Seattle's Public Safety Committee Is Considering Exclusion Zones for Drug Use, Sex Work. The Public Has Thoughts.

by Carolyn Bick

At least 70 activists showed up in person and online to the Seattle City Council's Aug. 13 special Public Safety Committee meeting to speak to the proposed drug and sex-work exclusion zones.

Public comments were for and against, especially when it came to the Stay Out of Area of Prostitution (SOAP) ordinance, which would create a sex-work exclusion zone. Though few commenters spoke to the drug-exclusion-zone proposal, known as Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA), those comments were mixed, too.

The SOAP zone would be located in North Seattle, encompassing Aurora Avenue North and bordered by North 140th Street and North 85th Street.

The SODA zones would be located in downtown Seattle and the Chinatown-International District (CID).

Pro-SOAP commenters focused on how the City's installation of barriers to close off places like North 140th Street appeared to have stopped gun violence and sex trafficking. Others spoke about being too afraid to sleep or eat for fear a bullet would fly through their walls. They appeared to believe that the law would target pimps and "johns," a slang term for sex workers' clients.

Anti-SOAP commenters said that the SOAP ordinance as written does not target sex traffickers or johns. Instead, they said, the law allows the police to harass anyone they suspect of selling sex, because it targets sex workers or people being trafficked.

As written, the SOAP is an ordinance "relating to prostitution; creating the crimes of prostitution loitering and promoting loitering for the purpose of prostitution; establishing policies governing arrests for prostitution and prostitution loitering."

The ordinance also has the potential to cut trafficked people and sex workers off from needed services, housing, and jobs, commenters said. Extensive research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) backs this up and highlights the role of policing practices around the issue.

A public commenter named Star, who identified themselves as a sex worker, recovering addict, and previously trafficked person, pointed out that the SOAP bill bans people from the area where services for trafficked people are located.

"With [criminal] records comes less chance of getting jobs outside the sex industry," another public commenter, Mazz, who also identified themselves as a sex worker, said.

Several commenters, including Jazmyn Clark, the Smart Justice policy program director of ACLU-WA, pointed out that the SOAP law would appear to be unconstitutional and violate due process.

In 2020, the City repealed anti-loitering laws that many commenters said appeared to be coming back in the form of SOAP. In the press release regarding the repealed laws, the council called them "problematic" for People of Color, the LGTBQ+ community, and women.

Anti-SOAP and anti-SODA commenters also said that neither would stop or solve gun violence, given the many factors that go into creating gun violence, and enacting the proposals would move the issue into places like Capitol Hill that still lack wraparound services.

In a newsletter to constituents the day before the meeting, District 7 Councilmember Robert Kettle invited Seattle residents to attend the meeting to support SODA, the anti-drug ordinance proposal. He highlighted his office's role in its creation, calling it a threefold "collaboration between the Executive, the City Attorney's Office, and my office."

"The ongoing drug crisis is something that most or all of you have seen or been touched by, so I am inviting all of you to join the Public Safety Committee tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. to share your experiences in your neighborhood and what you need from the City to make it better," Kettle wrote.

Extensive research has shown that drug use and addiction cross socioeconomic and racial lines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that among many so-called "white collar" workers — folks who might hold high-ranking jobs in Seattle's downtown, one of the places covered by District 7 — use of substances like heroin has risen 60% since 2002.

Regardless of socioeconomic status, research from the NIH shows that fear and shame due to everything from public language to witnessed criminalization of drug users keeps people from seeking treatment. Further research from Sage Journals shows that the "experience of stigma as a consequence of criminalization" also stops people from seeking treatment.

Following public comment, council central staffer Ann Gorman briefly outlined the SODA zones, which would cover downtown Seattle and the Chinatown-International District (CID).

As the law is written, though, only a judge would be able to issue a SODA order against someone, effectively barring them from a SODA zone. Even so, the police would still have first-line discretion to arrest anyone suspected of violating the law within such zones.

Research from the NIH has shown that an arrest can be traumatizing. Due to the overlap of drug use and homelessness, as well as the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows cities to crack down on people experiencing homelessness who sleep outside or in encampments, the SODA proposal appears to give police more discretion to target people experiencing homelessness.

Municipalities around Washington State have already adopted SODA ordinances. These include Auburn, Arlington, Everett, Monroe, and Pierce County.

The Municipal Research and Services Center suggests cities considering adopting such ordinances look to the City of Seattle's racial equity toolkit, as "[a] common argument is that SODA ordinances disproportionately affect populations that have historically received more unfavorable treatment by the criminal justice system."

Councilmembers also briefly discussed the SOAP ordinance proposal.

District 5 Councilmember and Public Safety Committee member Cathy Moore showed a graphic video of several shootouts on Aurora Avenue interspersed with clips of people speaking about the effects of shootings on their lives and businesses. During the shooting scenes, Moore slowed down the video.

The language in the SOAP bill discusses making the act of offering sex for money illegal, and extensively details what may constitute this act, including if someone "repeatedly approaches a motor vehicle, leans into the vehicle and engages in conversation with the driver."

The bill labels "prostitution loitering" as a misdemeanor, and states that "[n]o person under the age of 18 may be arrested, charged, or convicted of prostitution loitering."

The proposed ordinance also targets anyone who "engages in conduct with the intent to cause another to commit the crime of loitering for the purpose of prostitution," such as transporting people "to a known prostitution area or vicinity." And in those same areas, it would also be illegal if someone "repeatedly or continuously monitors or surveils a person or persons engaged in loitering for the purpose of prostitution."

It is unclear who makes such a determination. In the proposed ordinance, this violation is labeled as a gross misdemeanor.

As Ashley Nerbovig of The Stranger reported, Moore, ahead of the meeting, removed concerns about the SOAP ordinance's language raised in an independent bill analysis by the City's central staff. Staffers specifically raised concerns that the bill would disproportionately affect buyers who were People of Color, pointing to reporting by PubliCola.

Several committee members and city officials, including Seattle Police Department (SPD) Assistant Chief Thomas Mahaffey, briefly discussed Shoreline's SOAP laws.

Mahaffey said that from talking with King County officials, the Shoreline portion of Aurora does not have the level of gun violence that Seattle's portion of Aurora does. He did not offer statistics.

When District 1 Councilmember Rob Saka asked Mahaffey whether these laws had any measurable effect on the City of Seattle, Mahaffey said that he could only speak anecdotally. He said that Shoreline's law had pushed trafficking further south into the City of Seattle, where the police did not have the ability to enforce any such law.

Both SODA and SOAP ordinances remain in committee for review.

📸 Featured Image: Street sign at Aurora Avenue North and North 92nd Street, Seattle, Washington, in 2016. The proposed SOAP zone would encompass Aurora Avenue North and be bordered by North 140th Street and North 85th Street. (Photo via Seattle City Council/Flickr under a Creative Commons, CC0 1.0 Universal license.)