Interesting article in the Seattle times today about last night’s event where SPD initiated a new type of program that gives known dealers an option to stop dealing vs the usual book-em and release-em approach. Nice to see new crime-preventing ideas like this taking place and hope this approach has an impact…
“More than a dozen Central Area drug dealers voluntarily walked into an auditorium full of police and prosecutors Thursday night and were presented with an ultimatum: Stop selling dope or prepare for prison.
Confronted with photos, video clips and binders full of evidence gathered in a yearlong operation along Seattle’s 23rd Avenue corridor, from Madison to Jackson streets, the dealers were promised they wouldn’t be arrested, prosecuted or sent to jail for 20 months or more if they embraced the job training, educational opportunities and chemical-dependency treatment being offered them.”
We’ve been following this for a bit now…check out our previous articles for more background
http://www.centraldistrictnews.com/stories?tag=Drug+Market+I
>Lucas
cool, i know you guys had to be on this one. keep it up!
I’d heard abour Prof David Kennedy’s studies on this, glad to see they’re trying to implement the same here
would be great if this works, but as long as you can make as much in an hour as a working person in a month, it is a fantasy… Lets work on the front side of the problem…. legalize….
These street level dudes are making min wage selling drugs.
Up all in the same clothes for 2 days grinding to get off a couple hundred in rock is not a glamorous lifestyle
you are kidding yourself, this is not nyc where we have runners for organized gangs, this is the CD where he kid on 27th turns over 2lbs of meth from spokane and pockets $700 in 15 minutes…. take a look at 23rd and Union for an hour one friday night….
I’m encouraged by the community hands reaching out to help that I saw at Thursday’s meeting. The 23rd corridor got well-deserved police attention. I would ask police — and neighbors — to proactively and aggressively combat the drug-selling at Pratt Park, where crack sales are brisk, brazen and unimpeded, mere yards from children at play.
It happens along 20th, between Jackson and Yesler. Neighbors, we need to call police EVERY TIME we witness these sales: Get license plates of cars pulling up to the curb, provide descriptions of the sellers. Use your phone cam, if you have one. Police might not be able to respond quickly every time, but the volume of calls will create a focal point for police.
20th Avenue also would benefit from the installation of an enlarged speed bump to slow the drivers who race through here. I would hope we could do this before someone gets hit.