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Friday, August 7, 2009

Crime City Unveils Drug Diversion Program

Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 10:11 AM

In a move acknowledging that the city cannot arrest its way out of a drug problem, the Seattle Police Department, King County Prosecutors, and the City Attorney's office have announced plans for a new drug diversion program to take street dealing out of Seattle's neighborhoods.

The Drug Market Initiative (DMI), based on a program in High Point, North Carolina, aims to provide social services to low-level street dealers, instead of arresting and jailing them.

According to a release from the city attorney's office, the DMI will begin in the 23rd Avenue corridor in the Central District, focusing on open-air drug markets in the neighborhood. The city hasn't released all of the details of the plan, but so far it seems to involve getting dealers' families, community members, and non-profits to take part in interventions.

Strangely, the announcement came through city attorney Tom Carr's office—strange because all drug-dealing cases end up in King County Superior Court rather than municipal court. It's unclear whether the city prosecutor will actually play a large role in this initiative, or whether Carr is simply attaching his name to a headline-grabbing project during election season. Carr has never been particularly soft on drugs; after the total number of marijuana arrests began to drop following the passage of I-75 in 2003, making pot the lowest law-enforcement priority, Carr began to prosecute a higher percentage of marijuana cases referred to the city attorney's office by SPD. However, Carr has reversed his position on other issues before.

The city is holding a press conference later this morning to provide more details on the plan. Police have apparently already identified drug dealers and users who will be eligible for the program through undercover drug buys surveillance conducted in the Central District.

In an interview with The Stranger in June, Interim Police Chief John Diaz voiced some reservations about the practicalities and politics of running a drug diversion program. "I think we all agree there has to be a better way to deal with that [low level drug dealers]," he said. "The concerns I have on that are there are a fair amount of people that say police in general have too much discretion and too much power. That’s putting an awful lot of decision making on [SPD] and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. The devil’s in the details."

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This reminds me of an old Snoop Dogg interview on why he took to the streets as a crack dealer before his rap career. He originally worked for minimum wage at a grocery store as a bagger. He said, to paraphrase, that when facing the choice between making $5 an hour bagging groceries and $500 a night dealing crack, the choice was obvious.

I'm not sure how a deterrence program that tries to steer people back to the gainful employment whose crappy wages helped steer them to dealing in the first place will work effectively, no matter what bleeding heart you roll in front of these kids during an intervention. Many of these kids couldn't care less about their families and community's opinions of them anyway.

Posted by Gomez

on August 7, 2009 at 10:22 AM

East Precinct police will tell you they have a huge problem getting folks to cooperate in cases, so why would they assume folks are going to cooperate on a daily basis (which is how this works, people cooperate daily to ID offenders).

Letting these areas to continue may seem "low-level", but that's normally a line used by people who live nowhere near the area of activity. anybody living in that neighborhood (23rd ave corridor) will tell you it leads to much more than the simple exchange of drugs (these are hard drugs, H, crack, etc). It leads to B&E, assaults, prostitution, but whatever--Wallingford's a great place, so let that low level stuff happen as long as I don't see it.

Posted by dacoach on August 7, 2009 at 10:32 AM

3 Comment Pulled (Spam) Comment Policy

The New Yorker wrote extensively about this approach, the incredible results from it--and the difficulty of sustaining the effort required to keep making a difference, as well as the necessity of having not just social services, but jobs for the folks involved. Don't Shoot

Posted by GlennFleishman

on August 7, 2009 at 10:58 AM

As a lifetime user of the Gateway Drug to the devils haircutters, I have often wondered if and when the digital imagery 'captured' from the very HIGH EYE in the sky will soon be available for distribution.

Marijuana, as most law enforcement officials here in Seattle will attest to,

is the least worry and concern amongst the heavily burdened pharmacuetical industry analytical placebo theories for adult users of responsible legislation.

Curiously, randomn gangs of parents on patrol, who rightly so, fear the infiltration of high end calibered felony flight cases can at times...

inhibit the localized 'street force' of the underground adult community who's interest it is to provide a ladder of safety for the younger generation of "experimentalists" who as of yet are able to feel their way out of the slide and descent of over zealous rehab interns.

