Some 400 citations per year are issued in Seattle for drinking alcohol in public. It only feels like half of them are issued on sunny days at Bobby Morris playfield. The Community Police Commission, says that, like enforcement of marijuana laws, the beer and booze numbers disproportionately target minorities:
As part of its report on Seattle’s public consumption policy, the CPC is proposing the city create designated areas for public drinking. But before you and your bros get too excited about totally getting wasted on 10th Ave, here is how the CPC is approaching the solution:
The CPC recommends that the City of Seattle adopt an exception to the existing municipal code that would allow public drinking in designated areas. This approach is not unheard of: there are currently 18 cities in the United States that have a similar exception, and last year a bill to allow drinking in certain outdoor areas even passed the Ohio legislature.12 In Seattle, this approach is already used on a small scale on the premises of some social service providers, including some programs of the Downtown Emergency Service Center and the Dutch Shisler Sobering Support Center.
Fun times, right?
The commission was formed by the 2012 DOJ consent decree to help address SPD’s use of force and biased policing. The report (PDF) also recommends homeless facilities that allow drug and alcohol consumption.
The recommendations must be acted on by City Hall to become law — so no drinking in Cal Anderson tonight but go ahead and Netflix and chill in Volunteer Park.
So the solution to SPD disproportionately targeting minorities for certain crimes is to make what they’re doing legal, as opposed to stopping SPD from disproportionately targeting minorities for certain crimes?
Well okay then.
Nailed it.
Maybe the laws themselves disproportionately target minorities. Something I heard the other day that resonated with me was that if there is a law that makes something illegal to do, but inside your own home it is legal to do, like drinking, it’s essentially a way in which we criminalize homelessness. We know that people of color make up 60%+ of the homeless population in Seattle, so maybe the law is the right place to address the problem, in this particular case. Plus, we should be real with ourselves about this issue… it is definitively VICTORIAN that we can’t drink in public.
Now that is the answer I was waiting to see.HELL if any Law SEEMS to target a minority get rid of the law.Seattle is a big joke
Would we have to be contained in weird cages like at events? This country is so weird about alcohol….
Just allow drinking in public like most European cities and be done with it. We already have laws on the books that can be enforced for conduct that is harmful towards others or obnoxious. We don’t need to keep old puritanical laws on the books.
So much fuss over something so simple. People should drink in public and in parks all they want. Just be discrete and respectful.
See, therein lies the problem. They aren’t discrete and respectful now; there’d be even less of that if drinking was legalized in parks and public spaces. Yay to more drunken boorish behavior, only now looked more favorably on by law enforcement.
@Whichever
I often drink in public spaces, sometimes discreetly, sometimes not so discreetly, yet always respectfully.
They do, they’re called middle-class white people.
I do not readthis as an attempt to create a European atmosphere in Seattle but more as an effort to legalize public drinking by certain populations deemed to have no control over their actions. In other words, those addicted to alcohol would be able to consume in certain areas, probably those areas in which they currentky consume and our cited for alcohol consumption, but the rest of us would still be required to keep our white wine undre wraps while attending Shakespeare in the Park.
The emperor has no clothes.
I do not agree that current drinking laws “target” minorities. The obvious explanation (for disproportionate citations) is that minorities are more likely to drink in public, and therefore more likely to get a citation. The only people being “targeted” are those of any color who choose to disobey the law.
Ha, way to stereotype, Bob. Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re a troll or just a cranky old fart.
*obvious assumption
I just want to applaud the level of critical thinking that Bob displayed. Congrats!
Perhaps Bob’s comment should be taken as sarcastic, similarly to the following:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
— Anatole France
You could be right, those brown-skinned people may just be of weaker character than your average white dude on Pike/Pine who doesn’t get cited for public intoxication but is totally killin’ it on the weekend, brah; or the white guys and gals playing soccer and softball in various “we’re not really drinking” beer leagues in every park; or the white kids chillin’ with some PBR and some weed in Cal Anderson.
Or maybe the cops disproportionately target the homeless, who are disproportionately people of color. And maybe that’s totally cool; I mean, those guys are totally way more deserving of being harassed by cops because we enable their luxurious homeless lifestyle through our lavish homeless spending and perks. One of which, apparently, is to be arrested a lot for public drinking.
To clarify….the drinking-in-public law itself does not “target” any particular group, but it’s possible that at times it is enforced in a discriminatory manner.
As to whether or not minorities break this law at a higher rate, I plead guilty to making an assumption…..it may be true, it may not.
