The downtown Metropolitan Improvement District (MID), Downtown Seattle Association's corps of on-the-ground street ambassadors who direct the homeless to social service providers, give directions to tourists (from Bellevue), pick up trash, and provide safety among other essential daily services, is now providing something else: data.

Translating their eyes-on-the-street services into numbers about what they actually see, the MID has started publishing stats in a monthly newsletter.

MID's debut data point in this month's newsletter is a scary one: Documenting how many hypodermic needles ambassadors are finding discarded out on the street, there appears to be a steep rise in heroin use. Easily a record high in since 2013 (as far back as their reporting goes), the ambassadors report finding 503 disposed needles in the MID and nearly 300 in the retail core in February, 2015. (The MID stretches from the waterfront to I-5 and from Denny Way to Pioneer Square.)

The number of needles picked up in February 2015 represented a 302 percent increase over
February 2014.

By way of comparison, the average number of disposed needles each month during 2014 for the entire MID and in the downtown core was 260 and 92 respectively. The new numbers for January and February 2015 (that's the latest data the MID has) represent an 89 percent increase MID-wide and a 177 percent increase downtown.

Indicating the change could be even more startling, the lowest numbers of needles found month-to-month over the last two years has been in the early months, with the number of disposed needles increasing sharply in summer and into the last three months of the year. So—even more startling data to come? The number of needles picked up in February 2015 represents a 302 percent increase (four times higher) over February 2014.

The MID numbers coincide with the most recent numbers from UW research for the King County Board of Health released in March 2015, which show heroin treatment admits in King County spiking from around 1,500 in 2009 to approaching 3,000 in mid-2014. The 3,000 number is also a sharp increase over a previous peak of around 1,700 in 2005.

The UW report, written by Caleb Banta-Green, professor at UW's School of Public Health, states:

Heroin-involved deaths are up substantially to 69 in the first half of 2014 compared to 21 in the first half of 2010. In the first half of 2014 the most common drug identified in deaths was heroin, surpassing prescription-type opiates for the first time since the first half of 2002.

Heroin is more prevalent in the last few years; theories to explain the increase range from the national crackdown on painkiller abuse (which has funneled users to cheaper heroin) to the war in Afghanistan, which has destabilized the country and amped the illegal drug trade.

I have a call in to the DSA, the Seattle Police Department, and the mayor's office.