PREJUDICE UNDERCOVER

Activists want to cut biased drug stings from next year's city budget.
Mayor Nickels wants to continue them

On September 27, 2004, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels presented his proposed
2005-2006 biennial budget to the City Council. Due to the economic slowdown
and a court ruling against Seattle City Light, Nickels and the City Council
face an estimated $25 million shortfall over the next two years.

One way the Mayor proposes to balance the books is to eliminate 191 city
government positions. Estimated savings from these employee cuts are $10.9
million. Among the positions lost will be $400,000 worth from Human Services.

Nickels also proposed a $318,000 cut to the city's human services programs.
Among the funding lost would be money for advocacy groups, a homeless youth
shelter in the University District, and a crisis hotline for suicide
counseling.

At the same time as he recommended cuts in needed human services programs,
Nickels' budget proposal included $2.3 million for a south downtown hygiene
and homeless service center.

When asked about the $2.3 million proposal, Julia Sterkovsky of the Seattle
Human Services Coalition praised Nickels. "All the investments that he's
making in human services are very good and very wise. But we're also
disappointed that he's making these cuts in services when they are the most
needed."

K.L. Shannon and Lisa Daugaard of the Racial Disparity Project and the
Defenders Association have an idea how the City Council can redirect more
money to human services. By scrapping the Seattle Police Department's
"Buy-Bust" program, the council could save $3 million to $5 million.

The police use buy-busts to crack down on open-air drug markets. Members of
an undercover Anti-Crime Team approach small-time drug dealers on the
streets and attempt to buy drugs from them.

The Defenders Association is representing 19 African American plaintiffs in
a case challenging the legality of the buy-bust program.

Currently waiting in Washington's Superior courts, the case contends that
buy-busts are illegal on the grounds of selective enforcement. Attorneys at
the Defenders Association argue that the buy-bust program is questionably
concentrated in the police department's West Precinct.

"Drug exchanges on Capitol Hill are done almost exclusively by white
people," says Daugaard, "and there are very few buy-busts done up there.
Although Second and Pike[downtown] has about four times as many
transactions as Broadway and Denny, the number of buy-busts done is about
12 times more, so it's not like the concentration of resources they're
putting down there is a function of the number of transactions."

According to data collected by the Defenders Association and the Racial
Disparity Project, the police department's Anti-Crime Team undertakes most
buy-bust operations in the racially heterogeneous area of downtown Seattle.
However, the overwhelming majority of people being arrested there are
African American, a percentage that is not justified by the racial
composition of that market.

When talking about his proposed budget on Monday, Nickels emphasized a
four-point plan to eliminate Seattle's open-air drug markets. The plan
would reinstate the "Stay Out of Drug Area" (SODA) program, which uses a
court order to keep convicted dealers away from places that could be
considered drug markets, and working with service providers to connect
addicts with shelters, counseling, and rehab.

However, contrary to activists' desires, this plan would expand the
buy-bust program throughout the city.

Daugaard argues that buy-busts don't show effective results. "Open-air drug
markets are either exactly or almost exactly where they were a decade ago,
so even if you don't have a political or racial justice objection to these
kinds of operations, one can question what are they accomplishing, if
anything."

K.L. Shannon agrees. "This money should be diverted to something else,
because it's clear that buy-busts are ineffective. We have a budget crisis,
and this money could be put into drug rehab centers or human services."

Activists in the Racial Disparity Project such Shannon and Daugaard are
starting a new coalition of organizations and concerned citizens called
Budget for Justice. They will work to raise community awareness of the
racial disparity in buy-bust arrests and ask the City Council and the mayor
to de-fund the program and find a fairer, more effective way to spend the
money.

The first City Council public hearing on the proposed budget has been
scheduled for October 7th. Budget for Justice is organizing a community
forum on Oct. 5th to talk about the new budget in relation to the buy-bust
program. The forum will be held at Bailey Gatzert Elementary School from 6
to 8 p.m. Dinner will be provided, and Budget for Justice will also have
interpreters and child care on site.

For more information on the budget process and its effect on the poor, see
the Citizen Participation Project.