Sweet, now the SPD doesn’t have to ignore the homeless getting wasted on the streets, they can just say it’s legal.
Well, such “designated drinking areas” would provide adequate warning for places to avoid (read that vomit and urine) when walking the dog.
“… “designated drinking areas” would provide adequate warning for places to avoid..”
Like Seattle as a whole for businesses that rely on shoppers that have to walk through all that from some parking spot it took an hour to find.
Why don’t the laws just target the offensive behavior? I mean, most people drinking in public aren’t causing any negative externalities, so if someone gets drunk and starts doing mean/gross/crazy things cite them for that. A few cartoonish drunks shouldn’t ruin it for the 99% who discreetly imbibe in a park.
Can the fact that one ethnic group is cited for drinking in public at a higher rate than others necessarily prove that the local police are discriminating against them in an illegal way? Are there not quite a few other data points missing here?
Could one not use the same numbers to conclude that African Americans have a problem because they are drinking in public at a much higher rate than other groups?
I’d venture a guess that there are several types of citations that are far more common among young people than old ones. Is that necessarily proof that the police are discriminating against them because of their age or is it possible that they simply break certain laws in front of cops more often than older people?
I think the reality is that drinking in public is a lot like jaywalking or minor traffic violations in that whether to cite or not is at the discretion of the cop at the time. All of the following things can impact whether you get a ticket or a break in these situations:
-Your gender and attractiveness level
-Your race
-Whether you’re a veteran
-How you treat the cop
-Acting skills and whether you can convince him you’re actually sorry
-His metrics/scorecard (whether a couple more tickets will really move the needle on this next review or has he already secured the top rating)
-How busy he is with more serious stuff at the moment
-How much of a nuisance you are (quietly sipping beer < screaming and yelling guzzling from handle of liquor)
How can we necessarily say that the enforcement is flawed or that the police are using race to determine who to cite with that one datapoint?
Thank you. I made the same point above, but you made it much more coherently.
Maybe it isn’t fair to give SPD the benefit of the doubt, despite the federal government finding it to generally be pretty horrible police force particularly in its dealings with people of color, but here’s some other data to consider from like five seconds of Googling:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/03/24/3638162/seattle-homeless-race/
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/07/25/3464261/seattle-marijuana-homeless/
They target the homeless, which is proportionately more people of color than the general population, but not nearly as high as these percentages.
You could derive from this that the homeless drink more in public, or that brown people like the drank too much, unlike all the fine white folk in this city. Or you could hang out in Pike/Pine on the weekend and see a bunch of white people drinking in public and being obviously drunk in public, and generally getting away with it. Or you can see it at most of the parks in the area on weekends, particularly with organized sports; again, no cops, but lots of drinking (and fights, or at least arguing). Or maybe you’d rather hang out outside of Safeco after a Mariners or Sounders or Seahawks game and take in the wonderful sights, sounds, and smells of a drunken mob of (mostly) white people.
But you’re right, it’s probably not just a race thing. It’s probably everything else you mention too: discriminating by hotness, by military service (or lack thereof), by acting skills, by busyness, etc.
So again, as I noted earlier, it appears we’re addressing SPD’s inability not to discriminate when applying the law by eliminating laws, which is… well, it’s one way to address it.
The “data” in those articles still only shows certain groups getting cited at higher rates. It does nothing to address whether they’re breaking the law at higher rates or breaking the law right in front of a cop at higher rates.
I’m not saying that there definitely isn’t racial discrimination and I’m aware that Seattle’s police force is not a good one, but that does not change the fact that:
A CERTAIN RACE BEING CITED FOR SOMETHING AT A HIGHER RATE THAN OTHERS DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT THE POLICE ARE DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THEM ON THE BASIS OF RACE.
Two other things that also do not prove that the Seattle police are issuing citations to people because of their race are:
1. The anecdotes from a homeless black guy in one of the articles about having a hard time with cops.
2. The fact that you’ve witnessed white people drink in public and appear to get with it.
Children should be allowed in bars with their parents
So who got the remaining 62% of the citations?
Perhaps common sense can be used and police can realize that homeless people drink in public because they have no private spaces and adjust accordingly. Training should happen so that laws are not enforced disproportionally, but that does not mean that laws should just be cancelled. It seems like more and more Seattle wants to set it up so that the whole city is wasted on drugs or alcohol all the time. We’ve already got far too much of that, and too many bars. Please try to enforce the laws properly so that people who do not want to be drunk or high have some places to go where they aren’t surrounded by that constantly.
I just counted 45 people drinking in cal Anderson right now. I got a free beer too!