Public Safety & Preventing the Jail

Seattle needs to completely revamp its approach to public safety and criminal justice.  Enforcement alone will not solve the problems facing our neighborhoods. The City Attorney needs to focus on rehabilitation and prevention, not solely prosecution. Constantly seeking prosecution for low-level and first-time offenses wastes resources and leaves our problems unresolved at best and exacerbates them at worst.

As your City Attorney I will be proactive in working with our communities in order to restore trust and prevent crime. I will partner with community programs like the Clean Dreams project so they have the support hey need to succeed. If we are to avoid the shame of building a new jail while we are closing schools, we need to be aggressive not only with alternatives to incarceration, but with crime prevention as well.

Pete will bring a progressive approach to public safety that will work to find solutions while easing the burden on our jails, our police force and taxpayers' wallets. By approaching public safety from a ground-up, community based point of view, Pete will work to stop crime before the need for the criminal justice system.  This will also give our police officers on the ground the freedom to focus on the violent crimes that are threatening the safety of our communities.

THE PLAN: Community, Courts, Commitment

• I will bring a real commitment to Seattle’s community and mental health courts. But I will also renew prior efforts that have been set aside, like Community Accountability Boards, to reclaim our youngsters before they are lost and instill a greater sense of responsibility to communities and neighborhoods.

• I will also ensure that our problem-solving courts follow the best practices recommended by the major new report by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association. In particular, defendants in need of services should not have to plead guilty to participate, they should get the services.

• Immediately after the election I will meet with the new King County leadership to talk about mutual cost savings inherent in regional jail facilities, including a remodeled King County Jail. It’s not just the cost of building a new city jail, but ongoing operating and maintenance expenses.

• We are going in the right direction with city attorneys assigned to police precincts, but we need to go a step further to build true partnerships with neighborhood organizations, business owners and community groups.

• Before expanding the Drug Market Initiative, will rework the plan to emphasize more effort on engaging individual participants and ensuring that there are resources to sustain their choices to turn away from the drug economy.

• Clean Dreams, Clean and Green, Green Jobs Now, and Weed and Seed are all programs built on a similar idea, that by cleaning up the trouble spots in the city and giving troublemakers something positive to do, you can slowly change lives while improving public safety in neighborhoods. Trading traditional prosecution and incarceration for low-level drug offenses and using more long-term community programs can free up resources. I would work with King County to make resources available to support community-based treatment and jobs programs for those who otherwise would end up jailed, only to go back to their old life when released.

• Graffiti and tagging that mar public and private property will not be tolerated. Graffiti has increased dramatically in the last few years, but prosecutions are down 44% since the start of Tom Carr’s tenure. It makes our neighborhoods look run-down, and costs our small businesses in time and customers. Carr wants property owners to clean up the mess while he fills up the jail with the vandals. That’s ludicrous.

With or without federal grant money, we will develop a database of graffiti and tagging, and start holding the perpetrators responsible. Graffiti painters and taggers will clean up their own mess … and then some. Graffiti has its place, as ArtWorks has shown. But that place is not on private homes and businesses.

• I will stop charging minor marijuana possession cases and urge the Legislature to decriminalize it. Seattleites overwhelmingly want this, and certainly don’t want to build a new jail to house minor pot possession.

• The City Attorney’s office will work hard to help families make the connections with family services and other support organizations to help our youngsters grow up safe -- and not just staying out of jail, but contributing to the community.