Images courtesy of Seattle Channel
Seattle’s mayor has a new working group to help him craft another ordinance on public drug use after the city council failed to pass one last week.
Mayor Bruce Harrell says he lived through the “War On Drugs”, so he understands the concerns of people worried a new law would return the city to racist policing, but he says there are also people living their greatest fear because they feel unsafe in their own city, “and worse,” Harrell says, “to believe that our city government, all four corners, the executive, the city council, the municipal court judges and the city attorney’s office, the four corners of our structure – what is worse is to believe that we are incapable or unwilling to address it. I beg to differ.”
So, Harrell has compiled a group of city and community leaders to help because he says they do need to make streets safer, but they also need to solve a health crisis by getting people into treatment. Harrell says, “The fear now is that the city council had made a decision that is misaligned with state law and misaligned with what the vast majority of people want in this city, the majority of which elected me as their mayor.”
Harrell says any new proposed ordinance will lead with compassion because the goal is not to fill jails but to help people. Like many people, he says those arrests are meant to be a tool to get people into treatment despite the people who lined up before the city council to raise concerns that arresting people will traumatize people in communities of color and add another layer that would scare many drug addicts away from treatment. Mayor Harrell says it will also provide clarity for police officers so they know when someone needs to be arrested for their own safety or that of others versus when they could be referred for crisis care or other help.
For now, Harrell says people can still be arrested for public drug use, but he says it’ll be the status quo while they create the bill, get a count of how many people are in crisis and find places to take them for help, which he says could be the biggest hurdle since there are new facilities in the works that are years from being completed. The mayor says part of the upcoming work will be to take an assessment of where they can take people for drug treatment or crisis care. Harrell wouldn’t pin down a time line, but he says with the new state law coming soon and the council taking its recess in August, he’ll work to get a proposed drug ordinance ready “in the coming weeks.”
You can watch the mayor’s entire press conference on Seattle Channel here.
