There certainly is a lot of hand wringing over this by TS. Regardless of how the council votes today I don't think it will make much of an impact but the hysterics are certainly entertaining and no doubt how they vote will come up again for the CM's seeking reelection during the campaign.

Sounds like we need to increase the budget for the judicial system so drug users and dealers can be prosecuted and jailed at greater scale.

So does the Council and the Stranger have an alternate suggestion?

Only in the Stranger’s telling does Seattle over-prosecute drug-related crimes. Everyone else just wants the public drug use, open-air drug markets, and drug-related thefts and assaults to end.

"By adopting the new law without any plan, the Council could cause havoc in Seattle Municipal Court (SMC)"

This seems concerning at first glance. But as Ashley explained just yesterday:

"prosecutors dismiss the vast majority of misdemeanor cases."

Accordingly, there is no reason to expect "havoc" in the courts.

“… Davison killed Community Court. That program helped resolve misdemeanor cases quickly, which connected people to services faster. At the moment, SMC can’t close cases as quickly as prosecutors file them, said Damon Shadid, a municipal court judge.”

Of course, the Stranger fails to mention Shadid was a Community Court judge when Davison dissolved that court. Obviously, there’s no reason to give readers that context.

Last year my bike was stolen from where it was locked outside my apartment. A few days ago I bought a replacement from REI. Last night I rode it around the neighborhood (U-District) for the first time and locked it up, with a heavy-duty cable, on the back porch.

This morning I awoke at 6 am to find it stolen. I had only ridden this bike once. And it was locked to the porch, for the first time, for less than six hours before being stolen. And this was a replacement for another stolen bike. WTF!!!

Drug addicts commit crimes every day in order to get money to buy drugs. Meth and fentanyl addiction are not victimless crimes! At this point I have really had it with the drug addict @$$holes who keep stealing my bikes. And breaking into my car. Lock them up already!!!

And if they get caught with meth or fentanyl again, lock them again! Rinse and repeat, over and over. Until they decide Seattle is not a good place to be a drug addict /criminal. I have absolutely had it with Seattle bending over backwards to be accommodating / welcoming to transient drug addicts! Enough!

So are Teresa, Tammy, Kshama, et al. planning on voting to buy me a new bike? They're all for green transportation, no? I am really beside myself right now, and I am about as liberal as they come.

Kshama, so enraged about dog poop (when it's on her lawn). Concern for working people, not so much...

Is this really surprising? Going in you knew there were 4 no votes so you only need one more vote from two of the most easily influenced members of the council in Strauss and Lewis and sure enough Lewis attempted to walk a fine line by agreeing with the legislation but voting no for now until we can stand up diversion which of course will be never. The only good news is in doing so Lewis pissed off everyone in D6 making his re-election campaign much more likely to fail and also reminding other voters that this council is still beholden to activists and special interests and could care less about everyday residents like @10. We started cleaning house in 2021 now it’s time to finish the job this year.

I’d also like to say that the fact members of the council are still calling in on Zoom for important debates like this is bullshit. I get not wanting to have to deal with Sawants manufactured outrage (sure sounds like a like of “public commenters” we’re reading from the same script) but people deserve to engage with their representatives. They need to get their butts into chambers. As for comrade Sawant she of course couldn’t help but take a final swipe at her colleagues, even those who voted with her, to demonize them while extolling her own virtues. In case you didn’t know @10 she only cares about one constituent, herself. Nov can’t come soon enough.

"allow the City Attorney's Office (CAO) to prosecute people for drug possession and public drug use for the first time in the history of the city."

The "first time in the history of the city" line is a bit misleading. The Seattle City Attorney did not previously prosecute possession, because this was within the scope of the King County Prosecutor. The legislation the Seattle City Council is considering merely harmonizes drug possession and public use with the existing allocation of responsibility between these offices (Seattle handles misdemeanors, King County handles felonies). Presenting this as some sort of groundbreaking development is silly.

This is awesome. Even better reading the comments from the "scared of cities" losers that think homelessness should be criminalized.

Whatever, this lasts 7 months tops until the new council members are sworn in after this November's elections since now it's going to be at the forefront of every campaign.

@14: Were I a betting man, I’d be willing to place a wager on most of the commenters here having lived in Seattle longer than you have, certainly collectively if not also individually.

And you give the game away with your flogging that cheap straw man, “criminalizing homelessness.” As readers competent in plain English already know, the problem is the drug use and actual crimes that go with it, like the hurtful theft you so callously ignore. Recriminalizing drugs is not good policy, but even in liberal Seattle, exhaustion with the endless violence and thefts emanating from the never-ending encampments has made palatable the thought of simply arresting and imprisoning most of the campers.

