The Seattle Times described the bust on May 4 as a major operation to sweep drug dealers off the streets of Pioneer Square, saying that undercover narcotics detectives rounded up 15 of the “most prolific sellers of crack cocaine.” A reporter and photographer joined the officers—posting their story even before the police issued a self-congratulatory press release. A picture of a black woman in handcuffs ran in the paper above a caption calling it a “bonus arrest.” Seattle’s sole daily newspaper spoke only to cops and prosecutors, who hailed the three-month investigation as an antidote to neighborhood complaints and portrayed the defendants as chronic sellers and big-time dealers. Seattle Times reporter Sara Jean Green didn’t talk to anyone else—such as experts on the impact of buy busts downtown—or examine police records to see just what sort of people were arrested.
There’s another side to the story.
Records obtained from the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office show that the 15 people were almost exclusively selling minute amounts of crack, had little or no money, and were overwhelmingly nonwhite (reflecting a racial disparity chronic to police buy busts in Seattle). These were small-time dealers. And local experts agree that sentencing them to prison won’t solve the problems of drug markets or drug use in Pioneer Square.
The total combined amount of crack on 14 of the defendants was only 3.1 grams—a street value of about $310. That averages about 0.2 grams per person. Only one defendant had a notable quantity of drugs or money: 4.85 grams and $583.76.
Of the 14 other individuals, only five had any cash on them whatsoever, other than the money that the undercover officers had given them. According to jail and police records obtained from the county prosecutor’s office, cash amounts on the defendants were $2.49, $2.62, $6.48, $61, and $392. The other nine had literally $0 on their person.
The sweep was conducted, the Seattle Times reports, “in hopes that prosecutors can successfully argue for stiffer prison sentences, taking the repeat dealers off the streets for up to five years,” according to a prosecutor assisting the Seattle Police Department (SPD).
The Seattle Times editorial board also chimed in: “Police and prosecutors going full throttle on drug dealers is encouraging. Bravo.”
But Lisa Daugaard, director of the Defender Association’s Racial Disparity Project, which has followed the city’s buy-bust operations closely for the last decade, says of the defendants: “If they sold drugs, it seems highly likely it was to make a few dollars so they could immediately buy more drugs for their own use. We should be able to address that problem humanely through a public-health strategy.”
Indeed, police records show the defendants were not drug-ring leaders, as the Seattle Times suggested by calling them “some of the… most prolific sellers of crack cocaine,” but unsophisticated addicts. One undercover officer—who repeatedly told the suspect, “Again, I am not the police”—reported that the suspect “continually asked me if he could have ‘just one hit’ from me.” The man was arrested for 0.4 grams of crack and had no money on his person.
Based on officers’ descriptions, seven of the suspects are black, five are Hispanic, two are white (although one of those may actually have been Hispanic, based on name), and one is Native American.
Chasms in racial disparity are typical of Seattle buy busts, historically speaking. While drug sellers are usually white, even in open-air markets, police disproportionately bust nonwhite suspects. Katherine Beckett, a researcher at the University of Washington, and three other researchers concluded in a 2005 study on drug arrests in Seattle: “This overrepresentation primarily results from law enforcement’s focus on crack users, and especially on black and Latino crack users.” They added: “We find that law enforcement’s focus on crack users does not appear to be a function of the frequency with which crack is exchanged, the concentration of crack transactions exchanges outdoors, or other race-neutral factors.” In addition, Beckett wrote in another report called “Race and Drug Law Enforcement in Seattle” in 2004: “By contrast, the SPD conducts very few operations in open-air drug markets where whites, and heroin, predominate.”
For this sweep, SPD captain Steve Brown said it was a way “to consider how best to disrupt the mechanism of the market.” The Seattle Times editorial board noted: “To reduce crime and a sense of menace downtown, busting repeat drug dealers in Pioneer Square could make a real difference.”
But it is unlikely to make any difference. We’ve been through this before—to zero effect. The SPD conducted a major drug bust in April 2009, netting 30 people. SPD declared on its website: “Belltown Drug Ring Smashed by Seattle PD.” Three weeks later, the Seattle Times talked to a neighborhood leader who said the “regulars” were already back.
“In the short term, I think it indicates a message to those openly dealing that there are going to be some immediate consequences,” says Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “Does that mean that they won’t be replaced with others? No,” he says. “They will be back.”
“Typically, there is no long-term impact,” says Daugaard. “The basic law of supply and demand drives other sellers into the same territory, which has been established as a site to purchase narcotics.” The handful of arrests, she says, “are a drop in an ocean.”
