Anti-Graffiti Enforcement Returns to Seattle Streets (and Walls)

The SPD will decide whose public art is or is not a crime. by Carolyn Bick Last June, a U.S. District Court judge issued an injunction barring the City of Seattle from enforcing its anti-graffiti ordinance. The case came before the courts as part of an ongoing suit involving protests against police violence in early 2021. The case specifically regards the messages written in chalk and charcoal on the East Precinct during the protests.  In her decision, Judge Marsha Pechman stated that the ordinance as written was too broad to avoid trampling on First and 14th Amendment rights and specifically “impermissibly delegates enforcement of the Ordinance to the SPD without any guidance or boundaries.” “This is evident in the fact that SPD has apparent, unfettered discretion to enforce the Ordinance or not. While there is allegedly a policy not to arrest children drawing rainbows on the sidewalk, the Ordinance itself allows the police to do just that and to arrest those who might scribe something that irks an individual officer,” Pechman wrote. But Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison appealed Pechman’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last July — and, as of Feb. 2, Seattle...