I don't think you meant the 1500 block of Pine, Ansel.

Otherwise, yeah, this is bullshit showboating. That area is kind of messed up, but when was the last time you saw a cop on foot there? And even though there are no cops and a fairly open drug market, the area is not unsafe for the average person.

It may be safe for the average person*, but it's not inviting. If I was a business owner down there I'd be out there cheering on the cops right now too. Hopefully they do get most of the low level offenders into LEAD or another diversion program, but I don't think most people would have a problem with the cops cleaning up the area a bit.
Having an "open air drug market" in the same place as your retail core isn't sustainable. I know, I know, fuck the tourists and shoppers from Bellevue, but...I still think it's important to have a successful retail core downtown that doesn't make our city look like Skid Row (which actually gets the name from Yesler BTW).
*If it's safe for the average person, then who is it not safe for? The more vulnerable community? The tourist walking back from dinner? The dealers fighting over the turf?

Bu - but, shoppers from the Sammamish Plateau or Issaquah Highlands have vague feelz of apprehension when they go downtown and see so many non-white people just, you know, being there and all. If we don't sweep them off the streets periodically, they might not drive in to buy things at Bed, Bath & Beyond or eat at P.F. Changs.

You know how every spring, you have to clean the gutters out? This is maintenance; it's not installing gutter guard or cutting the offending trees down.

Junkietown has been at 3rd and Pike for 20 years. It will blossom again, never fear.

Ansel, re-read the article you linked. Beacon Hill does not rank #1 on all crimes. It ranks #1 on residential burglaries, a crime that obviously is going to be disproportionally uncommon in Downtown, an area where most homes are in high-rises. Downtown does, in fact, have the highest rate for the vast majority of non-property crimes.

This operation may well be too punitive, but you're doing your point a disservice by implying that 3rd & Pine is receiving attention only because of downtown business interests. Even putting aside crime stats, the sheer number of aid/medic calls to this area (check the public logs at Seattle.gov) shows how troubled this area is.

@1: O'Toole did in fact say 1500 block of Pine at the presser, so that was her bad not Ansel's. Yes, she meant 1500 2nd or 3rd.

One factoid that they kept trotting out was over 10,000 calls for service in the 9.5 blocks in 2014. That's barely more than 1% of all calls for service.

Anyone notice the new Buffalo Wild Wings at 4th and Pine? I'd rather have drug dealers there than shit like that.

@3:

Actually, the correct local designation is "Skid Road" NOT "Skid Row".

And what part of this area - with the exception of a tiny stretch of 3rd Ave - ISN'T a "successful downtown retail core"? You've got TWO major urban shopping malls, two major department stores, bars, restaurants, movie theatres, plus innumerable major retail establishments crowding every square inch of ground-level space; it's hardly a blighted area, despite what those people from the suburbs seem to think. So, clearly the activity of these people (which is generally confined to the bus stops on 3rd between Pike & Stewart and maybe a bit in Westlake Park) isn't that uninviting, otherwise why are so many thriving, successful businesses located in such close proximity?

@7, there's a new BW-3 in downtown ? Now our city is finally "World Class" and no NBA team needed!

On the topic of local businesses, this seems more like a proxy war between the one group of businesses (Pike Place, Starbucks, Macy's, The Gap, etc.) and another (Moneytree, McDonald's, various tobacco shops).

We all know why there's a Moneytree smack dab in the middle of the 3rd and Pine, and it's not for people who want spending money for Nordstrom.

#9

That could be...some days I envy the high turnover of clients in late model luxury sports coupes that visit the hookers in my apartment complex...calculating the transactions by the hundreds of bills passing hands.

It seems...so easy...when you have something to sell.

Oh, won't someone please please think about the poor defenseless criminals. Where will they commit their crimes now!?!

They will move 1/2 blocks outside the 9 1/2 blocks, then come back once the mayor's operation ends. In the meantime, Beacon Hill, where kids are being grabbed while walking to school, can wait and wait and wait whenever they call 911 for help. Because it's not important what you do to actually reduce crime, it's what you do to LOOK like you're trying to reduce crime, amirite?
BTW, did they see these harden criminals actually selling drugs or did they just sweep up anyone standing and walking while black?

@14:
"The arrests, dubbed “Operation Crosstown Traffic,” involved undercover officers who made 177 purchases of heroin, meth, marijuana, crack cocaine and other drugs from 186 street dealers. All of the transactions were caught on hidden cameras, police said."

So, no, they not just sweep up anyone standing and walking while black.

Locking them up does not work! Mr. Mayor expand and utilize the LEAD program which is effective in saving lives, saving tax payer money in the long run, and reducing recidivism among low level drug offenders.

@15: Is that from the police report? Because it's probably bullshit. SPD's undercover cops are thugs. And buy/busts are unconstitutional.

So is the preference that Westlake Park remains an open market to sell crack and meth? There aren't perfect solutions, but I'm surprised there's an apparent unwillingness to recognize there was a problem.

To whom should I write about this nonsense?

@spickles - I doubt there's a preference for Westlake Park to remain an open air market. Rather, there's a healthy skepticism about the city's approach and the sustainability of this approach once the initial flurry of press coverage is over with.

The problem has gone on for quite a while, and the mayor offered up some pretty lame excuses for waiting to address it until now. That doesn't help.

I've cut through Westlake Park fairly often running errands. I've seen the drug activity and smelled the pot. And frequently have noted the SPD officers, usually 2-3, standing together usually straddling their bikes (are they worried someone might run off with them if they park the bikes and walk around?), chatting at length with one another, including last weekend before the 100 arrests. Why couldn't they have been doing something last weekend? Years of watching them do nothing makes one rather skeptical.