ACLU of Washington drug-policy director Alison Holcomb adds, “Scooping up street-level dealers simply creates job opportunities for younger recruits.”
There are other ways to handle open-air drug dealing, including programs that divert arrestees to treatment, warning suspects that they’ll be arrested if they don’t clean up their act, and a host of social services. (Goodhew, in the prosecutor’s office, says that the drug-market sweeps are a piece of that puzzle.) No one realistically expects drug busts to stop—crack is illegal, and people don’t want to live in neighborhoods overrun with crack dealers. But the Seattle Times‘ coverage sounds like the deluded propaganda from the 1980s that suggested that we could eradicate drugs through an ever-escalating drug war.
Why does the Seattle Times routinely hail the enforcement and leave out the rest of the story in its coverage?
“It seems obvious to me that there are other questions to be asked, and King County is rich in expertise in this area,” says Daugaard. “One would hope that reporters would avail themselves to those resources.”
Two Seattle Times editors, the reporter Sara Jean Green, the SPD, and community groups in Pioneer Square (who had complained about the dealers) did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 
I actually agree with a lot of what was written in the article, I just think the example of the PS drug bust was a bad one. The people arrested were not junkies, but an organized group of dealers that came into the neighborhood and preyed on many of its most vulnerable (addicts and mentally ill). If you ever go by the compass center on “pay day” when people get their government checks, you will see a line of low level dealers outside looking to get paid. PS is a neighborhood that law enforcement has too often ignored. My problem with the bust and the claim that it was a major operation is that it was the “runners” that got caught and not the larger dealer(s).
Why is a buy-bust operation even necessary in a place like PS where everything happens out in the open. It seems like a waste of police resources and it shouldn’t have to be a story in the Seattle Times or the Stranger.
You offered to tell the story behind the story, claiming the Seattle Times and SPD didn’t do an adequate job. I just think you were unfair to the Times and the SPD in this case and I expected more from the Stranger.
When there is a story to be written about the SPD (ie. the incident on Westlake) or the Times you ultimately lose some authority in my mind.
@61: This certainly should have been an article about the efficacy of certain law enforcement tactics, but I think it’s hard to dispute that the thrust of the criticism aimed at the current strategy is race related. To say that there was “a minor issue of race in a story that is overwhelmingly about something else” is a stretch considering that the arrestees’ race is repeatedly brought up and your two main sources were someone from the “Defender Association’s Racial Disparity Project” and a university study on racial disparity in drug arrests.
True, you do touch on the ineffectuality of such small-time/low-level arrests several times, but as I mentioned before (post 50) you offer no viable alternatives to this type of drug sweep, which make these more valid concerns seem like mere kvetching.
Regardless of your intent, this is indeed a race article. To harp on race as much as you did and then think that it’s not going to overshadow the remainder of your points (which were problematic in their own right) is naive.
THANK YOU for this article. It provides a more researched and less biased presentation of the drug bust that occurred in Pioneer Square. I haven’t been reading the Stranger lately do to a recent move. When I just happened to pick up this week’s edition and read your article, I was thoroughly impressed. This is the kind of writing that is needed in papers more widely read like the Seattle Times. Please continue what you are doing for this city. It is a very needed service.
Citing information from 2004 and not acknowledging that maybe the reason certain races are mentioned more frequently in the arrest reports (that the percentages of these arrests reflect accurately the overall racial make-up of the crowd which is seen in Pioneer Square) shows how closed minded and racist the author of the article is. What does the writer, Dominic Holden, expect the Seattle Police to do? Import a bunch of white guys into the arena which they are working so they can “even the numbers”? The only reason the idea of “racism” continues to exist in it’s past form is because some groups “need” it to continue to exist, as if for an excuse for any particular behavior.
It’s time the editors of the Stranger start reviewing their writers.
I have been threatened 8 times since I moved to Seattle 15 years ago. Only one of those times the person WASN’T black. White people make up around 85% of the population and blacks make up around 8%, right? Perhaps that is why people like me think that perhaps blacks being disproportiately arrested has nothin to do with white racism, but with black behavior.
“over a minor issue of race in a story that is overwhelmingly about something else. “
GREAT JOB proving beyond all doubt that you truly are a stereotypical reality-ignoring seattle libtarded “progressive”.
DID YOU EVEN READ YOUR OWN FUCKING ARTICLE?
The focus on Black and Hispanic crack users because WE the people don’t like the APPEARANCE of SCARY DRUGINESS. If all these people were getting high and ruining themselves in a flop house where no one ever saw them, if they never went out on the street, and never “bothered” anyone, we wouldn’t care.
