A new audit from the city of Seattle confirms what most people already know: Drug use and overdoses are disproportionately concentrated in specific locations in downtown Seattle, First Hill, Capitol Hill and Little Saigon in the Chinatown International District. The city should act more accordingly, the audit concludes, by better coordinating and deploying a “place-based” approach to tackling the fentanyl crisis. Doing so will not only help address the crisis of fentanyl but also the crime that police and fire say is common in those areas.
The mayor’s office should appoint a single person whose job is to tailor specific responses to each hot spot location , the report recommends. “The City does not currently have a system for coordinating all the City departments, City-funded programs, and other government agencies focused on overdose prevention and crime prevention at locations where these events are concentrated,” the audit said. As part of their recommendations, auditors said the city should work more closely with federal law enforcement, namely the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.
S. Attorney’s Office, to investigate each death as if it were homicide — tracking evidence to map out supply lines and criminal syndicates. The Seattle Police Department does not currently investigate fatal overdoses.
There are organizations within Seattle that do this kind of work — the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, for example, or the “Beautiful Neighbo.