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In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

252 points by mitchbob 7y ago

sprafa 7y ago
So same as Portugal has been doing for decades - decriminalise small use and treat it as a public health problem instead of making average citizens into criminals. Portugal has a lot of bad things to it, but having no war on drugs has made it into one of the most peaceful countries on earth. And marijuana usage is pretty low, Last I checked. Why? Probably because it’s not a special thing. I’ve always pondered why they only did it there, and I’ve been routinely disappointed to move to the Uk and understand how horrible the drug problem is here. People take ketamine and OD in toilets here.
- allana 7y ago
  Washington State is one of the heaviest users of legal marijuana: https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/sewage-testing-in-washington-confirms-rise-in-marijuana-use-1691682/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/sewage-t... I doubt we will ever reach Portugal's low levels of use, but people can lead happy & productive lives while having chemical dependencies. The UK's war on drugs and party culture surrounding ket and others is kinda sad to watch :c
  - proverbialbunny 7y ago
    Portugal's use spiked up in the same way for a few years before ramping down. Most places who legalize experience the same sort of spike then a reduction.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Is it the same thing? The article is about just not enforcing the law. Portugal changed their laws.
  - sprafa 7y ago
    Well my impressions is that they de facto trying to adjust while keeping de jure the same situation. I did not read the whole article however, just skimmed it as fast as I could.
allana 7y ago
As much as the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the local Sinclair affiliates might scream that Seattle is wrecked, people and businesses are still moving here, our economy is growing, and massive redevelopment is occuring. One other place to pay attention to is Shelton, WA, they have a very interesting communal approach to homelessness and providing services, which has built a strong community that wooed some of my friends to buy and retire in Shelton.
- throwaway827364 7y ago
  People move here and the economy is growing because of tech. Do any of these employers support the city of Seattle’s policies on allowing people to openly shoot up in the streets?
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    The fact is that visibility is the first step to recovery. You can arrest them, hide them or try to move them around but it doesn't change the fact that they exist. It just makes it so you don't have to look at the problem, which is really the American thing. Better to hide the problem than solve it. These kind of efforts take time to take root. As people do things like this in public, that means more opportunity for social services to reach out and try to solve the problem. In 10-15 years you'll see drug usage rates drop as addicts can seek help for their problem without vilification or risk to having their lives destroyed.
  - allana 7y ago
    Its significantly safer than San Diego & Irvine IMO, both of which still criminalize homelessness and have had Hepatitis outbreaks due to these ineffective policies. Google, Apple, Expedia and Facebook are each building and hiring thousands here in Seattle, our homeless are significantly less aggressive than those I encounter in California.
  - entropea 7y ago
    You sound like you walk around in daylight just seeing people shooting up on every street. Its absolutely not true. Its actually really tough to find someone shooting drugs unless you're really looking at night hours. It's honestly not as big of an issue as Sinclair makes it out to be.
taurath 7y ago
Interesting take on the situation - one key difference is I don’t feel any less safe now than 10 years ago walking around. I DO see more “open” use, and people walking around obviously on something, especially by the homeless (which makes sense even if they’re not using at a higher level). I don’t see the social services much though. IMO they could use more visibility. The prevailing opinion seems like we do “nothing”. I’d like to see the stats on mortality and quality of life to those that get treatment though. It can’t be worse than locking nonviolent people up.
- allana 7y ago
  We don't have sufficent funding of social services to provide navigation teams and counselors to all of the visibly homeless (those you see on the street), never mind the thousands living in their cars in Seattle (the invisible homeless). Seattle is doing what it can, but we need state and federal action to go further. We can't single handedly solve the severe wealth stratification that is worsening day by day :c
  - empath75 7y ago
    or you know, Amazon and Microsoft could throw in some cash.
    - allana 7y ago
      Microsoft advocated for a tax on very large companies to fund social services to break the cycle of poverty leading to lack of opportunity for our youth: https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2019/07/21/amazon-microsoft-back-higher-education-tax.html https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2019/07/21/amazon-m...
      - sukilot 7y ago
        Microsoft's CEO lobbied for a progressive income tax that mountain residents voted down.
- _jal 7y ago
arikr 7y ago
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opinion/sunday/opioid-crisis-drug-seattle.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opin... This link above might bypass the paywall.
daenz 7y ago
TLDR: by letting mentally disturbed addicts roam the streets with impunity, shunning social services, assaulting toddlers[0]. 0. https://mynorthwest.com/1458667/seattle-offender-coffee-toddler-calderon/ https://mynorthwest.com/1458667/seattle-offender-coffee-todd...
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  “Some of them, I’m sure, are good people.”
dymk 7y ago
I am just astounded that this is being spun in such a positive light. It absolutely has had a negative impact on public safety here. They're offered public services, and they refuse them, because many of our "tiny villages" have no-drug-use policies, which they will not abide by. My city has one of the worst problems with repeat violent drug addicts in the nation (perhaps aside from the Bay) and yet we refuse to jail those who attack members of the public. Just a few weeks ago we released a known violent repeat offender who four days later tossed a hot coffee on an infant. Up in Ballard we released a guy who then chased people down with a pitchfork. Another is intent on assaulting the new Park Couriers who's job it is to keep people from open-using heroin in our public parks. There's a guy down at an I-5 onramp in downtown who keeps trying to throw small women off the overpass. He keeps failing at doing so, and the cops say "Can't do anything, he hasn't actually thrown somebody off". I guess we'll just wait until he succeeds. Oh well. I guess we'll just keep pointing these people towards social services, which they'll refuse again, lock them up for some token amount of time, and wait for them to harm the public again.
- trentnix 7y ago
  Often reality doesn’t fit the narrative, comrade.
  - dang 7y ago
    Maybe not, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
- taurath 7y ago
  Do you have any statistics to back that up (violence rate)? I don’t feel like anecdotes make for good conversation here.
  - allana 7y ago
    They don't have statistics to back their position, this attitude of not working from the data we have is such an issue that it has become local satire in Seattle: http://theneedling.com/2019/02/05/magnolia-named-worlds-most-dangerous-neighborhood-by-magnolia/ http://theneedling.com/2019/02/05/magnolia-named-worlds-most...
thomascgalvin 7y ago
> In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs. It is relying less on the criminal justice toolbox to deal with hard drugs and more on the public health toolbox. America's puritanical urges result in more self-harm than anything else. So much of the way our nation is structured is based on some ancient idea that you have to live clean and work hard in order to get to heaven. That is combined with a sense of justified sadism: if we catch someone not living up to these ideals, it is appropriate to punish them, and appropriate to take pleasure in punishing them. The War on Drugs was never about public health. It was about 1. controlling minorities, and 2. moral superiority. So there's absolutely no surprise that a health-based approach is showing better results than a punishment-based approach.
- JamesSchriver 7y ago
  That's rather condescending and ignorant. It has nothing to do with puritanical urges, it has to do with personal responsibility and everyone being responsible for their own actions, which results in having to suffer the personal consequences without having the right to impose oneself on others by one's own choices in life. Unfortunately, this whole drug situation in the USA has gotten, like many things, totally out of hand through gaslighting abusive actions by those who claim to want to "help" and make things better, but instead have nothing but a record and history of making things worse, which they immediately sweep under the rug the second even they can't ignore their constant, repeated, and typical failures. What this "caring" approach smells of to me is a kind of stasis, where the helper-syndrome types get to feel good about themselves, while getting rich as org directors, and also normalizing drug cartel operations. The Drug cartels and organized drug criminals are actually a real domestic terror and civil threat to society and communities as they kill and destroy lives by the hundreds of thousands and devastate lives by the millions every single year. I do agree that throwing users in prison is nonsense, even though often ( and I know people who can attest to this ) it is the thing that saves them from the drug and it also leads to users giving up people on the chain towards the sources of the chemical warfare that is waged on the American people. I also agree, this whole cottage industry of drug related careers and fortunes, whether it's NGOs or DEA, is an utter mess and corrupted. What really should be happening is that all drug producers, smugglers, transporters, and dealers be declared the perpetrators of crimes against humanity that they are and they should be treated like the enemies in war that they are, as they engage in chemical warfare that kills 80,000 people every year and destroys millions of lives and families and pillages billions and trillions of dollars. It should be a scorched earth tactic against smugglers, dealers, and producers ... a merciless, ruthless, hunt for these people that are then erased as the war criminals and pestilence on humanity they are ... the mass murderers they are. But that's from someone that actually hates the misery and suffering and death that drugs cause. I do not get the sense that most people actually care one iota about the 80,000 people that die every year, not to count the thousands who commit suicide due to addiction. All those who do not want to end it once and for all with direct, hard, and merciless action are complicit in and guilty of supporting the murders by the drug cartels and criminals against humanity.
