From the Seattle Times:
The test of a neighborhood's tolerance is gathered in a big, filthy pile in the middle of Brad Trenary's house.
Eight hypodermic needles, 32 empty drug baggies, 22 needle caps, 21 saline tubes and assorted tourniquets, alcohol swabs and lighters.
The debris — evidence of a city's heroin habit — was picked up last month by a group of garden-gloved neighbors at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill. The park includes the reservoir at 11th Avenue East and East Pine Street and Bobby Morris Playfield.
According to police officers, social-service providers, longtime neighbors and transient youth, the park has become an increasingly popular place to use heroin, despite ongoing renovation and the presence of soccer and softball games on afternoons and weekends.
In a neighborhood that regularly celebrates its eclectic heritage and countercultural diversity, the behavior has prompted some longtime residents to start asking themselves: Where do we draw the line?
"It crosses the line when public health is threatened, when people have to live with the debris," says Trenary, who has lived a block from the park for 10 years and became so fed up that he organized the cleanup. "How can you raise your kids when there are needles in the bushes, when there's vomit and feces in the park?"
In many ways, Trenary represents the quintessential Capitol Hill spirit. He is 50 years old, clean-cut and gay. He moved to Seattle 23 years ago from Montana with his partner and chose Capitol Hill because of its open-minded reputation.
"But we're maxing out on the outcasts of society," Trenary says. "For so long, it's been, 'Send them to Capitol Hill. They'll take them up there.' "
Residents say they have seen people overdosing in front of nearby businesses, leaving syringes in the park's playfields and public bathrooms, stabbing each other during drug deals, urinating and defecating in public, and fighting to use the portable toilets as shelter whenever it starts to rain.
Some of the transients who hang out at the park and the social-service providers who work with them say it's worse than that: At least two or three transient or homeless people die of heroin overdoses every year in the neighborhood.
"Me and my colleagues, we're trying to build self-esteem, make these kids feel good about themselves," said Elaine Simons, executive director of Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets, one of the few drop-in programs on the hill. "But we're failing. We're losing to heroin."
Valerie Kampe, 41, a mother of two who has lived on Capitol Hill since 1990, wonders how it got like this.
She remembers the neighborhood as "colorful, diverse, fun" and wants to raise her family in the city. But her son's brand-new bicycle was stolen off the front porch, and she found a syringe recently in her ivy.
"What I try to avoid doing is walk down the street and act suspicious of what I'm seeing," Kampe says. "I don't like to stare at them with an assumption and look for illegal activities. But without walking around looking for it, it's come to be in our face."
The problem became especially blatant during the summer, when the warm weather brought more people outside. The same tolerance — and acceptance — of subcultures that has made Capitol Hill Seattle's gay neighborhood also has made it a destination for groups of transients migrating along the West Coast.
The hill is also becoming a magnet as other neighborhoods crack down on their own troublesome populations. Pioneer Square recently banned sales of cheap, fortified alcoholic beverages. Heavy construction in the University District has made it more difficult for transient youth to loiter on The Ave.
"You see a lot more of the chronic drunks walking around Capitol Hill," says Mama Sara, 49, a former homeless woman who is now an unofficial caretaker for local castoffs and runaways.
Ask police officers about the problem, and they say personal heroin use isn't an enforcement priority. A 10-year veteran of the Seattle Police Department, who routinely patrols Cal Anderson Park and asked not to be named, says it takes at least three or four hours to deal with a person arrested for possession of heroin.
He has to drive suspects to jail, book them, inventory all their belongings, field test the drugs, send them to the crime lab and fill out paperwork.
He wonders what's the use. He has had "at least a few cases" where prosecutors or higher-ups declined to press charges against individuals who "were shooting up right in front us, individuals with the needle in the skin."
Capt. Fred Hill, the East Precinct commander, says 16 to 30 patrol officers work the entire precinct at any given hour, serving a population of about 88,000 in a high-activity area that also includes the Central District neighborhoods.
Given any number of other responsibilities, how realistic is it for a patrol officer to spend half a shift on a homeless kid caught shooting up in the park?
Sgt. Jeff Durden, with the East Precinct Community Police team, says, "It definitely goes beyond what the Police Department can do. There are a lot of social and economic issues here."
Trenary and his neighbors have e-mailed City Hall at least once a week, trying to get someone to pay attention. City Councilman Nick Licata did meet last week with residents and business owners to hear their complaints. Trenary called the meeting a step in the right direction.
But social-service providers and city officials repeat a common lament: There isn't enough money and support.
Street Links, known for its stalwart sandwich vans, stopped serving Broadway about a month ago. Manager Greg McCormack is vague about what happened, but says the effort is looking for a new sponsor. The Capitol Hill Youth Center, a drop-in facility, isn't around anymore. Neither is Stonewall, a recovery center.
Randy Nelson, a homeless-youth case manager with Street Outreach Services, says arranging drug treatment for people who want it sometimes takes months.
And then there is the lure of the drug itself.
Frankie, 29, is heavily pierced and tattooed. At the corner of Cal Anderson Park on a recent afternoon, he articulates what heroin has done to him.
He moved from Palm Springs, Calif., to Capitol Hill in 1995. Three nights in 1999 were all it took for him to become addicted to black-tar heroin. When he woke up after a weekend of heavy heroin use, he was already "dope sick" and craving more.
He struggled with the drug for months, losing his job, then his apartment. He tried getting treatment at a methadone clinic. It cost $361 a month for him and his girlfriend. He missed two payments, and the clinic put him on a 21-day detoxification program, and when that was over, it kicked him out.
"Opiate withdrawal, you'd rather be dead," he says. "It's the worst thing I've ever been through."
Now a self-admitted junkie, he says he sleeps in a tent in North Seattle. He scams, steals and sells dope. He mentions off-hand that there's a nasty bacterial infection — sores with "the consistency of custard" — going around the heroin community lately.
He smells. He hasn't showered. As he talks, his dog growls at another dog being walked by a middle-aged woman in sunglasses. The dogs tussle, and the woman yanks her dog back and quickly walks away.
"I can empathize with merchants and the parents whose kids are playing soccer," he says, nodding at an organized game nearby. "I put myself in their shoes, and I see some kids messing with drugs and needles, and my kid steps on a needle — I wouldn't want that.
"But most kids out here don't want to be part of society. They don't care what anybody thinks. That thought doesn't even cross their mind, that the things they might be doing are harmful. …
"And you know what? It's an easy way of life. We can get high all day. I have no responsibilities. I run my dog. I make some money."
A few moments later, Trenary walks briskly by. He nods his head at Frankie and another homeless man named Dan.
"I look at them now," Trenary had said a few days before. "I used to walk right by them, but I want them to know, 'You're being seen. You're not invisible anymore. It's not OK to shoot up in the park anymore.' "