A sign warns people to stay out of an alley near Third Avenue in downtown Seattle.
Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg
Seattle Wants Cops to Crack Down on Drug Users to Save Downtown
The city is tightening penalties to stop a spiraling fentanyl crisis — and revive an economy hit hard by public safety concerns.
The blocks at the center of Seattle’s drug crisis are surrounded by everything that should be driving the city’s economic recovery.
Just west of the fishmongers of Pike Place Market and the tourists lined up at the original Starbucks, the streets for years were marked by squalor. Boarded-up doorways. Littered sidewalks. Open drug use.