koolba 7y ago
> “You’ve got a guy shooting heroin on the street, and the cop is supposed to say, ‘You O.K.?’” grumbled one law enforcement officer in Seattle. (In fact, an officer would typically confiscate the heroin, admonish the user and move on.) Some residents worry that when the city ignores its own laws on the books and tolerates people openly abusing narcotics, it takes a step toward incivility that will eventually result in chaos and crime. There’s also a legitimate argument that the threat of prison is sometimes necessary to motivate users to participate in treatment programs. What non-drug user would want to live in a town where someone shooting heroin in public is not removed from the street? I know I wouldn't. I'm not saying lock em up and throw away the key but you can't just move on and pretend nothing happened. If you're going to provide treatment in lieu of jail time then it needs to mandatory.
- phil248 7y ago
  What does confiscating an addict's heroin accomplish? As far as I can tell, all you've done is make a desperate addict far more desperate than they were a moment ago. The situation is only made worse.
  - diydsp 7y ago
    One could say it incentivizes them to keep it at home, out of view of minors.
    - crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
      Hiding the world from our children instead of letting them see how awful the adults have made it is dishonest, at best. I prefer to teach kids how to find compassion for people in such situations.
      - sempron64 7y ago
        Do you have kids? If you let them near active drug users as an object lesson, you need CPS called on you.
hprotagonist 7y ago
Gloucester, MA has been doing this for at least 4 years. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jmaxj7/this-new-england-town-has-a-groundbreaking-new-way-to-deal-with-opioid-overdose-506 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jmaxj7/this-new-england-t...
nostromo 7y ago
... this is probably news to people actually living in Seattle. (Edit: the title was originally, "Seattle Has Figured Out How to End the War on Drugs") A place where meth heads attack people with pitchforks in the street a few days after being released from prison on a suspended sentence. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/man-accused-of-trying-to-attack-strangers-with-pitchfork-outside-ballard-post-office/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/man-accused-... Not to mention our random piles of used syringes, which are often found in parks where kids play. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/more-than-32000-syringes-collected-in-pilot-needle-program/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/more-than-3... Here's a syringe pile after cleaning up a homeless camp north of Seattle: https://2qibqm39xjt6q46gf1rwo2g1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/9061386_web1_M-Needles-1-EDH-171024.jpg https://2qibqm39xjt6q46gf1rwo2g1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... I'm all for decriminalization, but Seattle's current approach is to decriminalize not only drugs, but a host of other actual crimes, like public intoxication, public camping, shop lifting, harassment, etc.
- diydsp 7y ago
  >meth heads >>Man accused Is there a specific name for this particular type of generalization where a one-time event gets represented as a greater-than-one quantity?
  - isbjorn16 7y ago
    Hyperbole?
- allana 7y ago
  Yet "Moms for Seattle" can't be bothered to take a real photo of homelessness affecting Seattle's parks :c Those advocating for harsher handling of homelessness in Seattle have repeatedly shown themselves to be incompetent and callous. It'd be great if they could make an effort, like actually voting, rather than phoning it in and throwing money at blatantly photoshopped mailers.
  - rdtwo 7y ago
just_lurkin 7y ago
The reporters designation of "figured out" seems to stem more from the fact that the solution fits his own view than any actual real evidence. There is mention of the difficulties such lax policies has brought to the city, but they are waved away as being "growing pains" toward a new utopia. I can't say, living here, that I feel that the problem is solved. I view the needles outside my apartment as evidence to the contrary - though I suppose I'm an ignoramus for thinking that. Simply strolling through Pioneer Square or most parts of International District paints a significantly different picture. One can dine at a Chinese place on Jackson and look out their window and see junkies peddling stolen goods at the bus stop. The non-enforcement of so-called "petty crime" used to fund drug addictions is egregious and continues to undermine the already little sense of community there is in this city of transients. What I'm trying to say is that while I appreciate the difference in approach from the traditional one, I do believe that there needs to be an honest discussion about the limits of rehabilitation. More research on the subject, as it relates to Seattle, shows that there are many, many, people who take advantage of these lax policies to abuse the system, hurting others who actually need help.
- news_to_me 7y ago
  Do you think there would be fewer needles outside your apartment if we simply locked these people up? I think there would be more. I agree that the limits of rehabilitation need to be seriously considered, and that good policy requires a mix of approaches. That said, all of your arguments could be applied to alcoholics during prohibition. I think if we actually want a sense of community in this city, it starts by treating our neighbors as humans. These drug users are your neighbors. What are you doing to help them?
  - rdtwo 7y ago
    If my neighbor beat his wife, damaged my car and pissed on my house I would do exactly what ever good neighbor should- call the cops and make sure they have enough evidence to send his ass to jail. The problem is when the cops don’t come then what do you do?
    - 7y ago
caiocaiocaio 7y ago
Hmm, a headline with an extreme claim that seems completely unbelievable to anyone in the Pacific Northwest? I'm sure this is a legitimate article headline and not just clickbait, so I'm going to move my mouse cursor right on up there, expecting a rewarding, enlightening, and satisfying use of my time.
kerng 7y ago
Wow, Seattle has turned worse over the last few years. At some parts downtown its nearly as bad as SF. I don't think Seattle has figured out anything...
throwaway827364 7y ago
This article is disingenuous at best. I don’t support the war on drugs, but Seattle’s handling of the situation isn’t close to a model for other cities. As someone who lived here all my life, it’s been a complete disaster. I’m frankly really disappointed in the NYTimes for publishing this garbage. He doesn’t go into the negatives of what the policies in Seattle has done to the city until so far later in the article. The local officials are very lax on drug use, homelessness. We have entire tent cities. Petty crime is pretty high. The police won’t bother to respond if you report a car break in, for example. There’s trash littered on practically any street that has tents. Some of these folks are addicts and some aren’t but to say Seattle has solved this problem - you mean we just ignore laws and allow anyone to do whatever they want. Repeat criminal who was arrested last week? Here, we’ll keep you for an hour maybe and you’ll definitely be out by tomorrow. I’m not advocating jailing all drug use so private prisons get rich, but Seattle’s extreme leftist take on pretending like the problem hasn’t been a disaster for the city is just absurd.
- thatswrong0 7y ago
  Sounds just like SF, and it's a large part of the reason I want to leave the west coast entirely and go somewhere with more sane policies.
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    If you think the west coast has insane policies, then you should really try living elsewhere for a bit of perspective. I've lived in WA, CA, VA and TX. No state has sane policies and the more I've moved, the more I've realized this. WA still ranks at the top of my list for states to live in.
    - thatswrong0 7y ago
      Noted! Though I've lived in NYC before, and I think it has, at a glance, pretty sane policies for a giant diverse city (though I could be totally wrong!). It felt a lot safer there than it does in SF on a day-to-day basis. That's where I was planning on going.
phil248 7y ago
"Still, it shocks many Americans to see no criminal penalty for using drugs illegally" It only shocks Boomers. Their only answer to 'crime' was to keep making laws harsher until all the jail cells were full. Then to build more jail cells. There's no need to have criminal penalties for drug use in the first place. What we want less of isn't drug use, it's the anti-social behaviors and health issues that often stem from drug use. Look at the other comments here - no one is upset with the mere ingestion of substances, they are complaining about the behaviors they see on the streets. Behaviors that impact the rest of use negatively. And we all know that a lot of that behavior has nothing to do with drug use in the first place. But it's a lot harder to deal with the behavior issue because then you're dealing with things like mental health issues and large-scale economic issues, on top of drug abuse. It's so much easier to just use drugs as a scapegoat and start locking people up. Like the Boomers did! But we know that doing so is monumentally stupid and ineffective so we need a different way. Props to Seattle for trying a different way, but just as we've seen here in SF, these half-assed measures do as much to encourage anti-social behavior as they do to mitigate it. I think these West Coast cities being besieged by the nice-weather homelessness epidemic (and associated drug use) are going to have to come up with something a little tougher than what they've found the political will for so far. But we also have to acknowledge that we can't, won't and never should return to the idiotic War on Drugs.
