Seattle Crime Reports : Seattle Crime Blog : Seattle, Washington

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More than six months and 100 blog posts ago, I wrote a lengthy rant complaining about the crime and homelessness plaguing Broadway on Capitol Hill. One of my key criticisms (which had also been pointed out by someone else in a letter to the editor published at SLOG) was of the self-cleaning public restroom, located just past Bonney Watson Funeral Home and Seattle Central Community College.

Now the issue is back in the spotlight, after Seattle Public Utilities announced yesterday its recommendation that the City Council approve removal of the five self-cleaning crappers scattered around the city. Yup...It took them four years, but city officials have finally realized what most of us who walk the streets have known from day one: self-cleaning toilets are a nice idea, but one that fails miserably upon execution.

You can't blame the city for trying new things, though...especially when their ideas have been proven to work elsewhere. From The Times:

Council President Richard Conlin said he voted to install the toilets after seeing their success in Europe, where "everybody uses them."

"They are a middle-class phenomenon," he said. "We thought we could impose that."

The problem is that in all its old world glory, Europe is far more disciplined, and in some ways more civilized, than the United States. Issues that have worked well for them (socialized healthcare, marijuana decriminalization, a fully-functional and near flawless railway system) are simply unwanted or ineffective - and sometimes both - in America.

Plus, homelessness isn't nearly as prevalent across the pond: according to the United Nations, the entire European Union has around 3 million homeless...compared to the United States, where government figures suggest as many as 3.5 million within our borders alone. While I value the city's willingness to experiment with new sanitation options, we cannot realistically expect that a system proven effective in a culture vastly different from our own would have the same positive outcomes across the board.

Of course, don't tell that to Tim Harris of Real Change, whose idealistic approach to homeless equality is a prime example of how dangerous human emotion can be when we allow it to trample over reason. Harris' argument? That not only do we need these five silver dens of debauchery...we need more public toilets. Quoted in The Times:

Removing toilets would force people to relieve themselves in streets and alleys, Harris said.

"If you don't provide alternatives and viable alternatives, then it's not fair to blame people for activities that they have little choice but to engage in," he said.

At his blog, Harris continues the verbal diarrhea:

I actually went into this whole conspiratorial rant about how they'll take the toilets away, and then when the whole downtown smells like a Belltown alley on a hot summer day and there's shit on every doorstep, we'll hear all about the filthy, disgusting, homeless people who are too lazy to even find their way to the bathroom.

But for some reason she didn't use that.

Maybe she didn't use it because it's total nonsense. Tim, I know you mean well, but you're approaching this from an angle that values the homeless perspective above all: above safety for the greater community, above fiscal responsibility and above respect for urban progress. That may be a feasible position for an individual such as yourself to hold...but it is a dangerous one for an entire community.

Then again, Harris' vision of a putrid downtown core might have some unexpected benefits. If the people of Seattle were faced with unsanitary conditions at the hands of bums who treat the city as their personal playground, maybe we would all wake up to the fact that we can't allow this subculture of homelessness that we've tolerated thus far to continue prospering.

If Seattle really wants to grow into its own, Mayor Nickels should call up Rudy Giuliani and ask him what he did to get rid of the homeless during his time as New York City's mayor. I'm guessing it wasn't centered around the widespread installation of self-cleaning toilets.

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We at SCB seem to always write about situations where emotion overtakes reason, perhaps because that weakness is prevalent even in a libertarian haven like Seattle. Today is no different, as the news media and blogosphere are alive with discussion over Seattle's aggressive new plan to eradicate homeless camps.

The basics of the plan, as seen in the P.I.:

• The city's Human Services Department drafted the protocol following criticism starting last summer of unannounced sweeps of encampments, which are considered public safety and health problems because of drinking, drug use, garbage, rats, fires and lack of toilets.
• The proposal says the city generally would give at least 48 hours notice before clearing a camp and would try to connect homeless people with services and shelters, though it could deny notice and referrals if it suspects "illegal activities" or a public health hazard.
• The city would store certain personal items, such as prescription drugs or identification cards, for retrieval for up to 60 days.
• The protocol would cover all city property and departments. The city would respond to complaints or upon finding an encampment, and could deputize noncity employees to carry out the rules.

Sounds fair to us. But this has been a point of contention here for some time now. Last week SLOG published a post encouraging readers to attend a public forum on the matter, which occurred at Seattle Center last night. We couldn't go...but Tim Harris of Real Change, who has been extremely critical of the plan at his blog, has posted his take on the evening's events.

Not surprisingly, only one courageous voice - that of local blogger Craig Thompson, whose humorous spat with Harris is certainly worth reading - stood up in support of the plan. Take it away, Tim:

Only one person had spoken in favor of the Mayor's policy, and it was nutbar guerrilla columnist Craig Thompson, spinning his tales of criminality, murder, and the infiltration of the heroin trade into Seattle's homeless encampments, and how we need to destroy people's camps in order to save them from this certain menace.

Harris' anger towards Thompson seems to stem from the latter's moving editorial recently published in the P.I., which details the "criminality, murder and infiltration of the heroin trade" that Harris so casually dismisses. But Thompson has hit the nail on the head: while perhaps homeless people are not to blame or be persecuted for their living circumstances, the situations that inevitably arise as a result of their congregation in illegal camps have negative outcomes (both for the homeless folks trying to survive and the rest of Seattle):

The camp attracts drugs. It may start out a non-violent place but it will not stay one. Nearly all homeless camps I've stood in have signs of drug use -- crack pipes, syringes. They contain weapons, usually knives. [...] If sweeps end, camps will be as violent as they were in the Jungle in 2003, but on Queen Anne, the slopes of West Seattle and Magnolia, in Ballard and Ravenna Park. Criminals linked to hardcore drugs will take over -- this is already happening along Dearborn, around Chinatown, downtown uphill from 5th Avenue.

We feel bad for Tim Harris. So caught up in idealism and the false sense of moral superiority that some of us get from "helping" the oppressed, Harris seems unwilling - or perhaps unable - to accept the painfully obvious truth. No wonder he didn't take Thompson up on the offer of  a guided tour through "The Jungle."

Maybe we're just heartless bastards here at SCB, but we think the mayor's plan makes perfect sense. And for once, it seems like someone else in the local community agrees with us.