In a statement released on Friday, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced he has partnered state Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, and state Rep. Debra Lekanoff, D-Anacortes, to propose legislation creating a Cold Case Investigations Unit focused on solving cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people.
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Should the legal system treat drug possession as a crime? How can society compel people with serious substance-use disorders to get treatment? And how do elected officials handle those questions? It’s been nearly two years since the state Supreme Court’s February 2021 ruling, known as the Blake decision, struck down Washington’s felony drug possession law. The ruling essentially invalidated decades’ worth of criminal convictions, ...
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MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. — Arizona is renowned for its red, desert terrain, the striking beauty of the Grand Canyon and — perhaps less well known — one of the best mental health crisis response systems in the country. For more than 20 years, the state has been building an integrated crisis system that has shown success in keeping people with mental ...
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Sen. Manka Dhingra (D-Redmond) represents Washington State’s 45th Legislative District. She’s a member of the Senate Behavioral Health Subcommittee and has helped pass legislation to transform the state’s behavioral health system—reorienting it around prevention rather than crisis response—during her time in the Senate. Dhingra traveled to Arizona this month to learn about RI International—a global organization that offers mental health and ...
Read MoreMost trips that lawmakers take to “listen and learn” about “best practices” in other states usually amount to nothing more than poorly disguised vacations, but every once in a while there’s an exception that proves the rule. Washington State legislators Manka Dhingra and Tina Orwall led one such excursion this month when they took a group of local elected officials to ...
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By Manka Dhingra Special to The Times Janice Porcher was on a routine work errand one morning in 2017 in Fife. A nine-year veteran deck hand for Washington State Ferries, she was a favorite of her colleagues for her smile and her kind demeanor. Just after turning left at a green light, her car was suddenly smashed by a driver who ran ...
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Behavioral health officials discussed the implementation of the 988 suicide prevention call line at a meeting on Tuesday.
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Any casual observer of our local debate on public safety will know that dashboards are all the rage these days. Mayor Bruce Harrell campaigned on his love of data visualization. The Purge cosplayers over at the Seattle Police Officers Guild can’t get enough of them. But not all dashboards serve to shield those in power from the responsibility of articulating a ...
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By Manka Dhingra and Rebecca Saldaña Special to The Times “No two countries run by women would ever go to war.” That recent judgment by Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg may be open to debate, but we have seen clear evidence during the pandemic that when women assume political leadership, it leads to improved outcomes. That is one of many reasons to celebrate ...
Read MoreLast week, Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation into law that will improve access to community-based treatment for people with serious behavioral health issues and make it easier for families to get their loved one’s care when they need it, without hospitalization. The bill, HB 1773, introduced by State Rep. Jamila Taylor (D-Federal Way), streamlines the process for assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) ...
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