synack 7y ago
Anecdotally, Seattle PD has been more aggressive about going after dealers in the last few months. This has led to more turf wars between gangs and a spike in gun violence in parts of the city as they fight to fill the power vacuum. Not great, but it does indicate that the police have put a dent in the distribution network.
RocketSyntax 7y ago
"Increasingly there is global recognition that drugs are better addressed as a health challenge than as a law enforcement issue." That's pretty rad.
eweise 7y ago
A trick for getting by the paywall is to click the "stop" button on the browser before the page fully loads.
rdl 7y ago
Whoa. Using Seattle as a positive story in the war on drugs seems...highly questionable. The city has been essentially destroyed by junkie infestation, enabled by (possibly well-meaning) people.
- redisman 7y ago
  Yeah really. I urge any city leaders who read this to spend a day walking around downtown Seattle to see what "figured it out" means.
- whateveracct 7y ago
  Seattle is far from "destroyed." There are obviously issues, sure. But this smells like hyperbolic political rhetoric to me and I don't appreciate it.
  - whateveracct 7y ago
    All this sort of hyperbole does is breed hate for other human beings. Not what we need.
RickS 7y ago
As a resident, Seattle's drug policy seems okay. I think the goal of harm reduction, trust building, and getting people back on track is a laudable goal. People need a pathway back, not to keep being kicked down. But we need higher standards about the anti-social behaviors that are comorbid to drug use. The problem isn't that people are on narcotics. It's at least _possible_ to be a functional member of society while on opiates, and I don't think someone should be wrung through the legal system for having the wrong things in their blood for a bit. The problem is tent cities burning trash under the overpass. Lines of disheveled camper vans near the shopping centers draining their sewage into open buckets on the street (thank god they're kind enough to use a bucket) Panhandlers harassing residents at such scale that all but the most resilient citizens grimace at the thought of walking through their city center. Some of these people seem not to have drug problems at all. I'm okay with low standards about drug policy enforcement, so long as it's coupled with high standards about behavior in the public space. It's the second half that Seattle has yet to solve.
- sukilot 7y ago
  Seattle needs more public dumpsters and sewage receptacles for non-landowners/land-renters. When London was covered in rivers of shit in the 19th Century because there was no sanitation infrastructure, was that because the citizens were anti-social criminals? Or was is a societal problem that needed a funded solution?
mmilano 7y ago
Haven't been here a while and the first 2 links I clicked are walled. Seems like shilling sites to the front-page of HN might be a decent business.
dang 7y ago
Since people are objecting to "figured out", we replaced the title with a more neutral sentence from the article body.
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/xMFni http://archive.is/xMFni
dcolkitt 7y ago
I fully support legalizing all drugs, but don't understand why the latest wave of criminal justice reform tolerates property crimes. Crimes like smash and grabs, purse snatching, bike thefts, vandalism, littering, and shoplifting clearly have defined victims and lower the quality of life for everyone. It's perfectly possible to be a heroin addict and an upstanding citizen at the same time. The same cannot be said of a bike thief. The vast majority of even hardcore homeless drug addicts do not engage in malicious property crimes. It's only a small fraction, that also tends to be the most violent and socially pathological. Vigorous enforcement of property crime improves the life for everyone in the city. Doubly so for the otherwise law-abiding drug users, who most often bear the worse brunt of the anti-social property criminals. The best way to sell drug policy reform to law and order conservatives is to redirect those resources to non-victimless crimes. Not just throw your hands up in the air and give up on enforcing any laws whatsoever.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I would need quote on the 'vast majority' claim. You can't leave a bike for 10 minutes in downtown Seattle for a reason, homeless heroin addicts gets their drug and resource to procure those drug _somewhere_.
  - sukilot 7y ago
    I have left my bike unlocked, and even my automobile unlocked with its keys in it, many time and never been burgled. (Once in Boston my bike accessories were stolen off my bike.) Even if every bike is stolen by an addict, that doesn't mean most addicts are doing the stealing.
- jimbob45 7y ago
  Yeah I'm not sure I get it either. The problem was that throwing heroin addicts in prison for 5 years doesn't rehabilitate them or solve anything. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be held liable for crimes they commit while high.
- jbattle 7y ago
  The alternative is often vigilante justice, which is worse for everyone. Apparently the 'coffee throwing guy' was beaten by the child's father after he threw coffee - certainly an understandable reaction from a father who saw his child assaulted. But that's going to leave a mark on everyone - Calderon included
cabaalis 7y ago
I'm not a statistical expert. Can someone who is comment on how the population selection exclusions described below may or may not effect the results? > This evaluation included 318 adults who were suspected of recent violations of the uniform controlled substances act (VUCSA) and/or prostitution offenses and were deemed eligible for LEAD by arresting officers. Individuals were ineligible for participation if any of the following exclusion criteria applied: a) the amount of drugs involved exceeded 3 g (all drug classes were eligible); b) the suspected drug activity involved delivery or possession with intent to deliver and there was reason to believe the suspect was dealing for profit above a subsistence income; c) the individual did not appear amenable to diversion; d) the individual appeared to exploit minors or others in a drug dealing enterprise; e) the individual was suspected of promoting prostitution; f) the individual had a disqualifying criminal history (i.e.,conviction for murder 1 or 2, arson 1 or 2, robbery 1, assault 1,kidnapping, Violation of the Uniform Firearms Act 1, sex offense, or attempt of any of these crimes); g) within the past 10 years, the individual was convicted on a domestic violence offense, robbery 2,assault 2 or 3, burglary 1 or 2, or Violation of the Uniform Firearms Act2;or h) the individual was already involved in King County Drug Diversion Court or Mental Health Court. Source: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/6f124f_f4eed992eaff402f88ddb4a649a9f5e6.pdf https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/6f124f_f4eed992eaff402f88ddb4... From a layman's perspective, my question is would the exclusions shown above favor inclusion of people less likely of recidivism?
AcerbicZero 7y ago
lol the passed out addicts I pass every day, the piles of needles, the shit, the broken car windows, and the constant sound of either police or ambulance sirens would beg to differ.
coldtea 7y ago
Sure, since this "rule of law" thing is going so well for the city /s
ndarwincorn 7y ago
> “You’ve got a guy shooting heroin on the street, and the cop is supposed to say, ‘You O.K.?’” grumbled one law enforcement officer in Seattle. As progressive as some are here, the NIMBYism (see other locals that this opinion piece has riled up in the thread) and bad apples on the police force spoiling the whole bunch are just as bad as anywhere else. Another anecdote to add to the quote: walking up 12th Ave (Cap Hill) midday on a Sunday, some friends and I passed by a dude sleeping or passed out on the sidewalk and two oncoming walking cops simultaneously. One looked down and asked, "rough night?" and laughed with his partner. In case it's not clear, this wasn't a friendly offer of assistance, this was a drive by insult (they didn't break stride at all) that made it clear that if it weren't for progressive laws about occupying public space they'd be violently removing the guy from the sidewalk.
- ndarwincorn 7y ago
  For folks down this far, the prevailing hive mind in this thread is why when someone asks what I do for work here I try to distance myself from the rest of you as far as I can.
  - asdfgasd 7y ago
    I fully agree with you. This insane attitude of "my ill-gotten capital is worth more than your existence" is pathetic and sad.
    - ndarwincorn 7y ago
      Thanks man. What's especially insane about it is that most of the folks commenting and voting are members of the working class. Sure, they might have ill-gotten capital in the form of a deed (ignoring the likelihood that there's a lien on that deed) on a tiny parcel of stolen/colonized land or vested stock in the monopolist they work for, but that's a pittance in the scheme of things. They still need to sell their labor in order to meet their needs for food, shelter, community participation, etc. We need to find a way to reach these folks. Because this thread is evidence that they think they're significantly different from the people without housing they see on the street here every day.
pgnas 7y ago
Seattle is a poster child city for what NOT to do. Your politicians need to take their experiments someplace else. I was horrified at how terrible that city has become since I last was there. Now, if i go there, you are allowing these drugged out zombies to steal from me and harass me? I don’t understand, I really do not.
djsumdog 7y ago
