by Carolyn Bick
Despite the outpouring of opposition during the Seattle City Council’s (SCC) Public Safety Committee’s meetings in August and September, as well as the full council meeting on Sept. 17, the council voted 8-1 at the latter meeting to pass two controversial pieces of legislation targeting drugs and sex work, with the respective acronyms “SODA” and “SOAP.”
Opposition to the bills — called SODA for “Stay Out of Drug Area” and SOAP for “Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution” — came from all sides, including lawyers, aid workers, residents of the affected areas, and people who would be targeted. Support came from relatively fewer in attendance in-person or by phone at either Public Safety meeting, and primarily consisted of residents, people involved in real estate, and a few medical personnel. Councilmember Tammy Morales (District 2) cast the sole “no” vote.
Extensive public comment at all the meetings, as well as in various media outlets, laid out numerous issues with the legislation: Both bills will cut people off from service providers intentionally located in such areas, and the anti-drug legislation, SODA, will specifically create major legal problems. Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison has championed both pieces of legislation.
SODA creates “zones” in various Seattle neighborhoods wherein judges can issue what are effectively area bans against people who have been charged with or convicted of any criminal violation involving drugs.
The legislation’s language allows police to immediately, “without a warrant or other process,” arrest anyone they suspect of violating the order.
The SODA zones are located in Seattle’s downtown, the Chinatown-International District, Pioneer Square, Belltown, Capitol Hill, and the University District. The latter three zones are newer, introduced and approved at the Public Safety Committee’s September meeting. The council claims to have “narrowly tailored” and “carefully crafted” these zones to avoid cutting people off from needed services.
But some legal experts disagree. At each committee meeting, several lawyers detailed to councilmembers how harmful the bills would be, if passed. King County Public Defender Anita Khandelwal, who will resign on Oct. 4, directly told the committee at its September meeting that the Pioneer Square SODA zone cuts people off from the most direct route to the Department of Public Defense (DPD) office. She later expanded on this point in an email to the Emerald.
“[T]he proposed SODA zone in Pioneer Square would present an operational challenge because our office is right on the border of the proposed zone,” Khandelwal wrote. “DPD clients subject to a SODA order who also have a case in the King County Courthouse would be prohibited from taking the most direct path along 3rd Ave from the courthouse to our office.”
In her email, she iterated that the DPD is opposed to both SODA and SOAP, because “these policies … have proven to be ineffective, harmful, and enforced in a racially discriminatory manner in the recent past.”
The idea that a person could tell an arresting officer that they are simply on their way to see their lawyer doesn’t hold water, either.
“Even though the bill includes an exemption for people attending ‘scheduled appointments with legal counsel’ our clients frequently drop in to see their lawyers without an appointment,” Khandelwal wrote. “Since DPD represents the vast majority of people prosecuted in Seattle Municipal Court, and presumably will represent the majority of people subject to SODA orders, it’s likely that many attempts at enforcing a SODA order in the Pioneer Square zone will result in the alleged violation involving the client asserting that they were en route to our office.”
She continued, “Even in a circumstance where someone was arrested for violating a SODA order and they did in fact have an appointment, their lawyer could not disclose that information without violating their attorney-client privilege.”
At the committee’s September meeting, Khandelwal said in her public comment that a person’s attorney “would become a material witness to any proceedings involved in the alleged violation.”
According to the Washington State Bar Association, this would mean that a lawyer could no longer act as an advocate for their client — in other words, they could not do their job — and the City of Seattle may be on the hook for furnishing the accused person with a new attorney.
Pioneer Square is also home to several different kinds of service providers, such as supportive housing options and clinics. Councilmember Robert Kettle (District 7), chair of the Public Safety Committee, said during the committee’s September meeting that “we took great care to restrict [the zones] so then they were not including service providers, which was largely accomplished, not fully … but to the greatest extent possible.”
In her email, Khandelwal wrote, “Seattle city leaders do in fact have a choice other than resorting to policies that have already been shown to be ineffective, harmful, and enforced in a racially discriminate manner.”
Khandelwal cited the City Auditor’s Office, which published a comprehensive report in June titled, “Addressing Places in Seattle Where Overdoses and Crime are Concentrated: An Evidence-Based Approach.”
Not only did the Auditor’s Office not include exclusion, arrest, and incarceration as part of its evidence-based approach — in other words, measures that have been proven to work — but it did, Khandelwal pointed out, include “an appendix of a wide variety of public health interventions for people struggling with addiction in the very report that many Councilmembers cited in their remarks during the Public Safety Committee hearing as calling for a ‘place-based’ intervention.”
“Instead of further expanding the use of the criminal legal system to respond to poverty and addiction, Seattle could invest in any number of those non-carceral strategies,” Khandelwal wrote.
SOAP legislation carries with it a similar issue of cutting affected people off from needed services.
The legislation revives recently repealed laws that targeted sex workers and were shown to have a disproportionate effect on People of Color. The new SOAP laws are intended to target pimps and sex workers’ clients.
For the most part, the SOAP zone remains unchanged. It is bordered by North 145th Street and North 85th Street and by Stone Avenue North and Fremont Avenue North. However, the language in the latest iteration of the law states that the area “generally” applies to these borders.
Councilmember Cathy Moore, the legislation’s sponsor, claimed the legislation will target the gun violence on Aurora Avenue (which may not be solved with SOAP zones), and Public Safety Committee members have iterated that the law is not meant to target sex workers. At the August committee meeting, Moore showed violently graphic videos. She did not shield the identity of a person the video heavily implied to be a sex worker, who was running half-naked into the road.
Several people at the committee’s August meeting said Moore’s link between gun violence and sex work is not accurate. Moreover, they said, targeting sex work in this way ends up cutting off sex workers from needed services, and arrests could mean they are barred from future employment not connected to sex work. They repeated this sentiment at the committee’s September meeting.
During public comments at the committee’s Sept. 10 meeting, Madison Zack-Wu, a stripper and a Strippers Are Workers (SAW) member, listed 28 Seattle-based organizations, agencies, and individuals opposed to SOAP, including the Harborview Abuse and Trauma Center — the Seattle Police Department’s go-to hospital for medical emergencies — Chief Seattle Club, and other organizations the City of Seattle has supported vocally and financially.
After Zack-Wu was abruptly cut off after a minute by Kettle, a fellow public commenter and Green Light Project volunteer Elle picked up where Zack-Wu left off, for a total of 40 opposing organizations, agencies, and individuals. Former Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes was included on the list.
Morales, who voted in 2020 to repeal the City’s old SOAP laws, released a statement shortly after the Sept. 17 meeting. She pointed to the City’s earlier SODA and SOAP laws, and that “research has proven these orders did not reduce drug use or human trafficking.”
Carolyn Bick is a local journalist and photographer. As the Emerald's Watchdragon reporter, they dive deep into local issues to keep the public informed and ensure those in positions of power are held accountable for their actions. You can reach them on X, formerly Twitter, @CarolynBick and can check out their work on Muck Rack and their website.