In case you didn’t get to watch KOMO-4’s Town Hall on May 21, here are some of the main takeaways.
First and foremost, there were ZERO public officials at the event, despite invitations to the mayor, city attorney and all the members of the Seattle City Council. KOMO anchor and author of Seattle Is Dying, Eric Johnson, was moderator and reporter Matt Markovich gave several reports from the sites of homeless encampments being cleared.
The panelists included Scott Lindsay, an attorney and public policy adviser, Lisa Daugaard, director of the Public Defender Association, Todd Wiebke, former Seattle police officer, and I-Miun Liu, small-business owner in the International District.
Daugaard struck the central chord in saying that Seattle’s homeless/lawless crisis (our term for the situation) is “missing a sense of urgency to tackle completely unacceptable conditions in our city’—which was underscored by the absence of public officials. She cited the complexity of the problem and called for coordinated action among law enforcement, prosecutors, social workers and neighborhoods—who often inadvertently undo each others’ efforts.
The other panelists simply reinforced key elements of the problem:
• Wiebke said, “Police are no longer contacting people like we did 15 or 20 years ago…The amount of risk… is so high that it’s career suicide to get out of the patrol car and talk to somebody.”
• Liu was representative of the scores of store owners who have been victimized by the homeless/lawless crisis. “The street cops are as frustrated as we are,” he said. “It’s a vicious cycle and the criminals just laugh at us” because they know nothing will happen to them.
• Lindsay, who compiled the list of 100 repeat offenders that was featured in the KOMO documentary, said the city is not delivering criminal justice responses that would change the criminals’ behavior or protect the neighborhoods involved.
Near the end, Johnson revisited the suggestion that we take a look at McNeil Island (“or something like it”) as a treatment facility “where sick people learn to live life again.”
Nothing in that hour did anything to dispel the wisdom of establishing Action Central, which could be the leading-edge catalyst for coordinated action.
P.S. Here are links to prior posts in the fantastical Action Central series: Mayor Durkan’s Address; Homeless Central, a First Step; background on Action (nee Homeless) Central director John Shannon; his distinction between Homelessness and Lawlessness, The Stakeholders; The Perfect Site! The ‘Jigsaw Puzzle’ and Reaching For Reality. If you haven’t voted in the poll, please do now.
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—Larry Coffman