There is a lot going on in these comments. I feels like I've stepped back into /r/seattle (where redditors of Seattle seem to just hate all homeless people). There is a lot going on here. First, there are a lot of homeless. Housing is sky rocketing and many people cannot afford to live anywhere close to where they can find work. The tech community there basically waves there hands and just says, "You can't afford to live here as a barista, well then you just gotta do the 1~2 hour bus/car commute in order to make me coffee. Sucks to be you." Many of the other issues people are listing, aren't about drugs. They are about the homeless. Second, people are talking about the other petty crime that goes with drugs: people stealing to get money for drugs. Violent crime and theft certainly don't need to be normalized. Chicago's recent DA's office has been criticized of not being hard enough on kids who commit crimes; which leads to more things like carjackings and even more violent stuff (knowing they might not face charges). That's a different issue -- although tangentially related and can't be ignored. Portugal is a great example of a country where they try real treatment and help for people struggling with addiction. It's a better example of what happens with these policies long term. From what I've read and heard, it's mostly positive. I personally knew people in my home town who stood in line at 5am on Mondays to get their methadone for the week. Treatment programs/rehab are for the rich -- often costing $2k ~ $5k out of pocket. Movie stars go to treatment. There need to be more treatment options that are affordable for those most in need of them. Drug treaming in America is just as shameful as the rest of our totally broken health care system. https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-the-unaffordable-care-act/ https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-...
throwawaysea 7y ago
Yea the ubiquitous property crime, tents on public land/parks, needles on streets/greenspaces/tossed on our lawn, ... Seattle has DEFINITELY figured it out. Is this article satire? Because it seems totally disconnected from reality on the ground in Seattle. This was a beautiful city that is being ruined by progressive policy/selective law enforcement, and it is riding on the coattails of a strong local economy. Right now we are on the fast track to becoming just as trashed up as SF.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Selective enforcement of the law, is not in effect decriminalizing.
40acres 7y ago
I live in Portland, OR and have been to Seattle many times. This article is disingenuous -- homelessness and hard drug use are blights on these two rapidly growing cities. I'm deeply critical of our criminal justice system and feel that we need a complete revamping of who and why we criminalize. Instead of stop and frisk like tacits that disproportionately affect minorities we need to refocus our police and penitentiary efforts on bringing these folks into a facility specifically designed to wean them off drugs and rehabilitate.
cronix 7y ago
They're living in tents surrounded by rats, garbage, raw sewage and chasing away residents and business. Are these cities gaining taxpayers and businesses, or losing them? How happy are the residents of these cities with these conditions who pay for it all? You're very compassionate allowing people to decay on the streets. Congrats on your "win." What you won, I don't know. I see more misery than ever before. At least they can get their drugs without consequence now. I'm sure they're happy for that while they waste away in front of our eyes. At least you can say you were acting in a compassionate way, even while the results are completely contrary. Brownie points for you.
andrepd 7y ago
Was Bunny Colvin ahead of his time?
md224 7y ago
Seattle should consider instituting Outpatient Commitment [1] if they haven't already... it could be a good middle ground between throwing addicts in jail and letting them walk free with no obligations. Drug addiction is a health problem, not a criminal one, but decriminalizing only works in conjunction with a strong mental health care system; judging by the comments here, it sounds like Seattle might be lacking in that area (and they're probably not the only city with this problem). Deinstitutionalization [2] was a good idea in theory, but the execution seems to have been botched. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpatient_commitment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpatient_commitment [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
leftyted 7y ago
I think the ultimate source of Seattle's wishy-washy attitude toward serious crime is summed up nicely by an excerpt from something written by Ilhan Omar: > The desire to commit violence is not inherent to people — it is the consequence of systematic alienation; people seek violent solutions when the process established for enacting change is inaccessible to them. Fueled by disaffection turned to malice, if the guilty were willing to kill and be killed fighting perceived injustice, imagine the consequence of them hearing, “I believe you can be rehabilitated. I want you to become part of my community, and together we will thrive.” We use this form of distributive justice for patients with chemical dependencies; treatment and societal reintegration. The most effective penance is making these men ambassadors of reform. Basically, criminals are protestors against the inequity of society. This is a very old idea. Dostoevsky talks about it in Crime and Punishment. My sense is that, no, people committing crimes are not "protestors" and treating them as such simply doesn't work. Tough love works. Punishment works. I just hope that, when the pendulum swings back on this nonsense, it doesn't swing back too far the other way. I think it probably will, though.
frankus 7y ago
Optics aside, it seems like the obvious solution is to give people a free supply of safe drugs and a safe place to use them. Drug users would be better off because their supply would be safe and they wouldn't need to resort to crime to pay for it. Current supervised consumption sites have also been extremely successful at preventing overdose deaths and somewhat successful at directing users who want treatment to the available resources. The public would be better off because of the same crime reduction, as well as the reduction of violence and disorder stemming from black markets for illegal drugs. Public use would become so much more of a hassle than the legal alternative that it would likely disappear. The government would be better off because acquiring currently-illegal drugs legally is super cheap (most of them literally grow on trees, or at least plants), and is almost certainly vastly cheaper than the current prohibition strategy. The obvious problems: - No one is going to want a consumption site anywhere near their neighborhood. - Some number of people who would otherwise quit might continue to use if it were cheap and easy. - Something along the lines of "I'd love to sit around all day watching TV and drinking beer but I have bills to pay and I don't want my taxes paying for some low-life to get high."
blackflame7000 7y ago
One has to wonder if the softening of the public stance on drug use is leading to more drug users which are leading to more homelessness.
cameronc56 7y ago
I currently live in pioneer square, close to one of the homeless shelters. Here are some of the things I have seen in the last 1.5 years: 1. People openly shitting on the sidewalk. 2. Ambulances carrying away a junkie that overdosed and died in a doorwell 3. Having to push a sleeping person out of the way of the doorwell just to leave my apartment 4. random screaming, for hours almost every night 5. my girlfriend gets constantly harrassed 6. I puked in the alley our moving truck was in while moving in because there was so much human feces. 7. A naked person crabwalking down a hill 8. someone ripped a metal garbage can off of its stand, grabbed a vodka bottle that was inside it and threw it at a passing car, breaking their window 9. mass vandalism and theft of rental bicycles. 10. someone throwing those rental bicycles into the street 11. one homeless person attempted to steal a backpack from another homeless person having a panic attack or overdose WHILE A COP WAS HELPING THEM. 12. bike theft in broad daylight on 1st avenue 13. drug deals and needles. I have a picture of an abandoned backpack with dozens of needles sprawled around it 14. someone got shot at the 7/11 at night 15. a month later, there was broken glass from a bullet hole at the cherry street cafe. 16. someone using their gun as a pillow 17. tent camping, where i have to walk into the street to get around them. 18. people wandering around in the streets aimlessly, almost getting hit by cars. 19. ive been harrased in restaurants by homeless people that come in and want my food. 20. shopping carts full of trash, parked on the sidewalk every day. Seattle decriminilizing drugs is one thing. But decriminilizing these kinds of petty crimes has turned pioneer square into something shameful and dangerous. In my opinion, the city should not decriminilize drugs until AFTER the facilities (rehab and involuntary mental health institutions) are in place. The non-drug related crimes should not be tolerated either way, and what Dan Satterberg prosecutes/charges with regards to repeat offenders is criminal in itself. His personal agenda is putting the public at risk and he should resign immediately.
Leader2light 7y ago
Seattle is a shithole. Fuck the liberals. There is no other answer than this. Go and see, if you don't believe.
8bitsrule 7y ago
The war on drug users -very profitable for private jailers - certainly failed society. A real 'war on drugs' would mean serious jailtime and fines for kingpins up the supply ladder. Until that becomes palatable, it makes little sense to ruin the lives of their victims. A recent story in WaPo suggests that ball may be rolling. Author interviewed here: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=753114950 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
mrtweetyhack 7y ago
Good. More hobos can move to Seattle
diogenescynic 7y ago
San Francisco beat them to it. People openly shoot up heroin and and smoke meth and nothing happens. I see the same people often right in front of BART escalators selling drugs. It’s created a situation where cops claim crime is going down because the numbers are going down, but that’s because they just ignore the problem and don’t report what’s going on. California legalized hard drugs with Prop 57 and Prop 47 allows people to sell $1000 a day and it’s just a citation. So now there are multiple blocks where tweakers and junkies are selling stole luggage from breaking into rental cars and robbing tourists... Welcome to hell. Cops only give speeding tickets and enforce laws against normal folks. San Francisco is a miserable place for normal folks.