We’d rather have the APPEARANCE of an effective drug policy than an actually effective drug policy. People don’t worry about people using crack. They worry about the crack head that THEY were inconvenienced by or made uncomfortable by, or accosted by. Fix that OUTWARD problem, this absurd logic goes, and you’re fixed the drug problem.
Decriminalize small-timers, focus on the big boys, provide REAL funding for substance abuse programs and holistic approaches to homeless and at-risk populations and watch what happens.
I grew up here and always thought that ignorant racists could never last in Seattle.
I also thought, how could anyone openly defend hate and loathing? Or why would anyone want to play compare the ethnic dehumanizations?
What I’ve finished reading bothered me to no end. The longest comment calls ‘my ethnic group’ The Blacks.
Funny, based on past results, we should all be afraid of white people. But we’re not, because many of us are still working overtime trying to get over being sold like cattle and perceived as wild, over-sexed beasts.
Martin Hickman…Dude, you’re a prick and I feel sorry for you.
Jane Doe, there is life outside of Bellevue.
But hey, we’re American. We’re free to let our freak flag fly.
FYI, when I sold drugs back in my youth, I scored from a well to do white guy.
I grew up here and always thought that ignorant racists could never last in Seattle.
I also thought, how could anyone openly defend hate and loathing? Or why would anyone want to play compare the ethnic dehumanizations?
What I’ve finished reading bothered me to no end. The longest comment calls ‘my ethnic group’ The Blacks.
Funny, based on past results, we should all be afraid of white people. But we’re not, because many of us are still working overtime trying to get over being sold like cattle and perceived as wild, over-sexed beasts.
Martin Hickman…Dude, you’re a prick and I feel sorry for you.
Jane Doe, there is life outside of Bellevue.
But hey, we’re American. We’re free to let our freak flag fly.
FYI, when I sold drugs back in my youth, I scored from a well to do white guy.
“Decriminalize small-timers, focus on the big boys, provide REAL funding for substance abuse programs and holistic approaches to homeless and at-risk populations and watch what happens.”
What happens is Vancouver, BC.
No thanks…
Ignant McNugget you are clearly a racist. And following your hate rant, have left most educated people with a very clear fact. You Sir (used very loosely in this case) are a living example of ignorant and are exactly the type us educated people (you know us, we don’t marry our family) refer to when speaking about closed minded people. I feel very sorry for you. Packs of people like you make me nervous, I get a little paranoid around all the white sheets.
Each read just follows a deeper path into hate and ignorance. I see mention of ‘Blacks and their never ending bs’ Wow.
I don’t care for fire arms personally but I keep them to protect myself and my family from some of you racists that have some misguided impression that I am less than you. Like perhaps my service to my country doesn’t matter as much. Perhaps you’re upset that I commanded you in action. Lets look past the degrees (plural), lets dig past the 6 figure income, lets move past the unmistakable fact that whatever woman you used to love is now with an educated, financially comfortable ‘black’ with all his bs, tailored suits and sports cars.
Do these things make me less than you?
Did I not hire you? If you live in my neighborhood or live in one of my apartments, you’re keeping all that hate speak to yourselves. COWARDS.
FYI, I am a black man and I have yet to meet every black person in this city or the world. Which makes me unqualified to speak of all black people. So the statement that white people are sick of the ‘blacks’ and their bs is proof of your ignorance. Unless you’ve met every white person and they’ve all concluded that all black people are loaded with bs.
FYI, most every human being has a bs section and they all smell the same.
Some of this ‘Free Speech’ should be prosecuted as hate crimes as it appears the statements are made to purposely make members of this city uncomfortable and fearful of whatever actions you may be capable of, since obviously you have difficulty forming complete thoughts into sentences. You shouldn’t drive or vote. But most importantly, please, please, please do not reproduce. There are no more vacancies in the trailer park.
Lastly, I feel sorry for your Mother.
ps- Kiss my entire penny.
I’ll gladly shut up if you promise not to reproduce and agree to clean up your meth labs when you’re finished. Do we have a deal?
