Witness: ‘Just another day in the Seattle heroin den’

Chase Bank employees and passersby were greeted by an unbelievable scene Saturday morning on Capitol Hill as someone dumped potentially hazardous material that one witness described as a “free heroin starter kit.”

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“… tourniquets, cotton balls, spoons, needles,” a witness explained of what was dumped near the back entrance to the bank. “Literally everything you need, minus the heroin. Whoever left all that was like a dealer of some sorts because there were two unopened packages of needles.”

Another witness told me he’s used to seeing needles strewn about, calling this “… just another day in the Seattle heroin den.” But even he was surprised by the magnitude of the scene.

“I’ve stumbled across the occasional needle on the train and whatnot, [but] nothing to this extent. Unreal.”

Unreal indeed.

It was cleared before Chase opened at 9 a.m. and, when I arrived around 10 a.m., there was no sign of waste.

Chase employees were tight-lipped, refusing to offer comment. They forwarded me to a regional spokesperson.

Though it’s unclear if this is common practice, a spokesperson from Chase, Darcy Donahoe-Wilmot, tells me the mess was cleaned up by one of the bank’s staff members. However, she couldn’t tell me where they disposed of the needles, prior to this publishing. She said this was an isolated incident.

This scene comes as the city is moving forward with one heroin injection site in Seattle, despite community opposition. Indeed, activists generally use instances like this to make the claim we need injection sites so that we may contain the waste that otherwise makes it to the streets. But anyone who’s ever visited Vancouver and the neighborhood that houses their safe injection will tell you, it won’t stop our neighborhoods from deteriorating.

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