Images courtesy of Seattle Channel
You can watch the entire Seattle City Council Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting from Seattle Channel in the video below:
Local leaders question the public health approach as they see the number of drug overdose deaths reach an unprecedented crisis level.
Drug overdose deaths have tripled in the past 7 years, says King County Public Health’s Brad Finegood, who was part of a group telling the Seattle City Council Public Safety Committee about their harm reduction efforts – what they call “meeting people where they’re at” – especially since there’s so much crossover of drug use and homelessness.
Council member, Sara Nelson, says she agrees with the need for harm reduction, but she asked about trying to help people who want to stop using. “Does Public Health agree that it has a responsibility to change behavior, beyond ‘meeting people where they’re at,’” Nelson asks, “in order to help them address their addiction long-term?”
In response, Brad Finegood told Nelson, “If somebody comes in and says ‘I want to gain abstinence in my life,’ we absolutely want to help that person find that trajectory to get to abstinence.”
However, as has been said many times before, people need places to go and to live to get help, and there just isn’t enough to meet the need and the groups talking to the Committee offered that reminder.
Council members also heard about lot of money meant for police recruitment still unspent, and it comes as Seattle Police fall short on hiring and exceed their overtime budget.
SPD is still a bit behind their projections for new officer hires, but the rate at which they’re leaving is falling a bit.
The Mayor’s office promised a new recruiting push but now tells the city council it’s mostly on hold until fall, after they test social media ads.
Council member, Alex Pedersen, says campaign season is on again, and candidates know how to market themselves and get the message out quickly, so he hopes the Mayor and SPD will act with the same urgency. Meanwhile, Public Safety Committee chair, Lisa Herbold, is among those expressing concern that police are using a lot of overtime to meet minimum precinct staffing numbers, something she says is “not ideal” but which she says is also a problem for the 911 call center and Seattle Fire.
The council members also questioned whether salary savings from last year’s unfilled jobs should have been put into the still-idle recruitment budget when it could be used for the overtime.
