Welcome to The Newsfeed.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Seattle's new city attorney, after a decisive and historic win, is making some changes to the office.

During her campaign Erika Evans was vocal about her priority to divert low level drug cases to LEAD, which has sparked controversy.

I had a one on one conversation with Evans to learn more about her plans to take on this major issue in Seattle.

To level set, what is your position on combating the opioid crisis?

-80% of the cases right now that officers encounter with folks dealing with substance use disorder, they are already getting diverted into LEAD.

It's just the 20%.

Maybe this is a new officer that wasn't trained on, hey, this is the policy, that ends up into this office.

And all we're saying is we're going to just make sure that those cases that do come, that we're having a lens and an eye to make sure if some of these folks, some of them are young folks, that they have the opportunity to get connected to services and treatment.

We do reserve the right to prosecute.

If this person is not making meaningful progress, or they're not engaging with the services provided.

-Your office works in tandem with LEAD.

Will your office have a different approach than your predecessor?

-Yeah, I think the biggest, different approach really is the experience that I'm bringing to this role.

I've been a city prosecutor and a federal prosecutor.

I've gotten close to a million fentanyl pills off our streets, unlawful firearms off our streets.

This is work that I've done, boots on the ground that I've done in trial, gone toe to toe with high level serious drug traffickers.

I think that perspective matters in a role like this, when we're talking about a population that is not the traffickers, because those are felonies, our office doesn't do that.

It's the misdemeanors.

And a lot of these folks with the drugs are the ones that are dealing with the addiction, plus the the perspective of working on these cases before and seeing the need that these cases with folks dealing with addiction, you know, need to get connected with treatment.

We can see clearly the evidence is in our street of how what's been happening these last few years is not working.

It is very clear.

We can go to different areas in parts in our city, and we can see how what was happening is not working and our failed policies.

-Staying along the same lines, the King County Department of Public Defense, they had a report that found 215 criminal prosecutions over the last two years under the drug diversion program, only six people were connected to treatment.

You've called that a failure.

-Yeah.

And in that report as well, it found that Black people were four times more likely to be criminally charged for using than non-Black people.

That is a failure.

-One thing that you campaigned on, was expediting the process of DUI, domestic violence.

The backlog of those cases.

Now that you're in office, what are some of the ways in which that you'll be able to address that?

-We've been going to Olympia to work on a bill, that will allow us to address the backlog with the DUI that we currently have right now.

Today, if someone gets into an accident here in Seattle for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, it's going to take 22 months for us to be able to get the toxicology report back, to be able to charge that case.

And that is unacceptable.

People, in the meantime, will get another DUI as they await to have any conditions imposed on them.

And so this bill is going to allow us to use accredited private toxicology labs to be able to get those tests run quicker.

So we're doing what is necessary to keep the public safe.

And I'm really grateful for the support, bipartisan support we've had on this bill.

And it's moving forward.

And we're really hopeful that it will get through this legislative session.

-I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed, your destination for nonprofit Northwest news.

To find more from our interview with Erika Evans, visit us at CascadePBS.org.