprehensive plan—still a work in progress thanks to delays by outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office—actually allows eight-unit, three-story apartment buildings on every residential lot in Seattle, thanks to density rules that encourage “stacked flats” instead of townhouses. If developers save trees or add eco-friendly landscaping, that number goes up to 10 units and four stories.

Council Passes Watered-Down Consultant Ethics Bill

Outgoing City Council president Sara Nelson’s proposal to bar political consultants from working for the city itself while also running election campaigns was ultimately reduced to a mere disclosure bill—meaning consultants like Christian Sinderman can still work for city candidates while working for elected officials (and even having dedicated offices) at City Hall.

Wilson Appoints SDOT Director Who Headed Waterfront, Mercer Projects

Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson appointed Angela Brady, currently head of the city’s waterfront office, to replace Harrell appointee Adiam Emery as head of the Seattle Department of Transportation. In addition to overseeing the transformation of the downtown waterfront, Brady was in charge of the Mercer reconstruction project, which was supposed to fix the “Mercer Mess” in South Lake Union.