There is a new attorney in town and she means business. Newly elected Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison, wants to prosecute misdemeanors more often and more quickly, in an attempt to aid businesses and public safety. “That’s why I’m doing these tours with businesses,” said Davison, who took office in January and has visited downtown businesses to seek owners’ input. “I need to understand how I can use my office to help businesses and communities.” Davison is starting out with a clear focus on the criminal side of her position.
In November, Davison was elected Seattle’s first female city attorney after a campaign built on a promise to increase the office’s prosecution of misdemeanor crimes, which had been reduced throughout the 12-year tenure of predecessor Pete Holmes.
Davison, a 53-year-old Republican pledging law and order, beat progressive former public defender Nicole Thomas Kennedy, who took an opposite tack, disavowing police and working toward abolishing misdemeanor prosecutions. The diametrical pair overtook Holmes in the primary.
She said in January, addressing the nearly 5,000-case backlog in the office and prosecuting neglected cases, with an emphasis on repeat offenders will be main priority. In the first signal of those changes, Davison is expected to announce Monday that her office will make a decision on whether to prosecute new cases within five days of a crime being committed, in an effort to avoid the backlog, which has cases up to two years old, and expedite intervention.
City Councilmember Andrew Lewis, who used to work as an assistant city attorney and whose district includes the troubled area of Third Avenue and much of Davison’s focus, said Friday that aggressively prosecuting misdemeanors may not be the best approach to addressing street safety.
“Typically, everyone I’m talking to has been a victim of a horrendous and unacceptable crime,” he said of his efforts to address the same high-crime areas.
“We are going to be doing a change of course,” Davison said Thursday. “It’s going to be deliberate and purposeful to start to change the timing of when a crime is committed and when we do our part to address it.”“The best way to interrupt crime happening on the streets today is by quickly and efficiently moving on the cases referred to us by the Seattle Police Department,” Davison said. “I am confident that we have made the operational changes necessary to support this action and I know my attorneys and staff will work hard to make sure we meet these new filing deadlines in service to our city.”
