Dori: If tweakers caused Judd & Black fire, it’s an indictment of lax drug policy

I got a sad email this weekend from a listener named Katie. She said that she “grieved” at the loss of the Judd & Black appliance store in Everett, which burned down in a suspicious fire on Friday night.

It has been a part of the Everett community for decades. But just like everything else in this area it has been burned to the ground by the homeless. After 75 years of being a pillar in Everett it has been destroyed by tweakers and their reckless behavior. They just don’t care what they do or who they do it to. I am so tired of it. When are these liberals going to wake up and realize we need to get these people out of here? [sic]

She then said that she could go on, but, unlike the strung-out addicts, she has her family to tend to.

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The Judd & Black building, at the western end of Highway 2 in Everett, was a wonderful, historic building. It was built 130 years ago, before Everett was even an official city.

The Judd and Black families started the store back in the 1950s. In this era today, when retailers are trying to compete with the internet and the bigger, corporate box stores — the fact that Judd & Black carved out an appliance company that goes from the Puget Sound area to the Canadian border is simply amazing. I love these companies that have found ways to survive and thrive in the toughest of times.

Now, we called the Everett Fire Department on Monday morning, and we do not know for sure that the fire was started by tweakers. All we know is that there is a park near the store that has a homeless encampment, which does have tweakers there. We are waiting to hear back from the fire investigators to hear if that is how and why it burned down. We do not know the answer to that.

What I do know is that the Judd & Black building is an example of a part of our history, and a part of our very soul as a region. These family-owned businesses are the people who have created the jobs, provided the tax revenues, who have found a way, in really tough times for retail, to just make it through. If it is proven that it was the neighborhood encampment that caused this historic, 130-year-old building to burn down, it would be another damning indictment of Snohomish County’s decision to legalize small amounts of drugs. King County, as we heard a couple of weeks ago, is doing the same. King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said that this policy will make things better. When does “it gets better” actually happen? When are we going to see the manifestation of our whacked-out policies toward drugs?

We’re destroying the region, we’re burning the heart and soul to the ground so we can become the drug capital of America. Meanwhile, Mayor Durkan, over the weekend, announced her new budget, which includes $1.3 million for heroin death sites. Yeah, let’s bring more addicts from around the country to our region. It’s working out so well.

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