Seattle has finally started tossing people in jail for low-level crimes again after four years of letting shoplifters, vandals and other petty criminals walk free.
The change, which went into effect earlier this month, reverses pandemic-era restrictions by King County that kept Seattle police from booking all but the most serious misdemeanors into the slammer.
Officials in the Emerald City argued the policy hamstrung prosecutors and cops.
But now Seattle’s ne’re-do-wells will face a jail cell if they flaunt the law.
The move is a win for local law enforcement, which has long pushed for more tools to fight a four-year crime wave that has continued since the pandemic — despite crime in nearly every other major city declining, an analysis by the Seattle Times showed.
“We’ve had people tell us, ‘You can’t arrest me for that.’ Well, that was true but now we can. We’re hoping to get a little bit of accountability back,” the Times quoted Deputy Police Chief Eric Barden as saying.
The booking restrictions began in 2020, when King County Jail — which contracts with Seattle — slashed its capacity for social distancing reasons.
After that, the county cited staffing issues for the ongoing restrictions.
Meanwhile, Seattle officials, including City Attorney Ann Davison, said that the restrictions were a millstone around the necks of city law enforcement and municipal courts, causing many crimes to go entirely unpunished.
When the city began negotiating with a different jailhouse in the city of De Moines to hold its low-level thugs, a group of public defenders sent a letter to the city council whining about the long commute they would have to make to the new jail, according to the Urbanist.
Finally, the county used hiring bonuses and new overtime incentives to attract more correctional officers, and the city and county were able to strike a new deal that went into effect on Nov. 1, according to the Times.
