Drug needles triple on downtown Seattle streets
SEATTLE – Downtown Seattle cleanup crews are finding a dangerous and disturbing trend
as they sweep up trash: a sharp rise in the number of hypodermic needles left on the streets.
Cleanup ambassadors with the nonprofit Metropolitan Improvement District have seen a three-fold increase over last year.
"It's really dangerous. Matter of fact I had an incident a few weeks ago. I was on 1st Avenue and Bell (Street) and a little girl actually picked one up," said Bervis Townsend, a MID ambassador.
Cleanup ambassadors have been safely disposing of the needles and MID has been tracking the number of needles collected.
Cleaning crews picked up 151 needles in January 2014. They collected 503 needles in February 2015. They also found bags of heroin laying on the ground, and sometimes run across drug users who are homeless.
The trend has worried the local business and residents' association.
"More people are living downtown. More people are working downtown and to have an environment where there's an increase in the amount of needles that we're seeing, that was not a parallel track that we wanted to run," said James Sido with the Downtown Seattle Association.
Sido says the good news is businesses are starting to see improvements since the city and police implemented its 9 ½ Block Strategy Plan to curb crime and drug dealing.
Like many other parts of the U.S., Washington has seen a surge in heroin-related deaths as abuse of more expensive prescription opiates has ebbed.