With Police On Hand, Council Adopts Drug, Sex Work Banishment Zones
Advocates, including the region's labor unions, the ACLU, and homeless advocacy groups opposed the legislation.
By Erica C. Barnett
The city council adopted legislation on Tuesday reinstating a repealed law against "prostitution loitering" and creating new banishment zones for people accused of engaging in sex work or breaking local drug laws, including a recently passed law against public drug use and possession. The prostitution loitering law was repealed unanimously in 2020; that legislation was sponsored by Alex Pedersen, at the time one of the council's two most conservative members.
Although prostitution loitering and public drug use or possession are misdemeanors, violating the new Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) and Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) orders will be a gross misdemeanor, a far more serious offense. Because judges can issue the new orders as soon as someone has been charged with a crime—including as a condition of release from jail—people will soon be faced with the Sophie's choice of staying out of areas where they spend most of their time or facing up to 364 days of jail time even if they're never convicted of the underlying crime.
City Attorney Ann Davison applauded the council's 8-1 vote (with Tammy Morales dissenting), saying in a statement, “For the past two years I have heard loud and clear from law enforcement that they need new legal tools to disrupt both open-air criminal drug market activity in many areas of our City and the tragedy of human trafficking on Aurora Avenue North. ... I look forward to partnering with the Seattle Police Department on strategic enforcement to help impacted neighborhoods and protect vulnerable victims."
Like Davison, Cathy Moore, the sponsor of the loitering and SOAP bill, has suggested that every person engaged in sex work is a victim of human trafficking and exploitation. Her legislation expresses support for a future "receiving center" for victims of the sex trade; during her comments yesterday, she applauded the work of Kristine Moreland, a volunteer with Real Escape from the Sex Trade whose group The More We Love has proposed building just such a receiving center.
PubliCola readers will be familiar with Moreland from our coverage of homelessness in Burien, where The More We Love (originally a private company offering encampment sweeps at $515 a head) recently took over the city's homelessness response contract from the established nonprofit REACH. The group has since reinvented itself yet again, as an expert on sex trafficking in Seattle equipped to run a program and receiving center for victims.
Although Moore has said she'll seek funding for a small receiving center in this year's budget, her legislation does not call for any interventions or assistance for the majority of sex workers, who say they need health care, housing assistance, and destigmatization, not jail and criminal records.
Organizations including the MLK Labor Council, King County Coalition on Homelessness, ACLU of Washington, and sex worker advocacy groups like the Green Light project all opposed the bill. In a statement, Chief Seattle Club director Derrick Belgarde called the legislation a "bandaid on the deeper, systemic issues that continue to plague Seattle. Though framed as a public safety measure, this policy further marginalizes vulnerable populations who already face barriers to housing, employment, and healthcare."
The Chief Seattle Club is located right across the street from the Pioneer Square SODA zone, which includes the large plaza near the Pioneer Square pergola where unsheltered people often hang out, along with the Pioneer Square light rail station.
More than 100 people showed up in council chambers yesterday, the vast majority of them to speak in opposition to the two proposals. Establishing what has recently become a standard scene, a half-dozen police milled about, joined by a half-dozen security officers, to deal with any potential "disruption," which council president Sara Nelson helpfully defined at the start of the meeting. Another four officers were reportedly waiting in the wings all afternoon. Altogether, that means the council used at least 60 hours of police time (from roughly 1:00 pm until roughly 7, when the meeting ended) to protect itself from public commenters.
Although Nelson repeatedly called for security when someone shouted from the back or a commenter opposed to the legislation went too far over their allotted 60 seconds, no one was arrested and most people got to speak. (Some of those who had showed up starting at noon—a group that included many sex workers who outed themselves publicly to urge the council not to adopt the loitering law—gave up and left after Nelson halted public comment for the council to discuss and vote on their alternative to the social housing initiative)
On Wednesday, a staffer for Joy Hollingsworth said on X that the police were needed to protect the women on the council, who he said have been subjected to many violent and misogynistic threats from "activists." None of those threats appear to have occurred in council chambers, however; the "activists" who have showed up to oppose the bill were largely sex workers and sex work advocates, people who live near the proposed SOAP zone, and groups like the ACLU of Washington.
During the debate over a street vacation for a new basketball arena, five female councilmembers were subjected to violent, misogynistic emails and phone calls, mostly from self-identified male sports fans, over their votes against the street vacation. The threats and insults, which PubliCola covered extensively at the time, thankfully did not occur in person, and therefore would not have been addressed by police officers standing in council chambers.
This is so disgusting. I was on the phone waiting to give public comment but I was too far down the list. Meanwhile many, many articulate people commented in opposition and only a few in support. Why bother going through this farce of extended comment period if they were just going to approve it anyway? What an insulting waste of time.