For years, Seattle politicians insisted we had to choose between compassion and public safety. If you wanted clean parks and drug-free sidewalks, you were accused of lacking empathy. If you demanded accountability, you were told you were criminalizing poverty. Now even San Francisco is admitting that was nonsense.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie just signed legislation creating what the city calls the Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation, and Triage Center, known as the RESET Center. In announcing the move, Lurie rejected the tired false choice between order and empathy.

“For too long, San Franciscans have been told that we must choose between clean, safe neighborhoods and compassion for those struggling on our streets,” Lurie said on X, adding, “And today, we’re showing that our city doesn’t have to choose between compassion and accountability.”

Seattle leaders should be paying attention. They will not, of course. Since Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson took office, open-air drug use has exploded downtown. While it cannot all be placed on her policy choices, since she’s not been in office long enough to establish a meaningful plan, we can’t ignore that the problem worsened since she took office due to, at a bare minimum, a lack of direction.

San Francisco embraces arrest plus treatment

According to ABC7 News, the San Francisco legislation allows officers to arrest people engaged in public drug use and take them to the new facility. How novel!

“The RESET Center allows our officers to arrest those engaged in public drug use at a speed and volume we have never seen before,” Lurie said. He added, “If you use drugs on our streets, we will arrest you.”

That sentence alone would cause half the Seattle City Council to reach for smelling salts. The difference is not that San Francisco suddenly became conservative. It is that even a deeply progressive city has been forced to admit that allowing open-air drug markets and sidewalk fentanyl use is not compassion.

Lurie insists the RESET Center is not simply a jail with better branding.

“The RESET Center is a health-focused facility designed to care for publicly intoxicated individuals by moving them off the streets and into a safe and controlled environment,” he said.

That is what real compassion looks like. It starts with accountability.

Seattle went further left this year

Seattle, by contrast, has spent years dismantling tools that would make this possible. We decriminalized, defunded, and experimented. We tolerated encampments that turned into fentanyl bazaars. When San Francisco is talking about arresting drug users “at a speed and volume we have never seen before,” according to Lurie, you know the political ground has shifted.

In Seattle, we are still arguing about whether asking someone not to smoke fentanyl on a bus or in front of a school violates their dignity.

The RESET model recognizes a basic truth that you cannot offer treatment to someone who is passed out on the sidewalk and refusing help. You cannot restore public safety without consequences. You cannot clean up a city by pretending crime is merely a symptom of hurt feelings or poverty.

Unthinkable in Seattle. https://t.co/YNVp7U014Z

— Sandeep Kaushik (@skaushik100) February 18, 2026

Seattle can course correct

San Francisco learned the hard way. Voters demanded change, businesses fled, tourism cratered, and residents had enough. Seattle is heading down the same road, only further.

We could learn from what Lurie is doing. Wilson could accept that arrest and recovery are not in conflict with one another. We could stop pretending that enabling addiction is kindness. We could actually enforce laws and help addicts.

But that would require admitting Democrats were wrong. And in Seattle, that remains the hardest pill to swallow.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. on Seattle Red on 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow Jason Rantz on X, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.