@16 -- The Stranger's preferred candidates got crushed in 2021, which they absolutely refuse to acknowledge. Had the council voted in favor of this proposed legislation last night, it's off the table as a campaign issue this fall. Now if they don't approve it before November, the council elections are essentially a referendum on decriminalization, and Mosqueda's opponents can bash her over the head with it in her King County Council race. We saw how that went in 2021: the voters hated the idea of decriminalization so much, Seattle now has a Republican city attorney!

The vote last night was stupid on the merits but even stupider politics.

@17
30 years in my case, thank you.
This vote was the last gasp of the liberal block before their terms are ending. Too bad the elections aren’t next month.
But more importantly, it’s just another sign of the dysfunctional Seattle government. The mayor and council are not on the same page - the council members want a coherent policy but don’t have one.
The council, mayor, and prosecutors are all going in different directions.

@18: “…the voters hated the idea of decriminalization so much, Seattle now has a Republican city attorney!”

TBF, the Stranger went for full-out abolition for all misdemeanors (DUI excluded), not just drug possession and use. Seattle’s voters might have been ok with decriminalizing drug use, but not prosecuting domestic violence was a deal-breaker.

The vote is understandable. The most important and maybe only legitimate role incarceration plays in the drug crisis is to force people into treatment. In that role, the science is well known. People faced with the choice between jail and treatment are ten times more likely to enter and complete treatment than those who enter voluntarily and the outcomes (both good and bad) are the same. It's pointless to use jail without treatment and just as pointless to have treatment without the real threat of jail.

I miss the sensible left City Council that just got stuff done, instead of dredging up bad ideas from the 1980s like they just tried.

Look, War on Drugs was a failure. Period.

One way to evaluate the claimed flood of new misdemeanor possession charges is to review pre-Blake data on the KCPAO portal (https://kingcounty.gov/depts/prosecutor/criminal-overview/CourtData.aspx).

In the two years immediately proceeding the Blake decision, SPD referred an average of 52 monthly potential felony* drug cases to the King County Prosecutor. This is for ALL drug cases, not just possession. On average, the King County Prosecutor filed charges in just 22 cases per month for felony drug referrals from SPD during this time period. Again, that is ALL drug cases, not just possession. So, the majority of referrals were not charged, and the number of charges filed is relatively small (In this time period, the monthly average of filed cases in all categories from all agencies is 484 case per month).

Seems to me like we should not expect a substantial change in the number of possession charges filed, which have historically made up just a small percentage (less than 4%) of the volume of criminal cases pursued in our courts. If you disagree, I'd love to hear your reasoning.

*Remember, this all stared because simple possession used to be a felony, which the Washington Supreme Court struck down in Blake.

18 for the win.

This is inexplicably tone deaf and out of touch politics- and #16, there was a time when TS did have a major influence on elections. Then two things happened: no more print edition so casual browsing in cafes, etc. stopped - the only folks now reading TS are either in lockstep or come for the laughs; second, effectively no more actual journalism, just blogging/activism (e.g., 2021 endorsements, labeling anyone who votes against their chosen candidates "conservative" [which is tbh, amusingly stupid].

"And Manion’s bill might not end up amounting to much, after all. Under former Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, the office rarely prosecuted anyone for only carrying a small amount of drugs back when that crime was a felony. And for the moment, booking restrictions at the King County Jail prevent holding people for nonviolent crimes, such as drug offenses, said Noah Haglund, spokesperson for the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. "

In other words, this ordinance would hardly have reignited a blazing war on drugs.

I'd guess that pretty much everyone commenting here could give a fuck about whether people actually use drugs or not. What we DO care about is the antisocial destructive public behavior and the property crime that goes with drug use, and the very real possibility that by being the most lenient place in the country, we'll attract a never-ending supply of new addicts.

We absolutely need treatment for everyone who wants it, and it should cost them nothing. But that alone will not solve the problems coming from the sheer number of users. I suspect we would all agree that it normally takes several attempts at treatment for someone to get clean. And they also have to decide that they are going to do so. In the meantime, we're dealing with the collateral consequences of peoples' decisions to use.

If the Stranger has a practical way to deal with those issues that doesn't depend on waiting until each and every addict decides on their own to clean up their lives, I'd love to hear it (spoiler alert - they do not). But FFS let's not put out the welcome mat for people who would like to live the fentanyl life and show up here because they would get arrested other places.

@23: Yeah, enacting the EHT, saving the Showbox, defunding the police — whatever happened to the Council’s solid record of accomplishment?

Well, it sounds like Lewis opposed it for different reasons than I do. But we came to the same conclusion, and that's a tiny sliver of harmony. I'll take what I can get.

“The most important and maybe only legitimate role incarceration plays in the drug crisis is to force people into treatment. In that role, the science is well known .” @22 Would you share the research? Anecdotally that wasn’t my experience and I’ve read mixed information. I’ve never seen the 10x statistic. Thanks