252 points by mitchbob 7y ago

So same as Portugal has been doing for decades - decriminalise small use and treat it as a public health problem instead of making average citizens into criminals. Portugal has a lot of bad things to it, but having no war on drugs has made it into one of the most peaceful countries on earth. And marijuana usage is pretty low, Last I checked. Why? Probably because it’s not a special thing. I’ve always pondered why they only did it there, and I’ve been routinely disappointed to move to the Uk and understand how horrible the drug problem is here. People take ketamine and OD in toilets here.

allana 7y ago
Washington State is one of the heaviest users of legal marijuana: https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/sewage-testing-in-washington-confirms-rise-in-marijuana-use-1691682/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/sewage-t... I doubt we will ever reach Portugal's low levels of use, but people can lead happy & productive lives while having chemical dependencies. The UK's war on drugs and party culture surrounding ket and others is kinda sad to watch :c
- proverbialbunny 7y ago
  Portugal's use spiked up in the same way for a few years before ramping down. Most places who legalize experience the same sort of spike then a reduction.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Is it the same thing? The article is about just not enforcing the law. Portugal changed their laws.
- sprafa 7y ago
  Well my impressions is that they de facto trying to adjust while keeping de jure the same situation. I did not read the whole article however, just skimmed it as fast as I could.

allana 7y ago

As much as the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the local Sinclair affiliates might scream that Seattle is wrecked, people and businesses are still moving here, our economy is growing, and massive redevelopment is occuring. One other place to pay attention to is Shelton, WA, they have a very interesting communal approach to homelessness and providing services, which has built a strong community that wooed some of my friends to buy and retire in Shelton.

throwaway827364 7y ago
People move here and the economy is growing because of tech. Do any of these employers support the city of Seattle’s policies on allowing people to openly shoot up in the streets?
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  The fact is that visibility is the first step to recovery. You can arrest them, hide them or try to move them around but it doesn't change the fact that they exist. It just makes it so you don't have to look at the problem, which is really the American thing. Better to hide the problem than solve it. These kind of efforts take time to take root. As people do things like this in public, that means more opportunity for social services to reach out and try to solve the problem. In 10-15 years you'll see drug usage rates drop as addicts can seek help for their problem without vilification or risk to having their lives destroyed.
- allana 7y ago
  Its significantly safer than San Diego & Irvine IMO, both of which still criminalize homelessness and have had Hepatitis outbreaks due to these ineffective policies. Google, Apple, Expedia and Facebook are each building and hiring thousands here in Seattle, our homeless are significantly less aggressive than those I encounter in California.
- entropea 7y ago
  You sound like you walk around in daylight just seeing people shooting up on every street. Its absolutely not true. Its actually really tough to find someone shooting drugs unless you're really looking at night hours. It's honestly not as big of an issue as Sinclair makes it out to be.

taurath 7y ago

Interesting take on the situation - one key difference is I don’t feel any less safe now than 10 years ago walking around. I DO see more “open” use, and people walking around obviously on something, especially by the homeless (which makes sense even if they’re not using at a higher level). I don’t see the social services much though. IMO they could use more visibility. The prevailing opinion seems like we do “nothing”. I’d like to see the stats on mortality and quality of life to those that get treatment though. It can’t be worse than locking nonviolent people up.

allana 7y ago
We don't have sufficent funding of social services to provide navigation teams and counselors to all of the visibly homeless (those you see on the street), never mind the thousands living in their cars in Seattle (the invisible homeless). Seattle is doing what it can, but we need state and federal action to go further. We can't single handedly solve the severe wealth stratification that is worsening day by day :c
- empath75 7y ago
  or you know, Amazon and Microsoft could throw in some cash.
  - allana 7y ago
    Microsoft advocated for a tax on very large companies to fund social services to break the cycle of poverty leading to lack of opportunity for our youth: https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2019/07/21/amazon-microsoft-back-higher-education-tax.html https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2019/07/21/amazon-m...
    - sukilot 7y ago
      Microsoft's CEO lobbied for a progressive income tax that mountain residents voted down.
_jal 7y ago

arikr 7y ago

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opinion/sunday/opioid-crisis-drug-seattle.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opin... This link above might bypass the paywall.

daenz 7y ago

TLDR: by letting mentally disturbed addicts roam the streets with impunity, shunning social services, assaulting toddlers[0]. 0. https://mynorthwest.com/1458667/seattle-offender-coffee-toddler-calderon/ https://mynorthwest.com/1458667/seattle-offender-coffee-todd...

i_am_nomad 7y ago
“Some of them, I’m sure, are good people.”

dymk 7y ago

I am just astounded that this is being spun in such a positive light. It absolutely has had a negative impact on public safety here. They're offered public services, and they refuse them, because many of our "tiny villages" have no-drug-use policies, which they will not abide by. My city has one of the worst problems with repeat violent drug addicts in the nation (perhaps aside from the Bay) and yet we refuse to jail those who attack members of the public. Just a few weeks ago we released a known violent repeat offender who four days later tossed a hot coffee on an infant. Up in Ballard we released a guy who then chased people down with a pitchfork. Another is intent on assaulting the new Park Couriers who's job it is to keep people from open-using heroin in our public parks. There's a guy down at an I-5 onramp in downtown who keeps trying to throw small women off the overpass. He keeps failing at doing so, and the cops say "Can't do anything, he hasn't actually thrown somebody off". I guess we'll just wait until he succeeds. Oh well. I guess we'll just keep pointing these people towards social services, which they'll refuse again, lock them up for some token amount of time, and wait for them to harm the public again.

trentnix 7y ago
Often reality doesn’t fit the narrative, comrade.
- dang 7y ago
  Maybe not, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
taurath 7y ago
Do you have any statistics to back that up (violence rate)? I don’t feel like anecdotes make for good conversation here.
- allana 7y ago
  They don't have statistics to back their position, this attitude of not working from the data we have is such an issue that it has become local satire in Seattle: http://theneedling.com/2019/02/05/magnolia-named-worlds-most-dangerous-neighborhood-by-magnolia/ http://theneedling.com/2019/02/05/magnolia-named-worlds-most...

thomascgalvin 7y ago

> In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs. It is relying less on the criminal justice toolbox to deal with hard drugs and more on the public health toolbox. America's puritanical urges result in more self-harm than anything else. So much of the way our nation is structured is based on some ancient idea that you have to live clean and work hard in order to get to heaven. That is combined with a sense of justified sadism: if we catch someone not living up to these ideals, it is appropriate to punish them, and appropriate to take pleasure in punishing them. The War on Drugs was never about public health. It was about 1. controlling minorities, and 2. moral superiority. So there's absolutely no surprise that a health-based approach is showing better results than a punishment-based approach.

JamesSchriver 7y ago
That's rather condescending and ignorant. It has nothing to do with puritanical urges, it has to do with personal responsibility and everyone being responsible for their own actions, which results in having to suffer the personal consequences without having the right to impose oneself on others by one's own choices in life. Unfortunately, this whole drug situation in the USA has gotten, like many things, totally out of hand through gaslighting abusive actions by those who claim to want to "help" and make things better, but instead have nothing but a record and history of making things worse, which they immediately sweep under the rug the second even they can't ignore their constant, repeated, and typical failures. What this "caring" approach smells of to me is a kind of stasis, where the helper-syndrome types get to feel good about themselves, while getting rich as org directors, and also normalizing drug cartel operations. The Drug cartels and organized drug criminals are actually a real domestic terror and civil threat to society and communities as they kill and destroy lives by the hundreds of thousands and devastate lives by the millions every single year. I do agree that throwing users in prison is nonsense, even though often ( and I know people who can attest to this ) it is the thing that saves them from the drug and it also leads to users giving up people on the chain towards the sources of the chemical warfare that is waged on the American people. I also agree, this whole cottage industry of drug related careers and fortunes, whether it's NGOs or DEA, is an utter mess and corrupted. What really should be happening is that all drug producers, smugglers, transporters, and dealers be declared the perpetrators of crimes against humanity that they are and they should be treated like the enemies in war that they are, as they engage in chemical warfare that kills 80,000 people every year and destroys millions of lives and families and pillages billions and trillions of dollars. It should be a scorched earth tactic against smugglers, dealers, and producers ... a merciless, ruthless, hunt for these people that are then erased as the war criminals and pestilence on humanity they are ... the mass murderers they are. But that's from someone that actually hates the misery and suffering and death that drugs cause. I do not get the sense that most people actually care one iota about the 80,000 people that die every year, not to count the thousands who commit suicide due to addiction. All those who do not want to end it once and for all with direct, hard, and merciless action are complicit in and guilty of supporting the murders by the drug cartels and criminals against humanity.

