A Grumpy Seattle Tries Scapegoating the Poor and Homeless

Something interesting happens in a number of stories about Seattle's downtown safety crisis yesterday. See if you can spot it in this KOMO story, "Downtown street crime scaring away visitors":

A survey by the Downtown Seattle Association found that panhandling is a concern among 66 percent of those polled, while open-air drug sales are a concern to 75 percent. Nearly 40 percent said they simply do not feel safe downtown.

And statistics show their fears are not misplaced. Police records show a 22 percent increase in major crimes in downtown and South Lake Union from 2008 to 2009.

See how concerns about panhandling and open-air drug sales are pretty much the same thing? And note that to KOMO reporter Melody Mendez these "fears are not misplaced": major crimes have gone up. So panhandling (not specified as aggressive) is lumped in there with homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and vehicle theft.

Or, here, in this Seattle Times story on a packed forum on public safety:

Burgess said felony crimes increased 22 percent in 2009 over the previous year from the South Lake Union neighborhood to Pioneer Square, according to Seattle Police Department crime data. Much of that increase is the result of robberies and thefts "in our downtown core," he said.

Burgess, who is championing a new initiative to crack down on aggressive panhandlers...

It happened again! Panhandling keeps sneaking in there, along with major crimes.

It's not that Downtown doesn't have a crime and safety problem. It certainly does. If I were asked if I felt safe late at night in Downtown, I'd say no, and given a chance to specify the area, certainly not. If I'm catching the bus after a show, I don't wait anywhere near Third Avenue.

But it matters how we define a problem, and how we go about solving it. In Jon Talton's post in support of Councilman Tim Burgess's "Street Disorder" initiative, he mentions a man being held up at gunpoint on Second Avenue. But being held up at gunpoint is illegal already. In fact, as the Seattle Weekly points out, most of Burgess' plan to address street disorder is already in the works. The only news here is that Burgess could end up criminalizing panhandling without looking like someone who's criminalizing panhandling per se. (Which is the fear of Tim Harris from Real Change.)

But am I being fair? On Crosscut, Judy Lightfoot writes that, "The ordinance included in the initiative would prohibit aggressive solicitation from paid street solicitors as well as from panhandlers. It is expressly designed to preserve freedom of speech as well as the economic vitality of the city."

She describes how the mentally ill and homeless also have concerns about aggressive panhandling, despite the fact that Seattle has a law against aggressive panhandling. (Burgess' version spells out illegal behavior, like blocking someone's path or soliciting near an ATM.)

The problem is that what we're talking about is not panhandling. We're talking harassment (on the low end) and about coerced robbery (on the high end). The word "aggressive" is key, because it signifies the implied escalation that will come if you don't pay up. It doesn't matter if it's a bluff--if you rob someone pretending to have a gun, you've still robbed them.

Still, by attaching the label "aggressive panhandling" to this clean up of city streets, Burgess has, wittingly or not, implicated everyone who panhandles. Is this necessary? Could we not simply add foot patrols to problem areas and begun addressing the most serious offenders first? (Here is a map of violent crimes in Seattle this year.)

It strikes me as disingenuous to expect a $50 fine to deter street thugs from acting out (or the threat of community service). In my experience, most people in need of cash who are long on foresight, weighing consequences, and impulse control do not spend time threatening money out of people. (They go to work at investment banks. ZING.) A visible police presence is a thug's best impulse control.

One last observation about the perception of how bad Seattle streets are: As I mentioned before, major crimes are up. A response to this requires no new ordinance; it requires a wider blue line. But a key player in the general drama is not being discussed. The Downtown Seattle Association blames (and has long blamed) an unfriendly social environment whenever sales diminish. In the midst of the Great Recession, they return to the well, confusing (in part, I think) correlation for causation.

Sales are down because the economy across the country is on life-support.

But perception is a different matter. Years ago, in San Francisco, I learned a lesson in the public perception of the mentally ill and homeless. Talking to event organizers, I found that they used a ratio of businesspeople to, say, Tenderloin residents to judge an event's likely feeling of "security." People in public subconsciously draw a feeling of safety from the number of burgermeisters around them. But as Downtown undergoes the recession--and the number of shoppers or even WaMu employees on the street falls--even a stable number of homeless people would grow in significance. Suddenly, it appears there's more of them than of "us."

Whatever lesson you'd like to draw from that, you're welcome to.