Nicole Thomas-Kennedy knew the criminal justice system disadvantaged people of color and poor Seattleites, but she was still shocked when she saw this on display after becoming a public defender.

Thomas-Kennedy, who worked as a public defender for four years before opening her own firm last year, would represent a person of color experiencing mental health issues who didn’t have much support, for example. They would live in supportive housing with services and then get arrested for a misdemeanor; something as simple as stealing socks from Goodwill.

If they don’t come back to that housing for 60 days, they could lose it, but there’s nothing they can do if they’re in jail, she says.

Case workers would call Thomas-Kennedy begging her to get their client out of jail so the individual wouldn’t have to give up housing they’d worked so hard to get: “To have them lose it would be to start all over again and rob that person of the services that were there, of the stability that’s there. It was absurd how much money was spent on doing something that was so the opposite of anything that would help. And that’s not an isolated example, that stuff is over and over and over again.”

“It’s just an avalanche of shit,” Thomas-Kennedy told CHS Saturday.

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Thomas-Kennedy enters a race against incumbent Pete Holmes, who has held the position since 2010, and Ann Davison, who came up over 20 points short in a city council run in 2019 before becoming a Republican and finishing third in the lieutenant governor primary last year and now seems prepared to try to pummel Holmes in a “Seattle is Dying” style campaign.

Accusations of being “soft on crime” is something Holmes has easily overcome before. In 2017, Holmes easily defeated attorney, consultant, and public safety critic Scott Lindsay.

The city attorney’s office handles mostly misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, while the county prosecuting attorney takes on felonies in Seattle. The office also deals with civil cases involving the city.

Thomas-Kennedy, a self-styled abolitionist, would look to have the office stop prosecuting most low-level misdemeanors, except for DUIs since the potential for danger from them is higher than for other misdemeanors. Even DUI prosecutions, however, “could be more focused on what’s going to help this person not do this again as opposed to this person did a thing, now we must punish them,” she said.

The criminal division of the city attorney’s office in 2019 received over 13,000 reports from the Seattle Police Department for criminal charge consideration and the office ended up filing more than 7,300 cases in municipal court, according to a report from the agency.

Almost 1,000 of those cases were for DUIs.

On domestic violence, a charge which the office handled with nearly 1,060 cases in 2019, Thomas-Kennedy would like to see energy from the criminal side go toward more victim advocates.

“I would like to see DV prosecution and punishment as a last resort, instead of the only option,” she said. “We should be building up those services for victims and survivors and really trying to meet their needs, whether it’s housing, childcare, transportation. Those are the things that allow people to actually get themselves out of these bad situations.”

Thomas-Kennedy would also push to beef up the agency’s civil division to advocate for looser zoning laws to allow for more dense housing and divestment from “fossil fuel money,” for example. She also wants to abolish I-200, which banned affirmative action in the state.

To Thomas-Kennedy, the city attorney should take a “huge” role in making a more equitable city.

“The prosecutor’s job is to seek justice and so if there’s injustice clearly on display, why is the city attorney standing on the sidelines?” Thomas-Kennedy said. “That should be their job to ensure the safety of everyone who lives in Seattle and that means not prosecuting people who have no agency to do anything different.”

She says her vision of the city attorney is different from Holmes’s because “I actually mean it.” That is not to say Thomas-Kennedy thinks Holmes is the worst option. In fact, she agrees with his moves to decriminalize driving with a suspended license and his approach to marijuana possession charges. When Holmes first took office, he dismissed all pending marijuana cases and then became a vocal proponent of I-502, which legalized adult recreational use of the drug after it passed in 2012.

Holmes has sailed to re-election to two additional four-year terms since first winning in 2009. He didn’t even have a challenger in 2013 and in 2017 he won by a nearly three-to-one margin.

Early in his time in office, Holmes also directed prosecutors to seek maximum sentences of 364 days to avoid automatic deportations that take place if sentenced to a year. He lobbied the Legislature to make the change at the state level, and lawmakers followed suit.

In announcing his run for a fourth term, Holmes said his leadership can help Seattle through its “Great Reset” as it recovers from the COVID-19 crisis and responds to the demands of an “overdue racial reckoning.”

“My record of steady servant-leadership for the people of Seattle — in pursuit of the fundamental needs of safety, fairness, and reform for the benefit of all — is more urgently needed than ever,” Holmes said.

One of the biggest issues of his tenure has been continued federal oversight of SPD as the city attempts to reform policing. Holmes’s campaign for a fourth term is in part motivated by his hope to see the federal consent decree through its duration, according to Crosscut.

“What I want to do more than anything is roll up my sleeves and help the newly elected leadership decide what kind of Police Department it wants,” he told Crosscut.

But for Thomas-Kennedy the consent decree simply isn’t working.

“We need to change courses,” she said, “and I think one of the ways to do that is to start building up systems that don’t rely on police for everything.”

You can learn more at ntk4justice.com.

The Primary Election is August 3rd. See all CHS Election 2021 coverage here.

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