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Ann Davison’s plan is taking hold in Seattle. She appeared at an East Precinct community meeting last week.
The Ann Davison way is taking hold in Seattle’s approach to curbing day to day street crimes and low level misdemeanors. Last week, the still new Seattle City Attorney took part in a Central District and Capitol Hill community and public safety meeting to talk about her latest efforts.
Monday, the city’s municipal court judges who hear the lower level cases the new Seattle City Attorney’s office prosecutes agreed to a plan that will put the most chronic offenders in jail, not a community diversion program.
Responding to the proposal from her office, the court’s judges have signed onto Davison’s “High Utilizer” plan and agreed to exclude the most frequent repeat offenders from Seattle’s community court program which can provide a path for charges to be dropped if an offender participates in programs including housing and employment services, and drug treatment.
Last week at the monthly meeting of the East Precinct Advisory Council, a public safety community group supported by Seattle Police and the city, Davison reported that her “High Utilizer” initiative, an attempt to determine which individuals have patterns of repeat criminal behavior, has yielded a list of around 118 offenders. The goal of this initiative is to “stop the cycle of crime that they’ve been engaged in” and to protect repeat victims,” Davison said.
The initiative is part of Davison’s efforts to overhaul the City Attorney’s office and comes as Mayor Bruce Harrell has pledged a crackdown on Seattle crime in a mix of “hot spot” policing, more arrests, and more efforts to address core problems of poverty, addiction, and mental illness.
In February, Davison announced a new “Close in Time” plan to prosecute more of those who are arrested in a faster process and dig her office out from a pandemic-bogged backlog of misdemeanor cases.
CHS reported here on Davison’s first moves to reshape the office after her elimination of Pete Holmes in the primary as he sought his fourth term and defeat of police abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy in November powered by a “soft on crime” backlash in the city and concerns about street disorder.
At the EastPAC session, Davison told participants the “Close in Time” effort to stop the growth of a 5,000-case misdemeanor backlog by no longer putting new cases to the back of the queue has been successful in allowing the office to respond more quickly to domestic violence cases.
The City Attorney said her office has successfully met her goal of five days for a response to referrals, contrasting the average response time of 334 days she said existed before this change to the backlog which caused difficulties in sourcing witnesses for many cases. She said many witnesses forget about cases or move away, making it difficult for the office to take action on them.
During the meeting, Davison said that her office has fostered successful relationships with the Seattle Police Department and the King County Jail. She also said her office has established a “functioning, collaborative relationship with [the] King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office, which has not been there in the past,” by speaking with them on a weekly basis.
In the East Precinct, some of the most common crimes continuing to plague the area as COVID-19 restrictions lift and busier streets return are break-ins and burglaries. Through the first three months of the year, reported break-ins around the East Precinct climbed about 10% over 2021’s already high levels. So far this year, reported burglaries remain 50% higher than the same period in 2019 before the pandemic. And of the more than 330 burglaries reported in the East Precinct through March, 40% of the break-ins occurred along Broadway or in Pike/Pine.
Statistics also show a major change in how the city is policed. For 2021, the department reported a 27% drop in officer-generated responses like, for example, an officer driving by and noticing a smashed window at a business.
Meanwhile, across Capitol Hill and the Central District, community fears about crime levels have actually dropped — but so has trust in SPD.
Participants in the EastPAC meeting widely praised Davison’s actions during the online session, with East Precinct Captain Eric Sano saying “we are looking forward to having this partnership with the city attorney’s office and working to reduce the fear of crime and to get Seattle back on track.”
Davison, meanwhile, has also faced continued criticism that her tactics won’t stop the cycles that lead to misdemeanor crimes in the city. Her office also said it will need to drop nearly 2,000 theft, property destruction, trespass, and traffic cases to try to clear a pandemic-boosted backlog.
“Those are things that we had to, with heavy heart, decide we cannot pursue in order to focus on the recent referrals today,” Davison said at the community meeting.
More on EastPAC as well as future meetings can be found on the EastPAC Facebook page.
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Go Ann! It is time to end the sh*tshow created by City Council and Pete Holmes.
Thank god, go Ann!!!
Indeed! Let’s go!
Yes, Go Ann!
Nice to see someone in city government doing something other than enabling criminal behavior.
As the pandemic seems to wain and people return to work, reclaim sidewalks, business fronts, public transit, parks, etc.. Do not conflate a lower volume of visible crime and homelessness to efforts by police or local government.
Commerce and working people using our city again will drive all this stuff away as it only flared up because people were leaving the city unused during the pandemic and other people could then use that space.
Crime and homelessness will all just rage back the moment we hit another crisis because we pay no attention to the root causes of poverty in the United States and only try and police them in vain.
oh ok
Ah yes, we wouldn’t want that darn majority of voters who put Ann Davidson in office to get a false feeling of “we were right.” Yes, as offices fill and people return to our streets and businesses, it will “drive all this stuff away.” But of course you failed to mention that some of the reason people will return to our city, is because of a better approach to the prosecution of law breakers. Just my two cents, of course.
