Don: Seattle’s smells, downtown activity is downright embarrassing

A beautiful day in downtown Seattle turned sour with the rank odor of marijuana, urine and feces.

KIRO Radio’s Don O’Neill took his brother-in-law out on the town last week. Don does his best to sell the city and all it has to offer.

But all downtown seemed to offer was filth, Don said.

“There was just a lot of grown men standing around on a perfectly beautiful day smoking dope,” Don explained. “And there wasn’t a police officer in sight.”

Don attempted to flee the distinct smell of marijuana, but as soon as he did that, other odors took its place. The two went over to Occidental Park, where it looked like a “homeless-person party.”

Related: Do we really want surveillance cameras in black neighborhoods?

“There are people drinking, there are people peeing,” Don said. He was glad he didn’t bring his son. “It was one of the first times I have ever been embarrassed by Seattle.”

After their run-in with the party at Occidental, Don and his brother-in-law went over to grab a bite to eat near Pioneer Square &#8212 sitting at an outside table. They couldn’t smell their food as much as something that was becoming all too familiar that day. The smell of feces and urine.

“There is a lot of stuff there for our police department to have to deal with,” Don said. “You could put five police officers down in Occidental Park writing tickets and they’d be busy the whole time.”

It’s a frustration Kathleen O’Toole, chief of police for the Seattle Police Department, must be feeling now. O’Toole defended the department, after a report came out showing a “disproportionate” amount tickets for marijuana use in public were being given to African American men.

“We are making national news because we have a disproportionate number of tickets written to men and to African Americans,” O’Toole said during a City Council meeting Monday. The department issued a total of 85 tickets in the second half of 2014. Of those, about 70 are in question and making the rounds in the news.

“I don’t want to sit here and defend any of it,” O’Toole said during the meeting. “Some people say we need to look at the demographics downtown. Who were the people in Westlake Park? Who were the people on Pike and Pine? But bottom line is we are talking 70 tickets in a city with a population of over 650,000 people.”

O’Toole has asked for direction. She said she doesn’t want to go in front of the council every six months to defend a handful of tickets.

Don concurs. People shouldn’t be allowed to stand in public parks, partying. Everyone should be able to use public spaces and feel comfortable doing so.

“The party has to stop,” Don said. “And we have to give people like O’Toole the tools to go ahead and clean it up.”

And it’s not just marijuana and public defecation the city needs to clean up. There have been a number of complaints about people living in various Seattle neighborhoods.