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.
... 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-...
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-3...
Here's a syringe pile after cleaning up a homeless camp north of Seattle:
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.
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.
> “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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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_f4eed992eaff402f88ddb4...
From a layman's perspective, my question is would the exclusions shown above favor inclusion of people less likely of recidivism?
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.
Since people are objecting to "figured out", we replaced the title with a more neutral sentence from the article body.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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?stor...
Gloucester, MA has been doing this for at least 4 years.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jmaxj7/this-new-england-t...
Selective enforcement of the law, is not in effect decriminalizing.
A trick for getting by the paywall is to click the "stop" button on the browser before the page fully loads.
Was Bunny Colvin ahead of his time?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opin...
This link above might bypass the paywall.
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.
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-...
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.
Good. More hobos can move to Seattle
Seattle is a shithole. Fuck the liberals. There is no other answer than this. Go and see, if you don't believe.
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.
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-todd...
"Increasingly there is global recognition that drugs are better addressed as a health challenge than as a law enforcement issue."
That's pretty rad.
Sure, since this "rule of law" thing is going so well for the city /s
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.
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.
> “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.
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.