koolba 7y ago

> “You’ve got a guy shooting heroin on the street, and the cop is supposed to say, ‘You O.K.?’” grumbled one law enforcement officer in Seattle. (In fact, an officer would typically confiscate the heroin, admonish the user and move on.) Some residents worry that when the city ignores its own laws on the books and tolerates people openly abusing narcotics, it takes a step toward incivility that will eventually result in chaos and crime. There’s also a legitimate argument that the threat of prison is sometimes necessary to motivate users to participate in treatment programs. What non-drug user would want to live in a town where someone shooting heroin in public is not removed from the street? I know I wouldn't. I'm not saying lock em up and throw away the key but you can't just move on and pretend nothing happened. If you're going to provide treatment in lieu of jail time then it needs to mandatory.

phil248 7y ago
What does confiscating an addict's heroin accomplish? As far as I can tell, all you've done is make a desperate addict far more desperate than they were a moment ago. The situation is only made worse.
- diydsp 7y ago
  One could say it incentivizes them to keep it at home, out of view of minors.
  - crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
    Hiding the world from our children instead of letting them see how awful the adults have made it is dishonest, at best. I prefer to teach kids how to find compassion for people in such situations.
    - sempron64 7y ago
      Do you have kids? If you let them near active drug users as an object lesson, you need CPS called on you.

hprotagonist 7y ago

Gloucester, MA has been doing this for at least 4 years. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jmaxj7/this-new-england-town-has-a-groundbreaking-new-way-to-deal-with-opioid-overdose-506 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jmaxj7/this-new-england-t...

nostromo 7y ago

... this is probably news to people actually living in Seattle. (Edit: the title was originally, "Seattle Has Figured Out How to End the War on Drugs") A place where meth heads attack people with pitchforks in the street a few days after being released from prison on a suspended sentence. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/man-accused-of-trying-to-attack-strangers-with-pitchfork-outside-ballard-post-office/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/man-accused-... Not to mention our random piles of used syringes, which are often found in parks where kids play. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/more-than-32000-syringes-collected-in-pilot-needle-program/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/more-than-3... Here's a syringe pile after cleaning up a homeless camp north of Seattle: https://2qibqm39xjt6q46gf1rwo2g1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/9061386_web1_M-Needles-1-EDH-171024.jpg https://2qibqm39xjt6q46gf1rwo2g1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... I'm all for decriminalization, but Seattle's current approach is to decriminalize not only drugs, but a host of other actual crimes, like public intoxication, public camping, shop lifting, harassment, etc.

diydsp 7y ago
>meth heads >>Man accused Is there a specific name for this particular type of generalization where a one-time event gets represented as a greater-than-one quantity?
- isbjorn16 7y ago
  Hyperbole?
allana 7y ago
Yet "Moms for Seattle" can't be bothered to take a real photo of homelessness affecting Seattle's parks :c Those advocating for harsher handling of homelessness in Seattle have repeatedly shown themselves to be incompetent and callous. It'd be great if they could make an effort, like actually voting, rather than phoning it in and throwing money at blatantly photoshopped mailers.
- rdtwo 7y ago

just_lurkin 7y ago

The reporters designation of "figured out" seems to stem more from the fact that the solution fits his own view than any actual real evidence. There is mention of the difficulties such lax policies has brought to the city, but they are waved away as being "growing pains" toward a new utopia. I can't say, living here, that I feel that the problem is solved. I view the needles outside my apartment as evidence to the contrary - though I suppose I'm an ignoramus for thinking that. Simply strolling through Pioneer Square or most parts of International District paints a significantly different picture. One can dine at a Chinese place on Jackson and look out their window and see junkies peddling stolen goods at the bus stop. The non-enforcement of so-called "petty crime" used to fund drug addictions is egregious and continues to undermine the already little sense of community there is in this city of transients. What I'm trying to say is that while I appreciate the difference in approach from the traditional one, I do believe that there needs to be an honest discussion about the limits of rehabilitation. More research on the subject, as it relates to Seattle, shows that there are many, many, people who take advantage of these lax policies to abuse the system, hurting others who actually need help.

news_to_me 7y ago
Do you think there would be fewer needles outside your apartment if we simply locked these people up? I think there would be more. I agree that the limits of rehabilitation need to be seriously considered, and that good policy requires a mix of approaches. That said, all of your arguments could be applied to alcoholics during prohibition. I think if we actually want a sense of community in this city, it starts by treating our neighbors as humans. These drug users are your neighbors. What are you doing to help them?
- rdtwo 7y ago
  If my neighbor beat his wife, damaged my car and pissed on my house I would do exactly what ever good neighbor should- call the cops and make sure they have enough evidence to send his ass to jail. The problem is when the cops don’t come then what do you do?
  - 7y ago

caiocaiocaio 7y ago

Hmm, a headline with an extreme claim that seems completely unbelievable to anyone in the Pacific Northwest? I'm sure this is a legitimate article headline and not just clickbait, so I'm going to move my mouse cursor right on up there, expecting a rewarding, enlightening, and satisfying use of my time.

kerng 7y ago

Wow, Seattle has turned worse over the last few years. At some parts downtown its nearly as bad as SF. I don't think Seattle has figured out anything...

throwaway827364 7y ago

This article is disingenuous at best. I don’t support the war on drugs, but Seattle’s handling of the situation isn’t close to a model for other cities. As someone who lived here all my life, it’s been a complete disaster. I’m frankly really disappointed in the NYTimes for publishing this garbage. He doesn’t go into the negatives of what the policies in Seattle has done to the city until so far later in the article. The local officials are very lax on drug use, homelessness. We have entire tent cities. Petty crime is pretty high. The police won’t bother to respond if you report a car break in, for example. There’s trash littered on practically any street that has tents. Some of these folks are addicts and some aren’t but to say Seattle has solved this problem - you mean we just ignore laws and allow anyone to do whatever they want. Repeat criminal who was arrested last week? Here, we’ll keep you for an hour maybe and you’ll definitely be out by tomorrow. I’m not advocating jailing all drug use so private prisons get rich, but Seattle’s extreme leftist take on pretending like the problem hasn’t been a disaster for the city is just absurd.

thatswrong0 7y ago
Sounds just like SF, and it's a large part of the reason I want to leave the west coast entirely and go somewhere with more sane policies.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  If you think the west coast has insane policies, then you should really try living elsewhere for a bit of perspective. I've lived in WA, CA, VA and TX. No state has sane policies and the more I've moved, the more I've realized this. WA still ranks at the top of my list for states to live in.
  - thatswrong0 7y ago
    Noted! Though I've lived in NYC before, and I think it has, at a glance, pretty sane policies for a giant diverse city (though I could be totally wrong!). It felt a lot safer there than it does in SF on a day-to-day basis. That's where I was planning on going.

phil248 7y ago

"Still, it shocks many Americans to see no criminal penalty for using drugs illegally" It only shocks Boomers. Their only answer to 'crime' was to keep making laws harsher until all the jail cells were full. Then to build more jail cells. There's no need to have criminal penalties for drug use in the first place. What we want less of isn't drug use, it's the anti-social behaviors and health issues that often stem from drug use. Look at the other comments here - no one is upset with the mere ingestion of substances, they are complaining about the behaviors they see on the streets. Behaviors that impact the rest of use negatively. And we all know that a lot of that behavior has nothing to do with drug use in the first place. But it's a lot harder to deal with the behavior issue because then you're dealing with things like mental health issues and large-scale economic issues, on top of drug abuse. It's so much easier to just use drugs as a scapegoat and start locking people up. Like the Boomers did! But we know that doing so is monumentally stupid and ineffective so we need a different way. Props to Seattle for trying a different way, but just as we've seen here in SF, these half-assed measures do as much to encourage anti-social behavior as they do to mitigate it. I think these West Coast cities being besieged by the nice-weather homelessness epidemic (and associated drug use) are going to have to come up with something a little tougher than what they've found the political will for so far. But we also have to acknowledge that we can't, won't and never should return to the idiotic War on Drugs.

synack 7y ago

Anecdotally, Seattle PD has been more aggressive about going after dealers in the last few months. This has led to more turf wars between gangs and a spike in gun violence in parts of the city as they fight to fill the power vacuum. Not great, but it does indicate that the police have put a dent in the distribution network.

