The Seattle police union is slamming the city’s new socialist mayor for apparently issuing a directive halting all open drug use arrests — in favor of promoting a diversion program they say suffers from “suicidal empathy.”
Wilson, 43, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, ran on a platform of seemingly impossible guarantees — including a promise to “Trump-proof Seattle,” according to her campaign website.
The Seattle Police Officers Guild said it was blindsided by a directive from Wilson’s team to pause open drug use arrests, in a statement issued Sunday.
The union said that an internal memo ordered the police department to funnel related cases through the city’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which aims to steer offenders engaged in low-level drug crime away from the criminal justice system.
LEAD seeks to connect alleged drug users with intensive case managers, who typically help their clients with anything from housing to mental illness.
The union blasted her apparent decision as a glaring red flag that will promote societal decay — and claimed LEAD actively supports “suicidal empathy” in its lenient practices.
“Most cops know that the LEAD program supports this ideology, and they don’t want to refer cases. It is a waste of time. We’ve all seen how our streets can be filled with death, decay, blight, and crime when ideology like this infects our city. Now with this resurrected insane direction, death, destruction, and more human suffering will be supercharged,” Mike Solan, the union president, said.
Police Chief Shon Barnes wrote that “new policies and procedures are inevitable” in the wake of “the shifting political landscape our city has grown accustomed to,” in the full memo obtained by KOMO.
The jarring change was “effective immediately,” said Barnes, who also noted that any suspect who refuses to comply with LEAD will still face “traditional prosecutorial measures.”
Wilson, however, denied the union’s bold assertions and claimed in a statement Monday that she hadn’t enforced any policy change.
“You’ll know when I announce a policy change, because I’ll announce a policy change,” she said sarcastically.
Despite the orders laid out in the internal memo, Seattle PD also said “nothing has changed when it comes to police continuing to make drug-related arrests.”
The Post reached out to to the police union for comment.
Wilson’s vision stretches far beyond Seattle’s borders. On the eve of her Jan. 1 inauguration, she shared a post expressing “solidarity” with Somali child care providers in the city who have come under scrutiny amid a day care scandal more than 1,000 miles away in Minnesota.
City leadership, she said, “will not tolerate anyone who is trying to intimidate, harass, or film Somali childcare providers” — prompting the head of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division to remind her that “citizen journalism are NOT HATE CRIMES in America.”
