09.10.24
Hello Officeholders and Candidates,
This is an SOS. We need your help. Without emergency action Seattle is doomed.
Our city is being destroyed economically and socially by the dual addiction and mental illness epidemic.This is a request by citizens of Seattle directly affected by the epidemic to all the relevant city, state and national officeholders and candidates. We are asking for direct action from the officeholders and a pledge from candidates. Just as the military was used during the COVID-19 pandemic to assist where local resources were insufficient, we are asking each of you to commit to using the U.S military to supplement our civilian authorities in the restoration of order in Seattle. In order to permanently end the suffering in our city we ask each of you to a commit to the following principles and make a statement today pledging to commit to taking these actions beginning as soon as your position will allow.
For the military to be brought to Seattle and operate on a mayors or a governors or a presidents declaration of emergency.
To have military construction units and medical personnel supplement Washington state employees in the immediate construction of two temporary and secure emergency treatment facilities for the mentally ill and the addicted.
To have the SPD, King County Sheriffs, and the Washington State Patrol immediately arrest, charge and detain everyone who is committing crimes, including public drug use.
To have military personnel supplement the guard staff at King County jail to allow the jail to operate at full capacity.
To have all those who are mentally ill and living on the streets evaluated and where necessary, commit those individuals who need treatment to long term care.
To support the expanded use of involuntary civil commitment in Seattle and the use of military law enforcement, combat and medical personnel as needed to supplement civilian law enforcement and medical staff.
To have civilian medical and military personnel test all those who are living in subsidized housing for illegal drug use. Evaluating those who fail and offering a choice of participation in an appropriate level of addiction treatment or face eviction.
For the presidential candidates to pledge to end Medicaid’s “Institutions for Mental Diseases” exclusion.
For the presidential candidates to pledge to eliminate Housing First requirements in federal grant programs, which prohibit funding for sobriety-oriented housing.
We have been patient. We have all waited for the COVID-19 pandemic to end. We have waited for our administrations to change through elections. We have voted. We have paid our taxes when services are insufficient. We have been reasonable. We cannot wait any longer. Seattle is on the brink. If we do not receive your help now, we may no longer be able to rebuild our once civilized city.
The city is gripped by a fentanyl epidemic. This epidemic is destroying the lives of the addicts, and destroying the fabric of our neighborhoods. We are living in an open air drug market that ranges from Downtown to Capitol Hill to the International District. Our new light rail system has expanded the ability of addicts and dealers to move from one neighborhood to the next quickly. There are groups of dangerous and dirty and menacing addicts, using fentanyl and methamphetamine at all times of the day, in the middle of our business districts, in public. Many spend their days roaming in gangs to steal, to sell stolen merchandise and to deal drugs. Addicts in wheelchairs as a result of amputation of limbs caused by their drug use are dying in full view of everyone as they continue to refuse medical help. Overdoses happen daily in the street and in city subsidized supportive housing. Many are dying from overdose, often after being brought back to life over and over again. This cycle is causing a huge drain on public resources and further wasting the time, effort and energies of the very limited Seattle Police and Fire Departments. Our children and our visitors from all over the world witness this exercise in human misery.
We believe it is our duty to offer our fellow citizens suffering from addiction a place away from the cycle of drug use, theft or prostitution and dereliction they are tempted by in the city. A place where they can be separated from fentanyl and methamphetamine, drugs that are now more powerful than any in human history, and receive the appropriate length of treatment needed to recover. This dignified solution is the only way those who have become severely addicted will ever achieve a lasting change and rejoin society.
At the same time we are experiencing a mental illness epidemic that is the culmination of fifty years of failed mental health policy. The closures or dramatic reductions in capacity of our state hospital systems are the direct cause. Every day in the city of Seattle severely mentally ill people, who for their own protection, should not be outside of a long term institution even for a day, are wandering our city lost in psychosis. Their lives are nothing but misery. They exist in the streets like animals. Surely not in the way the well intentioned who closed the state hospitals imagined. The mentally ill are preyed upon by the addicts, dealers and the criminals. Their money and possessions are stolen. They are beaten, robbed and raped. We believe it is our duty to offer our fellow citizens suffering from severe mental illness a place away from the dangers and the lack of care they find in the city. A place where they can receive what they need to be safe, fed, clean, and comfortable. This dignified solution is the only way the severely mentally ill will ever achieve happiness or peace of mind.
Police or medical teams cannot mandate treatment for the severely mentally ill without their consent unless a patient is experiencing a complete psychotic break or deemed a danger to self or others. These disturbing and dangerous incidents often take place in public and at all hours of the day and night. On crowded sidewalks, in front of shops and restaurants, in the middle of roadways, on public transportation and anywhere else the mentally ill have access.
Why is all this happening in the streets of Seattle? Not enough police. No Seattle City Jail. Not enough jail guards at the King County Jail. Extremely limited involuntary treatment for the severely mentally ill. Not enough wards or long term beds for the chronically mentally ill. No drug possession laws to compel treatment. No city operated long term residential addiction treatment center for the thousands of addicts living at the animal level on the street.