RocketSyntax 7y ago

"Increasingly there is global recognition that drugs are better addressed as a health challenge than as a law enforcement issue." That's pretty rad.

eweise 7y ago

A trick for getting by the paywall is to click the "stop" button on the browser before the page fully loads.

rdl 7y ago

Whoa. Using Seattle as a positive story in the war on drugs seems...highly questionable. The city has been essentially destroyed by junkie infestation, enabled by (possibly well-meaning) people.

redisman 7y ago
Yeah really. I urge any city leaders who read this to spend a day walking around downtown Seattle to see what "figured it out" means.
whateveracct 7y ago
Seattle is far from "destroyed." There are obviously issues, sure. But this smells like hyperbolic political rhetoric to me and I don't appreciate it.
- whateveracct 7y ago
  All this sort of hyperbole does is breed hate for other human beings. Not what we need.

RickS 7y ago

As a resident, Seattle's drug policy seems okay. I think the goal of harm reduction, trust building, and getting people back on track is a laudable goal. People need a pathway back, not to keep being kicked down. But we need higher standards about the anti-social behaviors that are comorbid to drug use. The problem isn't that people are on narcotics. It's at least _possible_ to be a functional member of society while on opiates, and I don't think someone should be wrung through the legal system for having the wrong things in their blood for a bit. The problem is tent cities burning trash under the overpass. Lines of disheveled camper vans near the shopping centers draining their sewage into open buckets on the street (thank god they're kind enough to use a bucket) Panhandlers harassing residents at such scale that all but the most resilient citizens grimace at the thought of walking through their city center. Some of these people seem not to have drug problems at all. I'm okay with low standards about drug policy enforcement, so long as it's coupled with high standards about behavior in the public space. It's the second half that Seattle has yet to solve.

sukilot 7y ago
Seattle needs more public dumpsters and sewage receptacles for non-landowners/land-renters. When London was covered in rivers of shit in the 19th Century because there was no sanitation infrastructure, was that because the citizens were anti-social criminals? Or was is a societal problem that needed a funded solution?

mmilano 7y ago

Haven't been here a while and the first 2 links I clicked are walled. Seems like shilling sites to the front-page of HN might be a decent business.

dang 7y ago

Since people are objecting to "figured out", we replaced the title with a more neutral sentence from the article body.

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/xMFni http://archive.is/xMFni

dcolkitt 7y ago

I fully support legalizing all drugs, but don't understand why the latest wave of criminal justice reform tolerates property crimes. Crimes like smash and grabs, purse snatching, bike thefts, vandalism, littering, and shoplifting clearly have defined victims and lower the quality of life for everyone. It's perfectly possible to be a heroin addict and an upstanding citizen at the same time. The same cannot be said of a bike thief. The vast majority of even hardcore homeless drug addicts do not engage in malicious property crimes. It's only a small fraction, that also tends to be the most violent and socially pathological. Vigorous enforcement of property crime improves the life for everyone in the city. Doubly so for the otherwise law-abiding drug users, who most often bear the worse brunt of the anti-social property criminals. The best way to sell drug policy reform to law and order conservatives is to redirect those resources to non-victimless crimes. Not just throw your hands up in the air and give up on enforcing any laws whatsoever.

Aperocky 7y ago
I would need quote on the 'vast majority' claim. You can't leave a bike for 10 minutes in downtown Seattle for a reason, homeless heroin addicts gets their drug and resource to procure those drug _somewhere_.
- sukilot 7y ago
  I have left my bike unlocked, and even my automobile unlocked with its keys in it, many time and never been burgled. (Once in Boston my bike accessories were stolen off my bike.) Even if every bike is stolen by an addict, that doesn't mean most addicts are doing the stealing.
jimbob45 7y ago
Yeah I'm not sure I get it either. The problem was that throwing heroin addicts in prison for 5 years doesn't rehabilitate them or solve anything. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be held liable for crimes they commit while high.
jbattle 7y ago
The alternative is often vigilante justice, which is worse for everyone. Apparently the 'coffee throwing guy' was beaten by the child's father after he threw coffee - certainly an understandable reaction from a father who saw his child assaulted. But that's going to leave a mark on everyone - Calderon included

cabaalis 7y ago

I'm not a statistical expert. Can someone who is comment on how the population selection exclusions described below may or may not effect the results? > This evaluation included 318 adults who were suspected of recent violations of the uniform controlled substances act (VUCSA) and/or prostitution offenses and were deemed eligible for LEAD by arresting officers. Individuals were ineligible for participation if any of the following exclusion criteria applied: a) the amount of drugs involved exceeded 3 g (all drug classes were eligible); b) the suspected drug activity involved delivery or possession with intent to deliver and there was reason to believe the suspect was dealing for profit above a subsistence income; c) the individual did not appear amenable to diversion; d) the individual appeared to exploit minors or others in a drug dealing enterprise; e) the individual was suspected of promoting prostitution; f) the individual had a disqualifying criminal history (i.e.,conviction for murder 1 or 2, arson 1 or 2, robbery 1, assault 1,kidnapping, Violation of the Uniform Firearms Act 1, sex offense, or attempt of any of these crimes); g) within the past 10 years, the individual was convicted on a domestic violence offense, robbery 2,assault 2 or 3, burglary 1 or 2, or Violation of the Uniform Firearms Act2;or h) the individual was already involved in King County Drug Diversion Court or Mental Health Court. Source: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/6f124f_f4eed992eaff402f88ddb4a649a9f5e6.pdf https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/6f124f_f4eed992eaff402f88ddb4... From a layman's perspective, my question is would the exclusions shown above favor inclusion of people less likely of recidivism?

AcerbicZero 7y ago

lol the passed out addicts I pass every day, the piles of needles, the shit, the broken car windows, and the constant sound of either police or ambulance sirens would beg to differ.

coldtea 7y ago

Sure, since this "rule of law" thing is going so well for the city /s

ndarwincorn 7y ago

> “You’ve got a guy shooting heroin on the street, and the cop is supposed to say, ‘You O.K.?’” grumbled one law enforcement officer in Seattle. As progressive as some are here, the NIMBYism (see other locals that this opinion piece has riled up in the thread) and bad apples on the police force spoiling the whole bunch are just as bad as anywhere else. Another anecdote to add to the quote: walking up 12th Ave (Cap Hill) midday on a Sunday, some friends and I passed by a dude sleeping or passed out on the sidewalk and two oncoming walking cops simultaneously. One looked down and asked, "rough night?" and laughed with his partner. In case it's not clear, this wasn't a friendly offer of assistance, this was a drive by insult (they didn't break stride at all) that made it clear that if it weren't for progressive laws about occupying public space they'd be violently removing the guy from the sidewalk.

ndarwincorn 7y ago
For folks down this far, the prevailing hive mind in this thread is why when someone asks what I do for work here I try to distance myself from the rest of you as far as I can.
- asdfgasd 7y ago
  I fully agree with you. This insane attitude of "my ill-gotten capital is worth more than your existence" is pathetic and sad.
  - ndarwincorn 7y ago
    Thanks man. What's especially insane about it is that most of the folks commenting and voting are members of the working class. Sure, they might have ill-gotten capital in the form of a deed (ignoring the likelihood that there's a lien on that deed) on a tiny parcel of stolen/colonized land or vested stock in the monopolist they work for, but that's a pittance in the scheme of things. They still need to sell their labor in order to meet their needs for food, shelter, community participation, etc. We need to find a way to reach these folks. Because this thread is evidence that they think they're significantly different from the people without housing they see on the street here every day.

pgnas 7y ago

Seattle is a poster child city for what NOT to do. Your politicians need to take their experiments someplace else. I was horrified at how terrible that city has become since I last was there. Now, if i go there, you are allowing these drugged out zombies to steal from me and harass me? I don’t understand, I really do not.

