Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, serves as a national example of alternatives to arrest and prosecution for low-level crimes like drug charges, but following a recent report revealing increased drug prosecutions, we wanted to get a closer look at what LEAD does.
Understanding LEAD, the publicly funded program designed to address chronic crime, means looking at multiple angles on diversion including both the public health side – as we covered last week – and outreach to those living on the streets. Social workers Liz Woodruff and Clentonia Vann oversee those efforts and gave an up-close look at what a morning entails for them.
“Keeping track of folks is the hardest part of our job,” Woodruff said while walking downtown in an area known as The Blade. “Because folks are so transient, or because we have sweeps and folks have to move along, we really lose track easily. Then all the work and the progress that we have made, we're kind of starting back at zero, which is really unfortunate.”
Woodruff, Vann and other outreach workers go out to "hotspots,” where many unhoused people are, to connect with clients or folks in similar situations. They offer resources and essential supplies like food and clothing.
LEAD is part of Purpose. Dignity. Action., where Brandi McNeil is a deputy director. She said many people think of LEAD as a program, but it’s more like a framework.
"That allows collaboration amongst a bunch of different system partners, and many partners who would not otherwise collaborate,” she said. “You have prosecutors and police, whether that's Seattle Police Department or the King County Sheriff's Office. But then in addition to that, you have case managers, you have community members, business owners, you have [Seattle] City Council, you have [King] County Council and all those people typically who operate in their own little silos... What LEAD really is, is a framework to bring all of those people together and to have conversations that they wouldn't otherwise have.”
Data from LEAD showed that the number of folks referred to the program nearly doubled when comparing the referrals before and after the ordinance passed in September 2023: 432 in the two years before, and 845 in the two years after. Woodruff said she expects diversions to continue increasing into next year.
A King County Department of Public Defense report released in early October of this year revealed that more than 200 people were prosecuted on drug crimes, with prosecutions increasing over time, despite diversion being the stated intention of criminalization.
LEAD does not choose who is diverted, arrested or prosecuted. That is determined by law enforcement and the Seattle City Attorney’s Office.
