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.
City Attorney Erika Evans at her swearing-in on Tuesday.
By Erica C. Barnett
Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Joy Hollingsworth and Dionne Foster were the first two out gay/queer Black women to serve on the Seattle City Council. I incorrectly omitted Sherry Harris (1991-1995). I regret the error.-ECB)
A week of inaugurations wrapped up in city council chambers on Tuesday with the swearing-in of new Seattle City Councilmember Dionne Foster, along with reelected Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, and the selection (which we previewed in a Fizz item in November) of District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth as the new city council president. (District 2 Councilmember Eddie Lin, elected along with Foster last year, took office in November because he was replacing an appointed councilmember, Mark Solomon).
Only District 5 Councilmember Maritza Rivera (who misspelled both Rinck’s and Foster’s names in a newsletter congratulating them on their wins) was absent from the room; she attended remotely.
Several city hall staffers we’ve spoken to this week described a new feeling of “lightness” at City Hall since the new cohort of elected officials, including Mayor Katie Wilson, took office.
One day earlier, new City Attorney Erika Evans was sworn in at the Bertha Knight Landes Room at City Hall, by US District Court Judge Richard A. Jones. Invoking the example set by her grandfather, Lee Evans—who, as an Olympic gold medalist, made history as one of several Black athletes who raised their fists in a Black Power salute during the 1968 Olympic games—Evans said, “When we were seeing clear rollbacks in civil rights, I knew I needed to make a decision, just like my grandfather did, to stand up and fight back what was happening. That is the vision I’m bringing [to] this office.”
Councilmember Foster—the third openly queer Black woman to serve on the council, after Hollingsworth and Sherry Harris—had a huge cohort of fans in the audience, as did Hollingsworth, who will be the first Black woman to ever serve as council president. The council president is in charge of central staff, committee assignments, and administrative decisions about the council; she also appoints the council’s labor committee. That committee’s members serve on the Labor Relations Policy Committee, which negotiates city contracts, including police contracts.
Historically, it’s been a pretty low-key position; Sara Nelson, the most recent council president, politicized it, firing a widely liked council central staff director and enforcing a strict return-to-office policy for staffers while she herself attended many council meetings remotely.
Hollingsworth. the consensus pick after brief internal campaigns by Councilmembers Dan Strauss and Bob Kettle, seems likely to return the presidency to its less-partisan past. The first indication of this, on Monday, was the fact that the council approved her new role unanimously, with no other nominees. Hollingsworth praised each of her colleagues in turn, including the absent Rivera: “There’s due diligence, and then there’s Councilmember Rivera diligence,” Hollingsworth said. (Rivera is known for asking questions about policies she opposes long after they’ve been thoroughly answered).
The second indication of the council’s more progressive makeup was the new committee assignments that the council also approved on Tuesday. While some committees will remain largely the same (Bob “permissive environment” Kettle will continue to lead the public safety committee, while Rob “Pothole King” Saka will continue to head up transportation), others are led by, and stacked with, the council’s progressives—Foster, Rinck, and Lin.
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Rinck, who previously headed up the Sustainability, City Light, Arts and Culture Committee, will now lead a new Human Services, Labor and Economic Development committee, with Foster as her co-chair. Housing, once lumped in with human services under the Debora Juarez- (and before her, Cathy Moore-) led Housing and Human Services Committee, will be part of a new Housing, Arts and Civil Rights Committee led by Foster, with Lin as her cochair. Lin will head up a reconstituted Land Use and Sustainability committee, with Strauss as vice chair and Foster and Rinck as members.
And the progressive triumvirate of Foster, Lin, and Rinck will all serve on two committees headed up by two of the council’s centrists—Saka’s transportation committee and Rivera’s Libraries, Education, and Neighborhoods committee. (See all the new committee assignments here).
On top of those changes—all standard after any election—the council is also going through a total staff reorganization, starting with the creation of a new executive administrator to oversee all council staff and serve as a kind of buffer between the council president and legislative staff, who include not just central staff but the city clerk, public disclosure officers, and IT and communications staff). Ex-council president Nelson announced the changes in late December, including the news that “as recommended by HR,” her own chief of staff, Jeremy Mohn, will fill the role on at least an interim basis.
According to a December 19 email from Nelson, the new administrator will “ensure continuity of departmental operations across CP administrations and allow for the Council President to better focus on governance and policymaking”; she added that council HR recommended appointing Mohn to the position “given his extensive familiarity with departmental processes and issues.”
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.”
If you’re still undecided about the Seattle City Attorney’s race, Seattle Nice has just the thing for you—an election debate, moderated by your three co-hosts, between incumbent Ann Davison and challenger Erika Evans!.The live debate was hosted by the Urban Community Councils of Seattle a couple of weeks ago and we’re bringing it to everyone in podcast form.
Some highlights:
City Attorney Davison thinks her “high utilizers” list of people who commit multiple misdemeanors is working to reduce crime; Evans disagrees. “We really are not seeing the people that we started the initiative with, people who had sometimes 40 referrals for theft, sometimes in one location multiple times a day.”
Evans disagrees, but says she’d maintain the list as a way of directing services to frequent offenders: “The people who are on this list are folks that are not competent to stand trial, folks that are dealing with substance use disorder, folks that are unhoused.”
Evans said she would file fewer cases against people for misdemeanor graffiti and theft charges and re-focus the city attorney’s office on more serious misdemeanors, like domestic violence and DUI. Last year, “60 percent of all cases set for jury trial were dismissed. And to be clear, as a prosecutor, your role sometimes is to dismiss cases if, if it’s an improper case, or if there’s issues with it, but 60 percent means that way too many cases are just being filed to get the numbers up.”
Davison said her focus on prosecuting offenses issues like graffiti and shoplifting contributes to a better climate for businesses. “We want to foster economic vitality. We need anchor tenants. We need small business, but we [also] need large anchor tenants to create that neighborhood of fostering of a small business environment.”
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Davison defended her decision to eliminate community court, a low-barrier therapeutic alternative that allowed participants to avoid charges if they took part in required services, including a life-skills class. Davison instituted a new “drug prosecution alternative” that is more stick than carrot, allowing people to escape charges if they take a substance abuse assessment and don’t get arrested again for 60 days. Community court, Davison said, “increased recidivism. It actually encouraged people to commit crime. So I pulled out from that.”
Evans countered that the new drug alternative doesn’t help people with addiction to recover. “Someone that’s smoking fentanyl, they have to go get an assessment …to tell them whether they have a fentanyl addiction or not. No treatment. It’s wasting resources, and it’s cycling folks in and out, and it’s not addressing what we’re seeing on our streets.”
Two notes about the recording: As we recorded, the Mariners were losing to the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, tying the two teams on the way to the World Series—hence the baseball talk. And due to a production error at the venue, Ann Davison’s voice is harder to hear than everyone else’s; please excuse the poor sound quality.