@60: When the Pioneer Square residents’ group (actually the Fortson Square group) hung out that banner calling their area “Seattle’s Open Air Drug Market” & begging for arrests … SPD was working with the DEA & ATF on the most intensive undercover sting operation in years. Massive numbers of arrests were being made in PS over a 5 month period, in the middle of which the residents hung out their banner, and told reporters that the drug market was the worst they had ever seen. It is time for us to be realistic that this sort of enforcement is not going to succeed in shutting down drug markets. There are too many people buying drugs (including lots of middle class folks who come through looking to score) and we will never be able to afford enough police & jail cells to track down & bust everyone who sells and buys. We need to step back and try other approaches. We should take seriously the reality lived by those folks outside the Lazarus Center, what motivates them, what their needs are which they are trying to meet via drug use or dealing. Then we can address those needs and motivations, just like expensive private treatment programs do for more affluent addicts, without any sensationalized “crack downs” to “send messages.”
LIARS LIARS LIARS: you know what? Calling someone “racist” doesn’t prove your point. If you liberal cultural studies types are going to bring up race ad nauseam then you should be prepared to actually discuss the topic without resorting to calling us poor whiteboys “racist” then call it a day. get into it: like you do on the bus. If you’re going to call me a coward, (intellectually i’m assuming, since this is an internet message board) then enagage this topic on a genuine level. or perhaps, say RACISM, IGNORANCE, or most confoundingly: HATE.
That seems to be the big word with the left. Would you be sad if you realized i don’t hate you? Would that bum you out?
Sorry, even though you HATE me, i don’t hate you. Too many laughs.
“I don’t care for fire arms personally but I keep them to protect myself and my family from some of you racists that have some misguided impression that I am less than you.”
You keep firearms to protect yourself from the Stranger Slog contributors? Wow. If you are required to use that gun in self defense there is less than a 3% chance the person you will need to defend yourself against is white (although we make up 80% of the pop in Seattle).
Really, you are barking up the wrong tree.
And there is nothing I have read in the posts that could be prosecuted as hate speech. If you disagree you show me any statement which surpasses the 1st Amendment. Last I knew saying “blacks are disproporately involved in crime” is well within the legal definition of free speech, regardless of whether it is true or not. You also said it is prosecutable because it makes some people feel uncomfortable and is hateful. Same could be said about Louis Farrakhan and Jerimiah Wright and I don’t see there rights being taken away
bahahahaha this is my first time reading the comments on the Stranger’s site instead of just reading the hard copy. Hilarious. I love how some comments are “pulled” for “trolling” when 99% of the comments are trolling.
Dominic, you know the people you’re arguing with are just trolling you right? Nobody’s that stupid knee-jerk ridiculous racist (well almost nobody). You just gettin fucked with. Nobody pulling actual numbers and real studies could then come to such a braindead conclusion. You think the people at Fox believe their own stories? Someone with a motive (or just bored and whose already done some research on this) is having some fun with you, it kinda weakens your original work to stay in here and slug it out with the flamebait.
You wrote a good article, let it stand on its own. You can’t argue logic with people whose motive is just to draw you out instead of actually discuss and debate.
Again, good article. Think I’ll start f5ing this place more the trolls are somethingawful.com quality.
Back when I was buying drugs in Seattle, I bought them from white people, and you always went to their apartment, which was usually located in either Ballard or Capitol Hill (That was back before Ballard got all precious on us)
Of course, all I ever bought was pot, although my dealers usually had other stuff available (never crack, however).
I do know that a few downtown hotels used to have quite a cocaine problem in the management ranks, and a certain retailer’s ladies shoe department was heroin-centric for quite a few years. I am certain they didn’t buy their drugs on the street from black people, so I tend to side with Dominic on this one.
You poor simple creature (Mitchell). Have you thought that perhaps in defining an entire group of people as a color could also define how closed your mind is? I would never address my neighbors as ‘The Whites’ because that sort of speech is the bottom line for many of the real hard line racist in this country. Those with the need to categorize everyone into little boxes in order to make themselves feel better. Furthermore, I also believe that Farakhan is a racist hate baiter as well as Jeramiah. They too suffer from closed mind syndrome. The troubling aspect of this dialog begins and ends in statements pertaining to everyone being tired of the blacks and their bs. That statement by itself, all by it’s lonesome displays ignorance.Unmistakable, you ought to get hooked on Phonics ignorance.
Jane Doe, you seem so worried about defining who might threaten me as non white. Actually, the two people I have had to forcefully remove from my property were white. This doesn’t make me afraid of white people because I can realize that every person is different. I would hope that you wouldn’t try to break into my home or office but if you did, I would treat you exactly the same as any intruder.
As a property owner I am personally and financially invested in the communities that I reside and own real estate in. The nicer the area, the higher my rents, the greater my profits. I am a proud veteran who used his GI Bill and veteran assisted mortgages to provide for my family and generations of my family to come.
