Tacoma Business Council announcement.
It is not widely known, but last year our State legislature made changes which effectively legalized drug possession and put additional roadblocks on law enforcement doing their job. These changes have led to the crime wave we are all experiencing. At the end of November our County Prosecutor wrote the legislature asking that they fix the changes in the law on drugs as well as police pursuit standards which have “significantly contributed” to the drastic increases in violent and property crime. Read her letter here.
That letter was joined by 16 jurisdictions in Pierce County-but not Tacoma. Mayor Woodards declined to sign it. Drug addiction ruins lives and inevitably leads to crime impacting the whole community. There’s been much talk about addressing the root cause of crime; here is a chance to take action.
Last week, TBC wrote the Mayor asking that she either join that letter or, if she objected to some aspect of it, write her own. Read our letter here.
Washington’s experiment with decriminalizing drug possession and restricting police discretion on pursuits is a clear failure. The Mayor must weigh in on this. If she fails to do so that can only mean one thing – she is on the wrong side of these issues. If that is the case the voters deserve to know. If you agree with our county prosecutor’s stance, we ask you to reach out to the Mayor and your council members to voice your concern and send a copy of your letter to cityclerk@cityoftacoma.org so that it is in the record.
Thank you for your continued support!
With all due respect, issuing the Mayor of the City of Tacoma an edict and an ultimatum to participate in a largely symbolic gesture is a misguided display of power. While the issue over police pursuits and decriminalization laws are related in that they concern law enforcement, they are largely separate issues and combining them in advocacy efforts makes little sense.
I carefully read the letters linked in this article. They are rife with inaccuracies. Given the strong assertions that controversial, coercive drug “treatment” is beneficial, compassionate and humane, I am surprised to see a dearth of data supporting it. The statement “the destructive nature of these substances” reveals ignorance and an overly simplistic approach to complex societal problems as well as drugs implicated in them.
Statements like these continue to push an anachronistic perspective that treats public health matters with a moralistic rather than a scientific approach. There is general consensus that prohibition and the war on drugs has failed. Reams of data exist to support this conclusion. Furthermore, the war on drugs has never been more than a political tool of social control deployed to support power structures steeped in racism and designed to stamp out deviance and nonconformity or concentrate. It never had anyone’s best interests at heart except those of the prison-industrial complex and other members of the power elite.
The letters’ signers appear to be unaware, first and foremost, that manufacturing and distribution of controlled substances remain illegal. Secondly, as a health care professional, I can attest that coercive “treatment” is ineffective, counterproductive, and unethical. Additionally, RCW 10.31.115 specifically states, “Nothing in this section precludes prosecutors from diverting or declining to file any charges for possession offenses that are referred under RCW 69.50.4011, 69.50.4013, 69.50.4014, or 69.41.030(2)(b) in the exercise of their discretion.” Though I am not a lawyer or state representative, on the face of it this part of the statute would appear to imply that prosecutors do not lack the power to press charges against low-level drug offenders.
So why exercise this posture of aggrieved powerlessness?
This would make the claims in the letter above seem either wildly hyperbolic (in the kindest interpretation) or a deliberate misreading of the law in order to incite yet another a moral panic surrounding drug use. Such moral panics do not spontaneously arise. They are the carefully-crafted products of cynical social engineering designed to create fear and anger, and focus it on scapegoats. Such campaigns are implemented in order to deflect accountability from the leaders to whom it belongs, and distract the public from the catastrophic effects of their failed policies.
After 130 years of doing the same thing, we continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. Blaming individual drug users and making them accountable for society’s problems has failed to create desired change. Instead of persisting with this unsound methodology, why not try to further our understanding of the issues surrounding drug use and their attendant root causes like poverty, inadequate housing, and cost of living, to name just a few? Why not also address the broken mental health care system and examine drug use holistically, as the multi-factorial social phenomenon it is, as opposed to simply applying a criminal justice approach to health care?
Coerced “treatment” does nothing to address these larger issues. Nor does filling our jails with suspected perpetrators of petty victimless crimes. These letters are exercises in futility. The fact that they divert time and attention from our leaders in addressing root causes for serious societal problems further muddies the waters and drains badly-needed resources required to understand and resolve them. Strong-arming the Tacoma mayor exemplifies just the kind of heavy-handed, blunt-force approach that marks every failure of the drug war.
Politicians are leaders, and we have a right to expect more intelligent and effective solutions than the same-old grandstanding, ignorant pontificating, and scapegoating that we have been subjected to from time immemorial. These letters are little more than the fluffing of feathers in order to present the standard, vacuous “tough on crime” bravado.