Even a curiously more impregnatable reaction (s) of the separation of religeous freedoms designed in our civil rights in this {hemp-head} opinion is the level of animosity between the 'lega-lease'

[use of slang not recommended in front of the judge...]

and the subtraction of informed con scent can and will at times interfere on the game, with the very nature of the "natualists" high end clientle who often 'despised' by the tea-totalers and beer tear reformers who have already suffered the embarrassing details of being caught in an east coast shuffle of mandatory

" Come down into the drunk tank, son and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. "
epiphanies;

while at the same time civilty contracts are privatised to prevent hypothetical redress by those who think they now your future better than you believe in your now and future potential.

If all of this opinion sounds a bit self serving, my recommendation is this.

Look the other way and go buy coffee.

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Posted by dan k. on August 7, 2009 at 10:59 AM

Taxpayers are getting sick and tired of paying for more jails, more cops, and more prosecutions for overzealous sherrifs and city attorneys.

Just decriminalize MJ and stop giving us excuses for why you can't do that. Tell the feds to do it THEMSELVES.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on August 7, 2009 at 11:15 AM

funny, b/c this is targeted at crack and heroin dealers, not dealers of weed. that's not killing our community.

Posted by dacoach on August 7, 2009 at 11:52 AM

I live in Fremont, where everything is about MJ.

We ship the crack dealers south of the ship canal, except when they escape north on the 358.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on August 7, 2009 at 12:03 PM

In Cascade (renamed South Lake Union), we deal with heroin and crack dealers on a regular basis. Many of them are pretty reasonable folks, and solid members of the community...except for the part about dealing crack & brokering blowjobs in public spaces.

Getting these folks into services is a first step. Needed services (just a few): connecting with Division of Child Support to sort out how to renew a driver's license, Bank On for establishing above the table credit, employment & training programs for jobs that come close to competing in wage, and housing.

One major effect decriminalizing pot would have is helping chronic drug users get into housing. If you have a drug conviction, most HUD-funded housing can't accept you for at least two years. Let's say you don't have a conviction, but like to drink: most/much affordable housing is "clean and sober"--meaning that if you have a beer or smoke a joint you're out. In addition to to the housing for chronic inebriates, we need housing for average users of fairly harmless substances.

Giving some breathing room for beat patrols to make decisions about who to toss in jail (guy with 2lbs of crack in his bag) vs who to refer for services (crack whore giving a blowjob) is a first step.

Posted by MJ on August 7, 2009 at 12:20 PM

Jonah -- from the tone of your post I'm assuming that The Stranger was not invited to last night's roll-out. Carr spelled out some of the city's side of things there.

Posted by gnossos on August 7, 2009 at 2:04 PM

oh and Glenn @4: Ceasefire is actually quite different than Highpoint/Drug Market initiative...although both are the brainchildren of David Kennedy. Unfortunately, he has become the guru of these types of programs.

Posted by gnossos on August 7, 2009 at 2:16 PM

City Councilman Tim Burgess wrote about a related meeting held August 6:

On the Langston Hughes stage were two large tables, each topped with three-ring binders. The cover of each binder—set upright so all could see them very clearly—had a large SPD logo and the name of one candidate in big block letters. We would learn later that the contents of each binder held details of a police investigation ready for submission to a prosecutor for the filing of criminal charges.

The candidates sat in the front of the center section, taking up four rows. Surrounding them were dozens of police officers, prosecutors, neighbors, social service providers, former drug addicts, criminal defense attorneys, a pastor, two journalists, and me.

Everyone in the room was tense with expectation. Most of us, except for a few police officers and staff members in Carr's office, had never witnessed anything like what was about to happen.

The first official to speak was Seattle Police Chief John Diaz. His message was simple—“You will not be arrested tonight, although we could because we have strong cases against you. Instead, we are here to give you a choice, another chance. I hope you take it.”

Captain Paul McDonagh, commander of the East Precinct, which covers the Central District, was next. His message was the same, but much more personal. “Your behavior is hurting the community and yourself, it must stop. Tonight, we're asking you to choose to accept job training, addiction and mental health counseling, and other social services. If instead you choose to continue dealing drugs— not only in Seattle, but anywhere in King County—you will be arrested. The cases we’ve built against you which are documented in these notebooks will be filed and you will go to prison.”

What McDonagh did next brought his warning into sharp focus. He showed police surveillance images of the dealers, both still photographs and video clips. He explained how police detectives monitored their activities and recorded narcotics transactions between the dealers and undercover police officers. I watched several candidates sitting right in front of me squirm in their seats, exchanging glances. I'm sure not a few wanted to bolt.

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Posted by Phil M