Rep. Spencer Hutchins talks public safety bills in his latest legislative video update

Welcome, everyone. My name is Spencer Hutchins. I'm your state representative for the 26th Legislative District. We are coming to the tail end of this legislative session. Let's talk about what is going on in your state legislature. The state house has passed legislation that would address problems in our state law around drug possession. I voted against the bill because it doesn't go nearly far enough. The state Supreme Court, in the Blake decision, said all state drug possession laws are thrown out because there wasn't a knowledge element in our crimes. You have to show that there's a mental state component to the possession of drug crimes in order to charge someone. Right? If they say, oh, I didn't know those drugs were there, they're not my drugs, then the drug laws, the state Supreme Court said, don't apply to them because they didn't have a mental state component. What the state legislature should have done a long time ago is kept all of our drug laws in place and just added the word knowingly to our drug policy. Say, if you possess drugs knowingly, then you will be prosecuted under the law, go through the process under the law. That's not what the state legislature did a few years ago. And it left a really, in my view, very horrible situation where in our local community, we are seeing people using drugs in public areas, in public places, and our law enforcement is not able to do almost anything about it. And I have heard from local law enforcement, I've heard from our local community over and over again saying this situation is untenable. Well, the state legislature, the state house just passed a Senate bill on drug possession. The problem with the bill is it leaves drug possession as a misdemeanor. That doesn't go nearly far enough to really address the problem. Okay? We have to put a bunch of resources at the state level into drug treatment programs. This bill doesn't do that either. We don't have enough resources to do what it takes to make sure people are getting the treatment they need and the law is not set up to really force them into that system. A misdemeanor charge won't go nearly far enough to address the problem. And I just have spoken recently again with our local law enforcement leaders. They are frustrated that the legislature is not doing more to address this problem. I'm frustrated by this bill. It may be an incremental step in the right direction, but we really need to take this seriously and do the right thing and do a full scale change to our state drug possession laws. This didn't do it. So we have heard about police pursuits for years now. The state legislature passed some really unwise policy several years ago that really hamstrung our local law enforcement from being able to pursue fleeing criminals. Well, we passed a bill a few evenings ago on police pursuit. I voted against that bill because it didn't do nearly enough. I've spoken with our local law enforcement. They are so frustrated. There is a list of about 40, 45 crimes that someone can commit and still not be pursued down the road by our law enforcement. So this bill was an attempt to do something. But you know what? Our standards here in the Washington state legislature need to be higher. We need to do more than just something. We need to fix the problem. I voted no because this police pursuit fix out of the state Senate was a watered down version of what should have been what we know had bipartisan support all along. And unfortunately, that's not the policy that went through the statehouse. So I voted against it because we need to come back and be very serious about addressing the problems of police pursuit. The list of crimes that could be committed and the police can't follow you down the road makes my head spin. And it's totally unacceptable for me that we're not doing more to solve the crime problem in our community. I've been talking to you about this for a long time. I'm going to keep talking about it because we haven't fixed it. I hope I'm wrong, but I know we're going to be back here talking about the same problems next year and the year after that until we really make some meaningful change in our police pursuit policy. So as we wrap up this legislative session heading into the final days, we've had some long nights. I left the chamber a few nights ago at two o'clock in the morning. We're having some long nights and we've got some final budget issues that we're dealing with. We have some final Senate bills we're wrapping up. You know, as I wrap up this session, I just want you to know I'm going out at full energy to do what is right for our state and for our community. Please continue to reach out to me with your concerns as we're wrapping up this legislative session and I look forward to seeing you back home. Thank you.