Snohomish County is facing an unprecedented heroin epidemic with devastating consequences for our families, schools, and quality of life. Experience has shown that you cannot arrest your way out of drug addiction, homelessness, and mental illness. Therefore, we fully support the Snohomish County Council’s decision to give voters the opportunity to decide how we will address the heroin epidemic and associated problems. There is a complicated relationship between mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness, and crime, and we need to address that nexus of problems by taking a holistic, system-wide approach that actually works.
Public safety and social service professionals have known for many years that more comprehensive approaches to addiction- and mental illness-fueled crimes are more effective than a revolving door of arrest and jail. We think today’s public is more aware and better informed than ever before and likely recognizes the need for a new commitment as well.
We are happy the public will be able to make this decision.
To create and sustain new programs that address the causes of crime, and not just crime, requires new approaches. We think the public will be willing to adopt these new, system-wide strategies because this affects all of us, every day.
This proposal would allow Snohomish County to expand its Office of Neighborhoods initiative, pairing more law enforcement officials with more social workers. This would allow us to hire additional, needed Snohomish County Sheriff’s Deputies and social workers. The proposal would also allow us to expand alternative sentencing programs, drug addiction treatment, mental health services, and other social services that can help get at the root of addiction, mental health problems, and homelessness. These programs have a proven track record of success and need additional capacity to bring them to scale to address the current crisis. Today’s vote is the first in many steps to create long-term solutions for our heroin epidemic and related problems.
Of course, for those who would sell drugs or commit violent crimes, we will use every tool at our disposal to see them face justice. The additional public safety resources will ensure we are arresting, prosecuting, and jailing drug dealers and violent criminals. For those from the cartels or even smaller drug dealing operations, we will make Snohomish County an extremely unwelcome place for them to operate.
In addition, cities will also receive resources to implement coordinated efforts to work against the heroin epidemic. We believe this partnership between the county and cities will bring a truly regional approach to this difficult and painful problem. To ensure the plan addresses concerns from across our community, we will work with cities, law enforcement, the county council, county executive, and other partners. In addition to current efforts to find added efficiencies and opportunities for coordination across the region, we will work with our partners to establish a Snohomish County Public Safety and Human Services Alliance. The Alliance will help us implement and coordinate efforts across the region.
Working together, we will put the heroin epidemic behind us.
Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers, Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary and County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Roe contributed to this guest column.
