Thursday at 10:30 a.m. in the Council chambers, my committee will consider two very important issues, both directly impacting the most vulnerable people in our city.
Over a year ago, my office began receiving complaints about a practice called "wage theft," a predatory employment practice where unscrupulous employers either withhold paychecks or short pay employees. The employees taken advantage of are usually poor, often don't speak much English, and sometimes are immigrants or refugees who are trying to reestablish themselves and their families. Current legal protections for these workers are weak. Civil remedies can drag on for months. The employees are left to fend for themselves.
We will continue our discussion of this problem on Thursday, including our first review of changes I will be suggesting to our City's criminal laws that would explicitly make wage theft a gross misdemeanor crime. You can watch our previous committee discussion of this issue here, including testimony from a victim of wage theft.
Also on Thursday, we will hear a presentation from the City Auditor's office about their review of geographic-concentrated crime and street disorder, including possible solutions based on what other cities have successfully done. As we continue to struggle with City finances—we may face pretty steep cutbacks this summer—we must consider alternative police deployment strategies and other innovations that will maintain public safety with less resources. This is a reality we can't avoid and it's going to take some critical and innovative thinking. (Highlights from the Auditor's report follow the jump.)
Here are a few highlights from the Auditor's report:
- Research completed in 2004 showed that 50% of reported crime in Seattle was committed at about 4.5% of our street segments or block faces. These specific "hot spots" remained "quite stable over the 14-year period" studied.
- A 2009 study of juvenile crime found that just 86 street segments, or about one-quarter of one percent of the nearly 30,000 total street segments in Seattle, accounted for over one-third of all juvenile crimes committed over a 14-year period.
- Disorder and violent crime are correlated. The Auditors cite in their report, "While places that have zero physical and social disorder also have zero violent crimes, places with high disorder have about a 30% chance of having high rates of violent crime."
While these facts are compelling, even more intriguing is what other cities have done about it. The Auditor's report highlights the experience of three other U. S. cities and concludes that Seattle should adopt similar approaches. How a city responds, however, is key to whether neighborhoods accept the response. A police-only response is clearly not sufficient. In fact, a police-only response only heightens fears of the police, damages police legitimacy in the eyes of residents, and can sometimes lead to serious ethical concerns about police tactics. The Auditor's report will begin a necessary conversation as we seek to make every neighborhood in Seattle safe for everyone.