At the very least, please do not pretend that felony prosecutions of drug offenders is “for their own good.” The notion that being threatened with prison time and the ensuing stigma of a criminal conviction is somehow beneficial to people in trouble, is a ridiculous pretense worthy of the propaganda campaigns of a fascist state.
I do not know what the solutions are to this crisis, but I do know that lasting, constructive solutions will be collaborative, transparent, compassionate, and humane. They will have to address the unmet human needs at their root in a manner that respects individual autonomy and dignity. Such solutions cannot be achieved through coercion–either of public opinion or through turning the underclass into de facto political prisoners.
Brilliant
What a ridiculous word salad.
This is the kind of deluded rambling rant that can only come from someone who has done extensive experimentation with mind-altering substances.
Yes, I agree that the the prison industrial complex has grown into a monster of its own making, not unlike any collective “effort” to control people, but if you think that drug use is more a byproduct rather than a cause of poverty and crime, you are fooling yourself and hoping to fool others.
If you believe that a person who has malice in their heart is not more dangerous on mind-altering substances, you are covering for something.
Why do you think the CIA and other manipulators have done extensive experimentation on chemical mind control.
The same influencers who are advocating for legalization of these drugs are also hell-bent on disarming the law-abiding populace, using the heinous acts of the deranged against us, calling them us.
We are dealing with liars who are calling us liars, and may be so deluded as to think otherwise.
If you identify more with the problem than a reasonable solution, then you are the problem.
I saw drug dealers turn kids away from the hard-right choices in high-school.
Most never recovered to their potential.
I joined the army to get away from it and ran smack into an elevated drug culture here in the South Puget Sound area.
As lower-enlisted soldiers, we were poor, and those who fell victim to the pushers failed from there – some to their death.
I have friends on Tapps Island whose kids fell into heroin addiction.
Some died although surrounded by success and wealth.
No Mr Teerlinck, you have failed to convince me that we are better off with drug addiction in our people pool than without.
A multi-billion dollar criminal drug empire can buy a lot of influence, and it will ruthlessly destroy all opposition.
Such is evil.
Mr. Teerlinck- well said!
“Politicians are leaders”? No, they are elected representatives and should act as such. We don’t need them to lead us but rather represent what’s in our expressed best interest. That first and foremost interest is public safety. Why is it you propose that government must first consider “…..constructive solutions (that) will be collaborative, transparent, compassionate, and humane.” for criminal offenders rather than constructive solutions that will be collaborative, transparent, compassionate, and humane for the rest of society affected by this criminal activity? It’s a matter of perspective. Do you represent the criminal class or law abiding public?
While there might be some truths somewhere there in Justin’s letter, WE, THE ORDINARY PEOPLE, are tired of all the TALk. TALK solves nothing, and it’s now time for action by our mayor. Our police force needs whatever it takes to lock these criminals up immediately. These hoodlums give up their rights when they choose their behavior. Lock them up and then figure out the best way to treat them. The rest of us need to feel safe, and the only way to do that is to show these hoodlums that there are immediate consequences to their actions.
Thank you, Pat. I do not feel safe in my vehicle driving in Tacoma anymore.
The whole area is lawless, except near the courts, and I have never experienced this feeling in my home town before this last year.
It is not fair, right, safe, or acceptable.
Problem, one party rule for 80 years , result kakistocracy, murder and mayhem. Solution for me might be Tunisia, where they have police, and a respect for law and order! I am ashamed to say I am a native of Tacoma.
Fascinating.
Here we have a fulsome presentation of thoughtful concern followed by a fulmination of experts fixed to the very politics that the concern expressed seeks to remedy. While we each may have a personal history or “experience” related to almost any category of social travail, we might well consider that ours alone is not dispositive to a comprehensive understanding of roots or remedy.
The trauma of “failing social contract” at ground level when someone has a gun in your ribs or a knife at your neck gets immediate attention and warrants action. At altitude, such events merit measure and the wider compass of applied policy (law). I think that is what Justin Teerlinck, seeks to address, and presumably Mayor Woodards.
Both are important to the social environment; action on one hand and resolve on the other (Tacoma’s “social contract”). Sounds stuffy I know, but where fire is endemic, it’s not enough to simply extinguish the flame.
The progressives are wrong to call for the disarming of law abiding citizens when they are also complicit in the drug-fueled crime that puts us in danger.