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Gov. Gavin Newsom will decide whether to let Californians possess limited amounts of psychedelic mushrooms, DMT and peyote under a bill lawmakers passed Thursday.

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The measure is opposed by many law enforcement groups, including the California District Attorneys Association and the California State Sheriffs’ Association, who argue supporters' claims of medical benefits from psychedelics haven't been adequately studied.

Your local sheriff - a noted reader of medical papers.

In fact, SPD killed more people, not fewer, during the consent decree years. Between 2013 and 2019 (the years publicly available data is available) 1 out of 10 homicides in Seattle were carried out by SPD. Police killings of non-white people increased during these years as well.

Fatal police violence is what catalyzed community members to request the consent decree in the first place, after the 2010 murder of seventh-generation First Nations woodcarver John T. Williams by SPD officer Ian Birk. And yet a 2020 study, using data provided by SPD, found that the department is still nine times more likely to stop a Native American person, per capita, than a white person.

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A city in an affordable housing crisis — with a declared state of emergency over homelessness and a record number of deaths among people living outside in 2022 — defunded affordable housing to give money to SPD for positions the department had no plan nor ability to fill in 2023 and 2024. When the city faced a budget shortfall this year, Seattle City Council chose to raid “Jumpstart”— funds from a hard-won payroll tax that had originally been statutorily designated for desperately needed affordable housing and Green New Deal investments. This resulted in $40 million going from these urgent needs to the SPD’s bloated coffers.