djsumdog 7y ago

There is a lot going on in these comments. I feels like I've stepped back into /r/seattle (where redditors of Seattle seem to just hate all homeless people). There is a lot going on here. First, there are a lot of homeless. Housing is sky rocketing and many people cannot afford to live anywhere close to where they can find work. The tech community there basically waves there hands and just says, "You can't afford to live here as a barista, well then you just gotta do the 1~2 hour bus/car commute in order to make me coffee. Sucks to be you." Many of the other issues people are listing, aren't about drugs. They are about the homeless. Second, people are talking about the other petty crime that goes with drugs: people stealing to get money for drugs. Violent crime and theft certainly don't need to be normalized. Chicago's recent DA's office has been criticized of not being hard enough on kids who commit crimes; which leads to more things like carjackings and even more violent stuff (knowing they might not face charges). That's a different issue -- although tangentially related and can't be ignored. Portugal is a great example of a country where they try real treatment and help for people struggling with addiction. It's a better example of what happens with these policies long term. From what I've read and heard, it's mostly positive. I personally knew people in my home town who stood in line at 5am on Mondays to get their methadone for the week. Treatment programs/rehab are for the rich -- often costing $2k ~ $5k out of pocket. Movie stars go to treatment. There need to be more treatment options that are affordable for those most in need of them. Drug treaming in America is just as shameful as the rest of our totally broken health care system. https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-the-unaffordable-care-act/ https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-...

throwawaysea 7y ago

Yea the ubiquitous property crime, tents on public land/parks, needles on streets/greenspaces/tossed on our lawn, ... Seattle has DEFINITELY figured it out. Is this article satire? Because it seems totally disconnected from reality on the ground in Seattle. This was a beautiful city that is being ruined by progressive policy/selective law enforcement, and it is riding on the coattails of a strong local economy. Right now we are on the fast track to becoming just as trashed up as SF.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

Selective enforcement of the law, is not in effect decriminalizing.

40acres 7y ago

I live in Portland, OR and have been to Seattle many times. This article is disingenuous -- homelessness and hard drug use are blights on these two rapidly growing cities. I'm deeply critical of our criminal justice system and feel that we need a complete revamping of who and why we criminalize. Instead of stop and frisk like tacits that disproportionately affect minorities we need to refocus our police and penitentiary efforts on bringing these folks into a facility specifically designed to wean them off drugs and rehabilitate.

cronix 7y ago

They're living in tents surrounded by rats, garbage, raw sewage and chasing away residents and business. Are these cities gaining taxpayers and businesses, or losing them? How happy are the residents of these cities with these conditions who pay for it all? You're very compassionate allowing people to decay on the streets. Congrats on your "win." What you won, I don't know. I see more misery than ever before. At least they can get their drugs without consequence now. I'm sure they're happy for that while they waste away in front of our eyes. At least you can say you were acting in a compassionate way, even while the results are completely contrary. Brownie points for you.

andrepd 7y ago

Was Bunny Colvin ahead of his time?

md224 7y ago

Seattle should consider instituting Outpatient Commitment [1] if they haven't already... it could be a good middle ground between throwing addicts in jail and letting them walk free with no obligations. Drug addiction is a health problem, not a criminal one, but decriminalizing only works in conjunction with a strong mental health care system; judging by the comments here, it sounds like Seattle might be lacking in that area (and they're probably not the only city with this problem). Deinstitutionalization [2] was a good idea in theory, but the execution seems to have been botched. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpatient_commitment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpatient_commitment [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

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leftyted 7y ago

I think the ultimate source of Seattle's wishy-washy attitude toward serious crime is summed up nicely by an excerpt from something written by Ilhan Omar: > The desire to commit violence is not inherent to people — it is the consequence of systematic alienation; people seek violent solutions when the process established for enacting change is inaccessible to them. Fueled by disaffection turned to malice, if the guilty were willing to kill and be killed fighting perceived injustice, imagine the consequence of them hearing, “I believe you can be rehabilitated. I want you to become part of my community, and together we will thrive.” We use this form of distributive justice for patients with chemical dependencies; treatment and societal reintegration. The most effective penance is making these men ambassadors of reform. Basically, criminals are protestors against the inequity of society. This is a very old idea. Dostoevsky talks about it in Crime and Punishment. My sense is that, no, people committing crimes are not "protestors" and treating them as such simply doesn't work. Tough love works. Punishment works. I just hope that, when the pendulum swings back on this nonsense, it doesn't swing back too far the other way. I think it probably will, though.

frankus 7y ago

Optics aside, it seems like the obvious solution is to give people a free supply of safe drugs and a safe place to use them. Drug users would be better off because their supply would be safe and they wouldn't need to resort to crime to pay for it. Current supervised consumption sites have also been extremely successful at preventing overdose deaths and somewhat successful at directing users who want treatment to the available resources. The public would be better off because of the same crime reduction, as well as the reduction of violence and disorder stemming from black markets for illegal drugs. Public use would become so much more of a hassle than the legal alternative that it would likely disappear. The government would be better off because acquiring currently-illegal drugs legally is super cheap (most of them literally grow on trees, or at least plants), and is almost certainly vastly cheaper than the current prohibition strategy. The obvious problems: - No one is going to want a consumption site anywhere near their neighborhood. - Some number of people who would otherwise quit might continue to use if it were cheap and easy. - Something along the lines of "I'd love to sit around all day watching TV and drinking beer but I have bills to pay and I don't want my taxes paying for some low-life to get high."

blackflame7000 7y ago

One has to wonder if the softening of the public stance on drug use is leading to more drug users which are leading to more homelessness.

cameronc56 7y ago

I currently live in pioneer square, close to one of the homeless shelters. Here are some of the things I have seen in the last 1.5 years: 1. People openly shitting on the sidewalk. 2. Ambulances carrying away a junkie that overdosed and died in a doorwell 3. Having to push a sleeping person out of the way of the doorwell just to leave my apartment 4. random screaming, for hours almost every night 5. my girlfriend gets constantly harrassed 6. I puked in the alley our moving truck was in while moving in because there was so much human feces. 7. A naked person crabwalking down a hill 8. someone ripped a metal garbage can off of its stand, grabbed a vodka bottle that was inside it and threw it at a passing car, breaking their window 9. mass vandalism and theft of rental bicycles. 10. someone throwing those rental bicycles into the street 11. one homeless person attempted to steal a backpack from another homeless person having a panic attack or overdose WHILE A COP WAS HELPING THEM. 12. bike theft in broad daylight on 1st avenue 13. drug deals and needles. I have a picture of an abandoned backpack with dozens of needles sprawled around it 14. someone got shot at the 7/11 at night 15. a month later, there was broken glass from a bullet hole at the cherry street cafe. 16. someone using their gun as a pillow 17. tent camping, where i have to walk into the street to get around them. 18. people wandering around in the streets aimlessly, almost getting hit by cars. 19. ive been harrased in restaurants by homeless people that come in and want my food. 20. shopping carts full of trash, parked on the sidewalk every day. Seattle decriminilizing drugs is one thing. But decriminilizing these kinds of petty crimes has turned pioneer square into something shameful and dangerous. In my opinion, the city should not decriminilize drugs until AFTER the facilities (rehab and involuntary mental health institutions) are in place. The non-drug related crimes should not be tolerated either way, and what Dan Satterberg prosecutes/charges with regards to repeat offenders is criminal in itself. His personal agenda is putting the public at risk and he should resign immediately.

Leader2light 7y ago

Seattle is a shithole. Fuck the liberals. There is no other answer than this. Go and see, if you don't believe.

8bitsrule 7y ago

The war on drug users -very profitable for private jailers - certainly failed society. A real 'war on drugs' would mean serious jailtime and fines for kingpins up the supply ladder. Until that becomes palatable, it makes little sense to ruin the lives of their victims. A recent story in WaPo suggests that ball may be rolling. Author interviewed here: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=753114950 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

mrtweetyhack 7y ago

Good. More hobos can move to Seattle

diogenescynic 7y ago

San Francisco beat them to it. People openly shoot up heroin and and smoke meth and nothing happens. I see the same people often right in front of BART escalators selling drugs. It’s created a situation where cops claim crime is going down because the numbers are going down, but that’s because they just ignore the problem and don’t report what’s going on. California legalized hard drugs with Prop 57 and Prop 47 allows people to sell $1000 a day and it’s just a citation. So now there are multiple blocks where tweakers and junkies are selling stole luggage from breaking into rental cars and robbing tourists... Welcome to hell. Cops only give speeding tickets and enforce laws against normal folks. San Francisco is a miserable place for normal folks.