THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

What the Seattle Times Didn't Tell You in Its Story About an
"Encouraging" Drug Bust in Pioneer Square

The Seattle Times described the bust on May 4 as a major operation to
sweep drug dealers off the streets of Pioneer Square, saying that
undercover narcotics detectives rounded up 15 of the "most prolific
sellers of crack cocaine." A reporter and photographer joined the
officers-posting their story even before the police issued a
self-congratulatory press release. A picture of a black woman in
handcuffs ran in the paper above a caption calling it a "bonus
arrest." Seattle's sole daily newspaper spoke only to cops and
prosecutors, who hailed the three-month investigation as an antidote
to neighborhood complaints and portrayed the defendants as chronic
sellers and big-time dealers. Seattle Times reporter Sara Jean Green
didn't talk to anyone else-such as experts on the impact of buy busts
downtown-or examine police records to see just what sort of people
were arrested.

There's another side to the story.

Records obtained from the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office
show that the 15 people were almost exclusively selling minute amounts
of crack, had little or no money, and were overwhelmingly nonwhite
(reflecting a racial disparity chronic to police buy busts in
Seattle). These were small-time dealers. And local experts agree that
sentencing them to prison won't solve the problems of drug markets or
drug use in Pioneer Square.

The total combined amount of crack on 14 of the defendants was only
3.1 grams-a street value of about $310. That averages about 0.2 grams
per person. Only one defendant had a notable quantity of drugs or
money: 4.85 grams and $583.76.

Of the 14 other individuals, only five had any cash on them
whatsoever, other than the money that the undercover officers had
given them. According to jail and police records obtained from the
county prosecutor's office, cash amounts on the defendants were $2.49,
$2.62, $6.48, $61, and $392. The other nine had literally $0 on their
person.

The sweep was conducted, the Seattle Times reports, "in hopes that
prosecutors can successfully argue for stiffer prison sentences,
taking the repeat dealers off the streets for up to five years,"
according to a prosecutor assisting the Seattle Police Department (SPD).

The Seattle Times editorial board also chimed in: "Police and
prosecutors going full throttle on drug dealers is encouraging. Bravo."

But Lisa Daugaard, director of the Defender Association's Racial
Disparity Project, which has followed the city's buy-bust operations
closely for the last decade, says of the defendants: "If they sold
drugs, it seems highly likely it was to make a few dollars so they
could immediately buy more drugs for their own use. We should be able
to address that problem humanely through a public-health strategy."

Indeed, police records show the defendants were not drug-ring leaders,
as the Seattle Times suggested by calling them "some of the... most
prolific sellers of crack cocaine," but unsophisticated addicts. One
undercover officer-who repeatedly told the suspect, "Again, I am not
the police"-reported that the suspect "continually asked me if he
could have 'just one hit' from me." The man was arrested for 0.4 grams
of crack and had no money on his person.

Based on officers' descriptions, seven of the suspects are black, five
are Hispanic, two are white (although one of those may actually have
been Hispanic, based on name), and one is Native American.

Chasms in racial disparity are typical of Seattle buy busts, historically
speaking. While drug sellers are usually white, even in open-air markets,
police disproportionately bust nonwhite suspects. Katherine Beckett, a
researcher at the University of Washington, and three other researchers
concluded in a 2005 study on drug arrests in Seattle: "This
overrepresentation primarily results from law enforcement's focus on crack
users, and especially on black and Latino crack users." They added: "We find
that law enforcement's focus on crack users does not appear to be a function
of the frequency with which crack is exchanged, the concentration of crack
transactions exchanges outdoors, or other race-neutral factors." In
addition, Beckett wrote in another report called "Race and Drug Law
Enforcement in Seattle" in 2004: "By contrast, the SPD conducts very few
operations in open-air drug markets where whites, and heroin, predominate."

For this sweep, SPD captain Steve Brown said it was a way "to consider
how best to disrupt the mechanism of the market." The Seattle Times
editorial board noted: "To reduce crime and a sense of menace
downtown, busting repeat drug dealers in Pioneer Square could make a
real difference."

But it is unlikely to make any difference. We've been through this
before-to zero effect. The SPD conducted a major drug bust in April
2009, netting 30 people. SPD declared on its website: "Belltown Drug
Ring Smashed by Seattle PD." Three weeks later, the Seattle Times
talked to a neighborhood leader who said the "regulars" were already
back.

"In the short term, I think it indicates a message to those openly
dealing that there are going to be some immediate consequences," says
Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff for the King County Prosecuting
Attorney's Office. "Does that mean that they won't be replaced with
others? No," he says. "They will be back."

"Typically, there is no long-term impact," says Daugaard. "The basic
law of supply and demand drives other sellers into the same territory,
which has been established as a site to purchase narcotics." The
handful of arrests, she says, "are a drop in an ocean."

ACLU of Washington drug-policy director Alison Holcomb adds, "Scooping
up street-level dealers simply creates job opportunities for younger
recruits."

There are other ways to handle open-air drug dealing, including
programs that divert arrestees to treatment, warning suspects that
they'll be arrested if they don't clean up their act, and a host of
social services. (Goodhew, in the prosecutor's office, says that the
drug--market sweeps are a piece of that puzzle.) No one realistically
expects drug busts to stop-crack is illegal, and people don't want to
live in neighborhoods overrun with crack dealers. But the Seattle
Times' coverage sounds like the deluded propaganda from the 1980s that
suggested that we could eradicate drugs through an ever-escalating
drug war.

Why does the Seattle Times routinely hail the enforcement and leave
out the rest of the story in its coverage?

"It seems obvious to me that there are other questions to be asked,
and King County is rich in expertise in this area," says Daugaard.
"One would hope that reporters would avail themselves to those resources."

Two Seattle Times editors, the reporter Sara Jean Green, the SPD, and
community groups in Pioneer Square (who had complained about the
dealers) did not respond to repeated requests for comment.