SPD also provided data on people living in sanctioned encampments and others whom they determined to be homeless because they lived in an RV, for example.

Between 2016 to 2018, the data show the raw number of homeless bookings rose from 1,926 to 3,211. But the overall number of bookings also rose in that same period, so the proportion of bookings of homeless people rose only slightly, from about 17 percent in 2016 to 19 percent in 2018.

The bookings were made up of 1,014 unique individuals, meaning each person was booked on average three times in the year.

These numbers track closely to arrest numbers elsewhere. In 2016, the Los Angeles Times found that one in six arrest-bookings were of homeless people. In 2013, the National Health Care for the Homeless Council concluded 15 percent of the incarcerated population had a history of homelessness.

And in a grim chicken-or-egg problem, a 2018 national study from the Prison Policy Initiative showed formerly incarcerated people are 10 times more likely to become homeless.

The Oregonian found that 50 percent of Portland police arrests were of homeless people. That calculation included arrest-bookings as well as those instances where someone was arrested or cited but not booked into jail.

In Seattle, theft accounted for 20 percent of all arrest-bookings of homeless people. According to Whitcomb, SPD likely made those arrests based on history. "If we stop someone and they’ve been shoplifting and they’ve got a history of shoplifting, they’re likely to get booked into jail," he said. "If we stopped someone and they’ve never shoplifted before, they’re not likely to get booked into jail."

Assault was the second most common reason for arrest, at 17 percent, according to the SPD data. But that number is smaller than the general population: The percentage of nonhomeless bookings for assault is 28 percent.

The other most common types of arrests of homeless people are for outstanding warrants, loitering/trespassing and narcotics — each at a rate higher than what is encountered by the population of nonhomeless people who were arrested.

Whitcomb, the police department sergeant, said the numbers neither surprise nor concern him. "There’s the question of homelessness, which we all agree is a massive problem and everyone is working together to solve it," he said. "Crime is a separate problem and that’s exclusively ours to deal with. When crime happens, police get called. At that moment crime is happening, we need to address it."

"The question then becomes: are the people who are homeless being subjected to more rigorous enforcement than people who aren’t?" Whitcomb added. "I think we can say with confidence that we address criminal behavior when we’re called to it or when it happens in our presence. I would also say… if we can divert and refer people who we come across in those instances, we do."

Seattle University professor Sara Rankin sympathizes with the officers, who she says are first responders to a crisis — homelessness — they're not always trained to handle. "It’s frustrating for police officers, too," she said. "They’re in a position where they have to have those sort of interactions, but because there’s no exit it has a certain sense of futility to it."

In general, Rankin said she thinks the homeless arrest numbers are likely higher and argues the picture is incomplete without more detailed information about how many interactions police are having with Seattle's homeless population. "One of the main things that comes from all of this when I look at Seattle is that it is absolutely apparent that we do not have good data on the impact of the intersection of law enforcement and homelessness," she said.

For Rankin, having that data could bear out what she believes would be a persuasive argument for spending more to address the homeless crisis.

"If you put a price tag on your 20 percent of bookings and a price tag on all those move along warnings and a price tag on all those fire department responses and a price tag on all those emergency room services … tack all those expenses together, that’s crazy amounts of money," she said.

Over the years, Cindy Baker said she's been to prison seven times for a string of arrests that began with her drug addiction. She has housing now — in downtown Seattle on Third Avenue and James Street. But her front door spills onto the street where drugs are often bought, sold and used, she said. She's trying to stay clean, but the environment makes relapse hard to avoid. And while she'd like to move, that's near impossible because of her record.

Like Tymony, her subsequent arrests are not new crimes, but extensions of the original: relapsing and violating probation.

"It's just always arrest, arrest, arrest, arrest, arrest, you know?" she said. "It's always a whole bunch of time for nothing. … It's not good for a person's mental state or for a person to progress or even trying to think to get some help or to help myself."

"Because she has all these arrests on her record, it's harder to get housing and so we have to go for the supportive housing places where, like she said, it's a cesspool for drugs," said Brandie Flood, program manager with the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, referring not to the housing itself but to the neighborhood it's located in. "We want to move her to a place where she could even have a better life, but the way the housing system is set up here in King County and the City of Seattle, you have to be homeless again to get the type of voucher to pull her out of that building. We don't want to make her homeless for a certain amount of time."

For its part, Seattle has made strides intended to reduce arrests for low-level crimes that often affect people experiencing homelessness. SPD has a Crisis Response Team made up of trained officers and mental health professionals to respond when someone is in a mental health crisis.

Mayor Jenny Durkan and City Attorney Pete Holmes announced late last year that they wanted to quash 200 misdemeanor warrants for low-level offenses, such as drug possession and prostitution.

But the scope is large: Seattle Municipal Court, which handles mainly misdemeanors, has 9,849 outstanding warrants, according to a spokesperson. It does not track warrants by housing status, but public defenders say a large percentage is for people struggling with homelessness.

In Olympia, one bill would indemnify homeless people against certain low-level offenses if there was no immediate alternative to living on the streets. Seattle University professor Rankin helped draft the legislation. It’s sponsored by 11 legislators, including Nicole Macri, D-Seattle, who is also DESC’s deputy director for strategy.

The most innovative program is the much-lauded LEAD program — a first-of-its-kind partnership between police officers and outreach workers to avoid arrest in the first place. When officers encounter someone using drugs or working as a sex worker, instead of arresting that person, they connect the person with a LEAD case manager, who helps find housing, treatment or other services. Since its founding in 2011, the program has spread across the country, with over 90 cities either currently running or considering the program.

But LEAD remains limited in Seattle.

"The problem is that a lot of people who are going through the criminal justice system don't have that luxury of a LEAD case manager and a LEAD prosecutor taking their story into account," said Tracy Gillespie, LEAD project manager. "Most people are just going in business as usual, getting off probation and getting stuck in this warrant cycle from very small crimes that are not violent."

Seick said DESC case managers sometimes go beyond their standard duties to ask the Department of Corrections for a day release for clients so they can reclaim their things or check in with their landlords — if they happen to have housing — so they're not evicted.

But in general, he said, the focus should be better communication between homeless advocates and public safety officials. “We're often treating the same problems with different approaches,” he said, and that “collaboration really does work."