Seattle-area sheriff refuses to enforce camping ban despite landmark SCOTUS ruling

The sheriff in Washington’s most populous county is still refusing to enforce a camping ban, despite a landmark Supreme Court ruling giving the go-ahead. In March, the city of Burien filed a lawsuit against King County and the King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) for refusing to enforce Burien Municipal Code 9.85.150 which prohibits encampments within 500 feet of libraries, schools, daycare centers, and other specified locations. 

According to the suit, KCSO is breaking its contract to provide police protection for the city by telling deputies not to enforce the ordinance. King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall, a political appointee of Democratic King County Executive Dow Constantine, previously ordered her deputies not to enforce the ordinance but did not inform city officials, claiming that the constitutionality of the order needed to be resolved. KCSO filed a lawsuit against Burien claiming there is a lack of shelter space for the homeless in the city and that "KCSO personnel cannot participate in the effort," to clear the homeless unless there is available shelter.

On Friday, The US Supreme Court overturned a ruling from a California-based appeals court, thereby allowing municipalities to enforce bans on homeless people camping in public places. Despite the ruling, KCSO said its current policy of not enforcing the camping ban in Burien will not change. Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling told The Ari Hoffman Show that the KCSO “worked with us on crafting it and then they sued us to not want to enforce it after they'd been enforcing it for 3 months.”

He continued, “The constitutional question has been decided… cities do have the ability to regulate public space …this is where decisions on how to address them should be made. They should be made at the city level. They should be made in a democratic process.” The office of King County Executive Dow Constantine told KOMO News in a statement: “Because the Burien ordinance remains facially unconstitutional, it is my understanding that KCSO must defer enforcement until the federal court has had an opportunity to rule in the pending lawsuit.”

The statement continued, “It is inhumane to criminalize the basic human act of sleeping in public when the person has no other choice. We look forward to continuing our work with cities and community partners to provide services to unhoused populations and transition them into permanent and stable housing.” 

Schilling told Hoffman, “We do not issue fines. We do not have a criminal penalty. We have a civil infraction where we say, ‘If you do not move your tent after you've been offered a shelter or service, if you do not take it down, that can be a civil enforced infraction.’ We don't have any fines. We don't have anything criminal associated with it…The city of Burien's made that middle path to say, ‘We want to be able to enforce a tent regulation and not have tents up during the day, not have tents near schools.’”

He added, “We want to be able to enforce that. And we want to get people into shelters and services. We want to help people if they're addicted to drugs. We want to help people if they have mental health crises going on, but we want to tackle the criminal activities associated with tent encampments. And we want to keep public space free and accessible for all.”