They ought to leave the bikes back at the station - it's only a block further than my walk - and walk around the park and nearby blocks.

@NadgeTowne Doubt writing to someone would help. I've been trying to get the police to address an unrelated problem with the SPD since December. Frustrated with the SPD General Inquiry process, I then attempted to reach Chief O'Toole online about it more than 6 weeks ago (shortly after the Times article in which she touted her efforts to restore trust and transparency in the SPD). After no response, I wrote O'Toole and Mayor Murray via snail mail 3 weeks ago.

Still no response. I guess the Times article was just for PR purposes.

Another use of a militaristic approach to policing, instead of a more effective, and time tested commitment to daily presence and patrol.
How much would it cost to have two cops stationed at this intersection all day everyday.
After all, it is a major transportation hub for all of Seattle.

Some might argue that daily patrols would push the drug dealing elsewhere.
Anywhere else beside this crucial daily hub for commuters would be preferable.

There are plenty of cops available on Third Avenue, but they're all dedicated to arresting confused tourists who wind up driving during bus only hours for more than a block or two. I'm always tempted to tell them that the cops would leave them alone if they just parked their car and started selling meth on the sidewalk instead.

Is the program perfect? No. Is it working? So far, yes. The police have been way more present and active (like they should have been all along), and the open flouting of the law has stopped...for now.

More use of LEAD as promised would be good, but otherwise, there's no reason for hand wringing. Downtown was a mess. You can't - you just can't - let it be known that it's ok to break the law in the most visible part of the city. What message does that send?

From what I've seen, the drug dealers and buyers are mostly people of color. This operation probably does disproportionately impact them, probably because they're less likely to have the means to build a drug business in private like well-to-do white people can. It's unfair, but being poor is unfair. Life is unfair. Sorry. To let that fact stop the city from doing anything is painfully naive.

Again, that doesn't mean the city should not try to police with a goal of social justice, so it's disappointing to hear LEAD isn't more a part of the program. That's the only part of this article I agree with. The tone of the rest of it is silly.

Using the tunnel entrance by the McDonalds is pretty much out of the question these days. Glad to see the city is FINALLY paying attention to this.

@6: Right, that's 1% of 911 calls on .04% of the city's land area. I would call that disproportionate.

As for the big bust, sometimes you've got to do a deep clean before you can start maintaining. Unfortunately, they haven't been maintaining for a long time. As for the long-term efficacy of this approach (the other tactics like the storefront, physical changes to the urban environment) I'll take a wait and see approach.

Also, according to a recent Seattle times article, there were 180 violent crimes reported on the 1500 block of 3rd in the last year. That's nearly one violent crime every two days. On one block! It's not just a problem for tourists. It's a problem for commuters who don't feel safe in their own city.

Now are Seattle Police incompetent and corrupt? Probably. They let it get this bad, but O'Toole seems to be working hard to fix the department, and that takes time.

Being an ex junkie myself, yes locking them up is the best option for the time being. It keeps them safe and others safe. Has anyone looked at the stats on how many kids and adults are overdosing every day in the greater Seattle area? Also if you don't like the tourist or shoppers then why on earth do you live in Seattle? Those businesses contribute a lot of tax money that goes to ours roads and schools and detox wards of the police stations. Stop thinking about how it affects just the people in that area but all the families that are being tourn apart by the drugs coming out of that area. The fact that anyone would rather have drug dealers than a nice restaurant in their neighborhood is sad and disturbing!

Lead might have saved a close family member of mine. Count the dead from addiction.

"Kill the Messenger" (2014).

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2jbb90…

Cities all over the country have done this, focusing on high value retail and development areas for their 'crackdowns' instead of where the crime is actually going. And usually, its the city council (or their developer owners) clammoring for this. I call it "kick the homeless/browns/blacks out"-operation.

They did it in New York. They did it in DC. Theyve tried (and sort of succeeded) in Chicago, and theyre doing it in Seattle, Oakland, Minneapolis, San Jose, Denver, and Pittsburgh.

Police crackdowns are nothing more than "harass away the people of color" operations. Somewhere Sr Mayor Daley of Chicago is quoted saying that specifically, as if he was proud of it. Its how American cities work. And cities run by crooked developers, racist cops, and lapdog 'at large' politicians like Seattle are no different.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news…

Everyone at the Seattle Times appears to be singing the same hosannahs without realizing that the result is just a displacement of further drug dealing, mugging and related crime to the U-District & Capitol Hiill. Right next to Jack in the Box on the Ave you can get your crack in a box from dealers who jive the buses up and down the Ave, and they all have phones.

The heart of the problem is the American criminalizarion of pleasure that coincides with the wages of slavery; an impoverished class with a strong component that revolves in and out of jail for having no recourse to income but what the majority of society regards as criminal activity. It has been that way for a long time as the history of policing & American racism will tell you.

I got to know just a little about this when I published
DRUGS AND MINORITY OPPRESSION by John Helmer (1975)
http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.…

In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the "Slave Patrol" (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing "Jim Crow" segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.
http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/hist…
So, if the modern American police force was not a direct response to crime, then what was it a response to? More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to "disorder." What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19thcentury America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who

http://www.aphf.org/hist.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforc…

Address the root causes of petty crime and addiction instead of more jails and police. Causes? Poverty and an elitist and racist system as touched on by 33 and 34.
Criminalizing people further will only exacerbate these issues. Abusing people that are already abused is stupid and will come back to nail you. Its common knowledge among many now that the legal system is for the benefit of the rich and the rest of us are screwed. For now.