Due to my global travels I have come face to face with many uncomfortable, violent and ignorant adversaries. This experience has led me to understand the importance of an open mind in order to pursue a better, more profitable community capable of improving the quality of life for all of our neighbors which would in turn make this world a better place for our children to inherit. If you cannot wrap your mind around that objective, please leave our country. They will accept you in China or some other country where the line in the sand is more clearly drawn for an ignorant persons well being.( And yes, I have been to China )
And I still feel sorry for your Mother. I’ll bet she had greater hopes for you. That said, I would like to encourage you to return to school in order to obtain information which would in turn improve the quality of your life. I’d wager to say that if you spent a fraction of your passions learning that you do assuming you understand someone else, you might grow to understand yourself. That all alone will improve the quality of your life. (Jane Doe & Mitchell)
My fire arms are equal opportunity. A bullet has no preference. If you came into my house uninvited it would not pan out well for you, whether you are Jimmy Walker, Louis Farakhan or Newt Gingrich.
Ignorance has long been the kindling to a violent confrontation. If I know very little about you, I’m going to assume and since we’re all afraid of what we don’t know or understand the cycle continues. My fire arms are protected as I am a citizen of this country and I defend my person, property, family and country to the death. Exactly how our military trained me to do.
Get a life haters. Or have I created a new category for you? What? A right leaning conservative that actually loves his neighbors, fire arms, trees and has hope for this troubled world? I’m certain you didn’t think we existed but we do. Did I mention that I’m also one ‘Of Those Blacks with never ending problems and bs’?
My problems are defined in current bank rates, real estate values and evicting non paying tenants. Not exactly what you thought? Just pay your rent on time and I won’t evict you. I promise.
If “the other side of the story” is *not* the fact that police are exclusively targeting nonwhites in drug busts, it should be rewritten.
Holy shit. I’m with the others that said I didn’t think that racism was really an issue here in our part of the world. After reading the comments here it appears that assumption was wrong, though.
Personally, I agree with the article. Treating symptoms while ignoring the cause is usually a waste of time and money. Half-ass treating a symptom and calling it a triumph is even worse; it insults the intelligence of everyone reading it.
#43: “Also, I like how all the ignant-ass crackers commenting on this issue are anonymous, unregistered trolls. “
I’m fairly convinced that all those comments are coming from only one racist troll with a lot of time on their hands. They all bring up the same talking point and have a nearly identical writing style.
Good piece – thanks for adding to the debate. Do you know if the legislature ever expanded drug courts to allow low-level dealers as well as users? Seems like that would be the right place for these ‘dealers.’
It is a shame that people going to the many human service agencies and work release facilities in the area are forced to confront the temptation of falling back into drug use thanks to the proliferation of open-air drug markets in the area. It would be good if the market were moved out of Pioneer Square at the least, for exactly this reason, but I am not holding my breath….
Dominic,
Please respond to comment #50. It raised excellent points that I would like to see you address, rather than reading your responses to some of the obviously idiotic criticism here.
the interweb is CRAAAAZY.
Normally, I would be the first to attack an article with claims such as this one’s, but I commend Mr Holden for citing and linking to his sources… Keep up the good work, you may not have fully swayed me on the issue at hand (everyone in Belltown has had their own personal experiences with this issue), but you have my respect…
http://www.stories.pk i have visited to this site and found to get the interested site which is very impressive.
@28:
And if we can keep it among the darkies in Pioneer Square… all the better, right?
@95, 50
If you re-read the article, Holden’s main point is that the Seattle Times has bought into the story that was some sort of fantastic operation by the SPD that will significantly disrupt the drug dealing, when in fact plenty of evidence indicates that its effect will be minor at best. The argument that these were prolific dealers is countered by the paltry amounts of drugs or money that were on them at the time of their arrest.
They make it sound like they nabbed Pablo Escobar here, but in reality they caught 15 crackheads. Congratulations, SPD, you caught some crackheads that were too fried to spot a cop. Job well done. Drug problem solved in Pioneer Square. I guess we can start building those new upscale residences in the north lot.
I live in Pioneer Square and witness the dealing on a daily basis out of my window. From what I have witnessed most of the dealing is an organized effort by a group of yes, non-whites. They assign spotters, dealers, and those who carry the cash and drugs and like a well orchestrated square dance come together and disperse again every 10 minutes or so to pass the drugs or money around and limit the exposure any one dealer has to being caught. Thus I am inclined to believe the police that these were big time dealers even if they were not carrying large amounts of drugs or cash at that moment.