Last week, Mayor Ed Murray announced that he and the city's legal department would be moving to shut down all 11 hookah lounges operating in the city. Murray claims the lounges are illegal because of the state's ban on smoking in places of employment and that they are magnets for crime.

That's despite Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole's acknowledgement that bars also create issues of fights and violence. According to the mayor's office, police have responded to three recent homicides plus “more than 100 fights and disturbances connected to smoking lounges” since 2012. (It doesn't take much more than one Saturday night on Capitol Hill for 100 fights in three years to feel pretty underwhelming.)

When I asked the chief and mayor about the comparison between bars and hookah lounges at a press conference last week, Murray said: “If we have a bunch of Irish pubs in this city where young people are being shot and murdered outside them,” Murray added, “I’ll close them down. If it’s happening outside the Knights of Columbus club, I’ll close it down. What we have right now is a situation that is clearly connected to a certain type of business and we’ve got to act.”

Not everyone is convinced.

On Monday, hookah lounge supporters took to the city council's public comment period to complain that the targeted closure of hookah lounges is racially motivated. (To get up to speed, check out Josh Kelety's story on Publicola about backlash against the crackdown from the East African community.)

“Hookah lounges do not bring violence," one speaker said at Monday's meeting. "Violent people bring violence.” Another speaker called the lounges a "safe space" she seeks out when she doesn't want to go out to bars.

Gerald Hankerson, president of the Seattle-King County NAACP, decried an effort to "eliminate black businesses" amid widespread gentrification. He called on the city government to address systematic issues, including police reform and gentrification, before targeting hookah lounges.

James Bible, a lawyer and former president of the Seattle-King County NAACP, said during the public comment period that he is "forever confused about how Seattle chooses to apply the law" and that this effort is the “criminalization of black businesses." After about an hour of public testimony, Bible was the last speaker allowed to address the council. As he finished, the crowd in council chambers began chanting, "Black lives matter."

Council Member Nick Not-Running-for-Reelection Licata has joined in criticizing the policy. Monday, he sent the mayor a letter warning about "potential unintended consequences." Instead of moving to shut down the lounges, Licata asks Murray to "monitor establishments for the next 60 days to allow a report to your office and the council that would review the current crime data and the extent to which it is directly linked to any particular establishments." He also asks Murray to look at other cities that allow smoking lounges.

"Cities such as Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles have a number of hookah lounges," Licata writes, "despite statewide indoor workplace smoking bans. Can we learn anything from them?"

Licata sponsored the new rules that are allowing the city to shut down the lounges. Those rules were targeted at the soon to be extinct medical marijuana market, but also open the door for enforcement against these businesses, the mayor said last week. Licata encourages Murray to look at the "spirit" of his legislation before using it for a different kind of business than it was written for.

Licata, who's been on the council since 1998, also drops this history lesson on Murray:

I am interested in the data collected in support of your enforcement actions. Are the incidents inside the establishments, or outside; are the people involved connected to the establishments? I ask because in the late 1990s, data was used in a similar way toward R&B and hip-hop music establishments, with a tendency toward collective responsibility. Analysis of the data often did not support the claims. As a result we stopped the practice of focusing on nightlife establishments as a class and instead focus on individual establishments, when necessary. City government worked for many years to build trust and understanding with the nightlife community. This approach has allowed the city to effectively take enforcement action against bad actors, with the support of the nightlife industry.

I've reached out to the mayor's office for comment. Read Licata's full letter here.