Council Passes New Laws Against Graffiti, Expanding Police Power to Shut Down Businesses for Off-Premises Violations

"Blight"

By Erica C. Barnett

On predictable 7-1 votes (with progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck dissenting), the council passed two pieces of legislation yesterday that PubliCola—and our podcast, Seattle Nice—have covered extensively: A bill empowering the City Attorney's Office to pursue civil actions for graffiti and fine individuals $1,500 per tag, and a bill expanding the city's nuisance property law to allow police to penalize property owners and shut down businesses for off-premises activities, such as drug use or liquor law violations in the vicinity of a nightlife venue.

If police document three violations of the new law in 60 days, or seven in a year, they can begin abatement proceedings against a property owner, which can mean anything from corrective action to shutting down a business for repeated violations.

As we reported last week, Councilmember Rob Saka added a number of amendments in committee that dramatically expanded police power to take action against private property owners for violations of both city and county laws.

Although the ostensible purpose of the legislation was to reduce gun violence and dangerous criminal activity outside bars and clubs, a Saka amendment expanded the list of items that could qualify a property as a "nuisance" to include local laws against animal cruelty and garbage dumping as well as violations of the King County health code, including laws on rodent control, on-site sewage, chemical contamination, and more. (Saka also amended the bill to increase fines for violations by 50 percent, in line with his amendment boosting the fine for graffiti from $1,000 to $1,500 per tag.)

Because the nuisance ordinance allows police to go after property owners who rack up three or more violations, the law, with Saka's amendment, would have allowed the city to fine or potentially shut down a business for non-criminal health code violations that fall entirely under the county's purview, and which Seattle police are not trained or authorized to enforce.

On Tuesday, the council passed another amendment to correct Saka's overreach, removing all of the language he added (and that the public safety committee approved) that would have made the presence of rats near a property the legal equivalent of shooting someone on a nearby sidewalk.

As District 2 Councilmember Mark Solomon put it, people in his district may complain about neighbors with "a junky yard," but it isn't appropriate to get police involved in a dispute that can already be resolved through the city's inspections department or King County Public Health. "My concern is that adding the chief of police into the mix on what is actually a public health issue is not necessary," Solomon said.

As amended, the law still allows a court to order property owners to take care of public health nuisances, but it doesn't count those hazards as "nuisance activities" that police can use to shut down a property.

The council also passed an amendment exempting nonprofits from potential police abatement because of activity that happens around their properties. Dan Strauss, the amendment sponsor, said the change would ensure that police couldn't shut down food banks or other social service providers based on things like drug use or other criminal activity committed by clients of those providers. "There are other ways for the city to address the issues that don't result in a loss of social services," Strauss said.

Council President Sara Nelson and Councilmember Maritza Rivera opposed this exemption, arguing that the police should have the authority to target what Rivera called "bad actor" nonprofits, beyond simply arresting people for doing things that are already illegal, like selling stolen property or using drugs in public.

Nelson, citing an unnamed "small business owner" who complained about "spillover" from a nearby nonprofit, said allowing police to target nonprofits would create "an opportunity to really bring not just the nonprofit but the small business together to really think about what could be some solutions."

Rivera, who cited an unnamed nonprofit in her district that "has refused to meet with me to discuss any way that they can be better neighbors in the community," said the city has few tools to stop nonprofit organizations from allowing illegal activity outside their properties. "it's not my intent to ever use it against" food banks or housing providers, Rivera said, b"ut other providers, that are not ones that we fund, where we don't really have much of a mechanism for compelling them to behave better in community."

Councilmember Rinck noted that the intent of a particular elected official in 2025 is less relevant than what the law actually says. "This bill gives not just this mayor, but any future mayor, broad power," Rinck said. "We may trust this mayor, we may trust this city attorney, but I'm thinking about ... the potential for this to be misused in the future."

The council also passed the new anti-graffiti law, which proponents have argued will "deter" graffiti by imposing fines that could easily add up to tens of thousands of dollars. The ordinance now includes a last-minute walk-on amendment by Kettle that makes the law—which City Attorney Ann Davison has said she plans to enforce using social media posts—retroactive for the past three years, meaning that people could be fined for graffiti that no longer exists. Rinck and Strauss were the only votes against that amendment, which Kettle—inaccurately—called "technical."

"This is not about murals," Kettle said. "The murals are essentially commissioned art and beautiful ... [going] back to Renaissance Italy. ... This is about taggers who damage public and private property. This is about the taggers who bring blight to our community, to our neighborhoods, and then create the challenges that result from that."

Kettle—always on brand—took the opportunity to say that the two bills were part of his six-pillar "public safety framework," rather than one-off proposals based on the individual priorities of the mayor and city attorney, who advanced the bills to the council.

"This is not a standalone bill," Kettle said. "It's part of a broader strategy and a plan that we have here on council, particularly to the Public Safety Committee, to address the the public safety challenges that we have." Kettle cited "20 public safety bills" the council has passed since 2024.

This number includes hiring bonuses for new police officers, a bill making it easier for police to shut down after-hours hookah lounges, two bills authorizing closed-circuit police surveillance cameras around the city and funding the expansion of the city's Real Time Crime Center to monitor them, and bills that created new tools to crack down on sex work and drug use and to banish people from large swaths of downtown and north Seattle if they violate the new sex work and drug laws.