Harger: SPD arrested a violent Aurora Ave. pimp, fentanyl dealer 3x in 9 months. WA law tied its hands. Feds didn’t have that problem.

Leon Henderson was arrested by the Seattle Police Department (SPD) in January 2023 outside the Park Plaza Motel on Aurora Avenue with 1,700 fentanyl pills, 600 grams of methamphetamine, and a loaded pistol under his seat. SPD did their job. He went through the state system. He didn’t learn a lesson.

He was arrested again in May 2023 with 7,000 fentanyl pills and another firearm. SPD did their job again. Went through the state system again. Still no lesson.

He was arrested a third time in September 2023, near a Ballard homeless encampment, with a backpack containing nearly 10,000 fentanyl pills. Each arrest, more pills than the last. Each time, SPD put him in cuffs. Each time, Washington’s sentencing limits were the limiting factor.

This week, a federal judge sentenced him to 20 years. Not because local law enforcement wasn’t trying. Not because SPD or King County prosecutors weren’t doing their jobs. But because Washington law simply doesn’t give prosecutors the tools to put a fentanyl dealer away for the length of time he deserved. The feds do.

What Aurora Avenue in Seattle looks like when you actually live there

Most people who drive Aurora Avenue do it with their windows up and their eyes forward. They see the motels, the women standing at the curb, the encampments spilling onto the sidewalks, and they keep moving. They don’t have to live there. Some people do.

I’ve talked to those neighbors, and they see women working as prostitutes with johns parked in front of their houses in the middle of the day. They hear the crack of gunfire at night. Violent pimps settle disputes the way violent pimps settle disputes. They’ve learned which stretches of sidewalk to avoid and which hours to stay inside. They’ve called SPD and filed complaints. They’ve shown up to community meetings and told elected officials exactly what their street looks like from the inside.

And then the next morning, it’s all still there.

These are people who pay taxes, raise kids, and maintain their homes in a corridor that the rest of the city has largely decided to tolerate from a distance. They didn’t choose to live in an open-air crime zone. They just live there. And for years, someone like him was part of what made Aurora Avenue what it is.

A Seattle fentanyl dealer and a pimp. The combination matters.

His prior record includes a 2019 conviction for promoting prostitution. He isn’t just a drug dealer. He’s a pimp, and a violent one. Court documents say he forced a victim into sex work by injecting her with heroin and threatening her with death. That’s not someone who drifted into the life. That’s someone who understood exactly how addiction works and used it as a leash.

That’s the Aurora Avenue Seattle business model for people like him. Fentanyl on one side, women for hire on the other, stolen loaded guns keeping the whole operation together. Each time he was arrested in 2023, he had a different female companion. The first was allegedly involved in prostitution. The third had been reported as a missing person out of Clallam County. A missing person. On Aurora. With this man.

King County prosecutors said the pattern suggests he was running both operations simultaneously. The neighbors on Aurora already knew that. They’ve watched this combination operate on their street for years, but couldn’t get anyone to do anything about it at a scale that would actually matter.

18,000 potential Seattle fentanyl overdoses. One dollar at a time.

He knew his customers on Aurora Avenue. Federal prosecutors noted he was deliberately targeting homeless addicts along the North Aurora Seattle corridor, people who, as U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead observed from the bench, would struggle to resist the temptation. That’s not a side effect of his business. That’s the business model.

A dollar a pill. Keep them trapped. Keep them coming back. Keep them folded over on the sidewalk or holed up in a tent, in misery, in public, making every block of that street harder to walk for every person who lives there. And as long as they’re buying, the neighborhood suffers alongside them.

Over nine months, investigators recovered more than 18,000 fentanyl pills, 220 grams of fentanyl powder, and 700 grams of methamphetamine. At a dollar a pill, Judge Whitehead noted, the defendant could have caused “18,000 potential overdoses in our community.”

Fentanyl isn’t a lifestyle choice someone makes from a position of freedom. It is a chain. He was in the business of keeping people chained because he understood that someone deep in addiction is going to find it almost impossible to say no. I’ve looked a mother in the eyes after she lost her son to this. That pain doesn’t go away; it doesn’t get smaller. She carries it every day. He knew there were more mothers like her in his future, and he kept going anyway.

Washington’s drug laws aren’t built for dealers like this

Three arrests in nine months. Tens of thousands of fentanyl pills. Stolen loaded firearms. A prior conviction for forcing a woman into sex work by injecting her with heroin. Under Washington law, fentanyl distribution is a Class B felony with a maximum of 10 years. With firearm enhancements, a state court could add more, but realistically, a state sentence for someone with his record on drug charges would likely land between four and eight years, with earned release cutting that down further.

SPD kept arresting him, and prosecutors kept charging him. The ceiling on what Washington law could do to a dealer like this is a problem Olympia created, and it’s a problem the neighbors on Aurora Avenue have been living with for years. They’ve watched dealers like him get processed, cycle back, and set up shop again. They know exactly what a state drug sentence looks like in practice. They’ve seen it.

The feds had different tools. Twenty years. Mandatory minimum. No earned release, no early exit. He will be nearly 55 years old when he gets out.

Two things at once

Sending him away for 20 years matters. It matters to the Aurora Avenue Seattle neighbors who have been waiting for something that feels like a real consequence. It sends a message to the next dealer thinking about setting up near a homeless encampment with a backpack full of fentanyl pills.

But locking up dealers isn’t enough by itself. The people he was preying on are still out there. They need a real detox and real treatment. A genuine path out, not just harm reduction kits, and a place to use more safely. As long as the market exists, someone will fill his spot.

The two things aren’t in conflict. You can believe that a person trapped in addiction deserves real help and still believe that the pimp profiting from their misery deserves a long stretch in federal prison. Both things are true, and the neighbors on Aurora Avenue deserve a city and a state that act like both things are true, not just one of them.

Washington’s drug laws don’t give prosecutors the tools to impose sentences like this one. That’s a conversation worth having in Olympia. The people who live on Aurora Avenue in Seattle have been trying to have it for years.

The feds finally gave them an answer. Twenty years. The feds did what Washington law wouldn’t allow.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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