Don’t believe the “moving soon” spin. The city went to sh*t because the ideologues on city council, Pete Holmes and Dan Satterberg essentially legalized crime and gave the keys to the city to drug addicts and dealers. Hopefully having some adults in the room can help dig us out of the hole.
Yeah.. Nothing to do with the global catastrophe we’re living through.. Nothing at all.
Seattle was fine until the Socialists got control of City government. We voted for change last November 3rd. We’re seeing it now. Roll on Bruce Harrell Roll On.
Right, there was no homelessness in Seattle before “the Socialists go control”. Homelessness has been a long-term problem in Seattle, way before the pandemic, and way before “the Socialists”.
I’m a centrist Democrat, and I’ve moved to the right since living in Seattle. I’ve never met a Marxist or a Communist until I moved to this city. It’s truly repulsive.
Hmmmmm. Interesting theories, but how do you explain the article’s rising crime statistics in 2002 versus 2021? Even though our city and neighborhood have been reopening throughout this year, and for that matter during the second half of last year, crime has been rising. And parks have been seeing incredibly high usage throughout the pandemic as people sought outside recreational activities that were safe, so reclaim them in that sense. There is an intense need to continue reclaiming them via enforcement action by the city, which is thankfully happening with increasing frequency.
Much of the problems with the City Attorney’s office prior to Davidson were self inflicted. Note the author attributes the case backlog to the pandemic, but that offers only a partial explanation. Well documented policies of that office under Holmes created the backlog, and the sooner we rid ourselves of those policies the better. And incarcerating those who repeatedly commit crimes against their fellow citizens is a large step in the right direction. That step alone will go a long way towards reducing the visible crime and homelessness you so blithely blame on the pandemic. Not soon enough, in my opinion.
Well-stated. Huge phenom in both broadway QFCs during the past couple years of massive shoplifting, which is not directly a crime against fellow citizens–still seemed a bad sign and most amazing to see in the NW U.S. Couple months ago saw ppl at qfc practically shovelling liquid soap bottles into their backpacks to resell elsewhere, and also massive theft from the meat case. All the shoplifters were easily able to leave the store with their stolen wares bc the former policy was not to prosecute. Both stores have sharply changed their approach in the past month or so. That tightened security has impacted the vibe on the street, too.
A long over due course correction to the rotating door.
If the city raises taxes on the rich to build more jails to house the offenders, I am all for it.
From what I understand, King County Jail is not close to full. But if funding is required, count me in.
KCJ isn’t full. RJC isn’t full. Not even 1/2 full. A majority of the people who show on the jail website as “in custody” are actually on electronic home monitoring.
You all might want to give this at least another 20 min. after implementation before you give it a pass or fail. (I for one can’t take this seriously nor any of you so far but, that’s just me.)
Noone is giving out grades yet but we are praising the program’s approach.
Bummer. And here I was just crying for you to validate my opinion, d4l3d.
Yeah it is just you. Did you happen to get body-slammed against a wall while minding your own business by one of those 118 people mentioned in the article? Things are better already.
There is no reason someone with multiple arrests should be out walking around committing more crime.
What is most remarkable is that the majority of opinions on this generally left leaning blog and comment section are supporting Ann and her initiatives. She is early in her term but is a woman of and in action. She has assembled a competent team, and is responding to the needs of the community. Perhaps we can have a 2+ term Republican identified person in this position if she stays the course and gets things done.
What blows me away is that the community diversion program has been offered to serial offenders like the Steven Rich, who has had 77 criminal cases since 2016 and was still eligible for this program. Or Ileana Bozarth, who has been booked into jail 12 times in the past year.
Whether people change due to being in prison or jail is besides the point with people like this. So long as repeat and prolific offenders are locked up, they are not doing damage in the community. And a lockup just might be a deterrent for some, and addicts if offered treatment in lieu of jail (with a return to jail if they do not comply), might have their lives saved.
Stay the course Ann, and welcome to the real world, those who have had a change of heart on the hill about crime and enforcement.
Ann Davison is a breath of fresh air in our city government!!
Does this mean it’s not pointless to call the cops anymore?
It’s depressing for someone on the left, like me, to see just how badly Ds and progressives have handled crime. It should have been obvious that improving the competance and integrity of of our criminal justice system and maintaining a downward trajectory on crime was a prerequisite of long term reform. Instead the tack taken has been to try to convince voters that crime doesn’t matter, or worse that they deserve to be victims of crime because of built-in injustice of society. How exactly did they expect that to play out?
Amen.
I am leaning left right now with texts like those, maybe our collective brains are just getting out of the fog, a repeating offender’s place is in , guess what ? Prison !
Justin – This is incorrect: “Monday, the city’s municipal court judges who hear the
lower level[misdemeanor] cases the new Seattle City Attorney’s office prosecutes agreed to a plan that will put the most chronic offenders in jail, not a community diversion program.” No, they didn’t agree to put them in jail. They simply agreed to exclude then from Community Court’s diversion program. There are still other diversions, monitored by probation officers, which they are eligible for. Additionally, even in the mainstream court there is not agreement to “put them in jail.”Much needed leadership Ann, thank you.