Instead of long term beds in mental health and addiction hospitals away from the city center, we have spent fifty years creating a Downtown, Capitol Hill and International District ecosystem of dangerous housing and utterly ineffective treatment services. Instead of a functioning city jail we are held hostage by the conditions at the county jail. Instead of strong laws and adequate levels of police staffing protecting public spaces, businesses and citizens we must rely on ourselves to defend and protect our lives and livelihoods.
Seattle’s inability to respond appropriately to the combined mental health and drug addiction epidemic is the primary reason why large numbers of employees refuse to return to downtown offices. Businesses have been unable to survive without this customer base of office workers. The crime and disorder are affecting the convention and tourist related businesses as visitors are unable to find any safe areas to enjoy downtown away from their secure hotels or the Pike Place Market. We are continuing to lose businesses at an incredible rate. Seattle downtown commercial real estate valuations are at fire sale levels. Business owners are unable to hire employees. Many are trapped in their neighborhoods to provide security. All are worried about losing their life’s work and their livelihood. Many have resolved to flee at the first opportunity.
Dirty streets. Unrelenting public drug use and the crime associated with addiction. A dirty and often frightening public transportation system with no real level of security. Graffiti, trash and highly intoxicated people everywhere. The quality of life in our streets and on our sidewalks, in our parks and other public spaces has been destroyed. This lack of quality of life destroys the feeling of the people as citizens of the city. It is demoralizing when we are unable to act as stewards of the city and its environment. A lack of empathy and distrust is promoted. When dangerous incidents happen most just walk by without offering aid. We are experiencing an extremely low level of 911 service calls as citizens give up on our police systems. We are losing our pride in where we live. The physical environment of Washington’s only large city suffers the costs of mental illness and drug addiction in a unique and far more severe way than anywhere else in the state.
Severe mental illness and drug addiction are incompatible with city life. The solutions of the last fifty years, of housing the severely mentally ill and the severely drug addicted in our once civilized city neighborhoods, is morally, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt. What started as compassion has become cruelty. Everyone involved, and most of all the mentally ill and the addicted themselves, are humiliated, degraded and demoralized by this moral failure of the city, the county and the state.
To save itself, Seattle must exercise its duties and obligations to its citizens by first disavowing and repealing the cities own failed policies and then resolving to get its citizens and businesses out from under the lash of county, state and federal laws harmful to our fair city. The county and the state have failed in their responsibilities to create a safe and healthy environment in Washington cities and have instead become agents of our destruction.
Savage Citizens is the beginning of a multi-year campaign to dig us out of this hole and to help to solve these problems for generations. We will do whatever needs to be done. To not act is to permanently doom our city to lawless failure.Together we can and will create the necessary legal, political and social strategies needed. We can end the suffering of the mentally ill, the addicted, the citizens and the businesses of our city. No more endless amounts of money need be thrown away on ineffective short term solutions that end up lasting for decades.
We are asking each of our potential leaders to act now. These are some of the steps and goals we intend to achieve with or without our the help of our current and future leaders :
For the city of Seattle to begin to protect itself from the failures of King County and the state of Washington by:
Strengthening Seattle policy to allow for more long term involuntary commitments of the chronically mentally ill. To be willing to defend this policy against all legal challenges.
Pass a stronger public drug use ordinance and a drug possession ordinance than current state law with multi-year prison sentences as consequences. To be willing to defend those laws from state interference and civil rights claims.
For the city of Seattle to locate property, out of the city center, and to secure funding for our own city-run long term residential treatment centers. One facility for the mentally ill and one for the addicted.
For the city to lobby the State of Washington to fund and expand its own system of long term mental health residential treatment centers.
For the city to lobby the State of Washington to legislate the creation of and funding for its own system of multi-year residential addiction treatment centers available to all Washingtonians.
We will need a massive amount of help to accomplish our goal. Most of all we need others who are willing to shift away from the demoralized or cynical view of government as the problem. Government in the right hands has been the only solution to solve problems of this magnitude. It was progressive governments that created a compassionate asylum system in the states. The progressive laws passed in many states to care for the mentally ill were wise and necessary. It was conservative government that understood from the 1920’s to the 1990’s that addiction epidemics and real cities cannot coexist. The conservative laws passed to protect cities from the chaos and disorder we are experiencing in Seattle now were wise and necessary. We will need help from those of you who can look past the party line ideologies that are preventing solutions to our addiction and mental health epidemic. Fixed views won’t get the job done. We need the help of our current leadership and candidates. Only you can help us with the first step right now.
We understand that asking for the military to help our liberal city will sound extreme to some of our fellow citizens. Those of us affected every day by the epidemic do not think so. Our military was created to come to our aid. Our servicemen and women can assist our authorities to address and fix this disaster without further delays.The military has always been used to come to the aid of cities devastated by natural disaster, epidemic and attack. No other entity can create the baseline of civilization and restore the order and peace we need to save Seattle.
We need your courage. It has been fear and the unwillingness to go against the status quo that has created these untenable conditions. We believe the citizens of Seattle are ready to come together in unity to solve these problems. We need your leadership, your actions and your example.
We look forward to your bold action. If we ever work directly with you we will be happy to approach that work with an open mind and a spirit of appreciation.
In Service,
Savage Citizens