Experience and Urgency for Safer, More Supported Communities

In her first term, Leesa hosted community summits on critical public safety issues, including wage theft, sexual assault, organized retail crime, and hate crimes.

Responding to community feedback and priorities, she set up two new divisions in the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office –  the Gender-based Violence & Prevention Division and the Economic Crimes & Wage Theft Division– to improve focus and coordination on these crimes.

• Under Leesa’s leadership, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office significantly increased its attention to retail theft. With a new position dedicated to retail crime cases, helping drive a substantial increase in the number of case filings.
• Leesa helped launch a pilot program between the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, and law enforcement agencies to better coordinate and respond to organized retail theft.
• She fought for Washington’s strongest-ever protections against catalytic converter theft with HB 2153. Importantly, vehicle dealers are now required to mark catalytic converters – enabling law enforcement to trace them back to the source.

• Leesa aggressively pursued people dealing fentanyl and meth in King County, consistently filing felony charges against people trafficking large quantities of deadly drugs.
• Leesa’s administration has filed hundreds of drug-dealing cases each year she has been in office, the vast majority of which involve fentanyl and meth dealing.
• Leesa’s team regularly collaborates with local law enforcement on major drug busts throughout King County to stop people who are preying – and profiting – on the suffering of people struggling with drug addiction.
• She has renewed the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office’s commitment to Drug Court, and in September of 2024, Leesa celebrated Drug Court’s 30th anniversary and the nearly 3,000 people who have graduated from the program to change their lives for the better.

Fulfilling a promise made on the campaign trail, Leesa developed and launched a statewide Involuntary Treatment Act Listening Tour, bringing together healthcare professionals, law enforcement, public defenders, and prosecutors to reimagine how we can get help for people in crisis in the least restrictive means possible. The tour is expected to conclude in 2026

• Under Leesa’s leadership, King County has emerged at the leading edge of hate crimes prosecution in the state in terms of caseload volume, specialized prosecutorial practice, and identifying opportunities to strengthen the law to protect marginalized people.
• Leesa championed HB 1052, making clear that hate crimes can have mixed motives, providing a critical additional measure of accountability for these serious crimes. 
• She backed ESB 5623, which empowers courts to impose community and therapeutic treatment (which is a common request of many hate crime victims) in addition to jail time. The bill also expands possible hate crimes to include assaults that do not result in physical injury.

• Created the office’s first-ever Felony Traffic Unit, dedicated to holding people accountable for vehicular homicides, felony DUIs, and serious felony assaults. 
• Supported passage of the BEAM Act – creating new tools to protect the public from reckless drivers by allowing courts to mandate speed-limiting devices on repeat offenders. This bill was named after Buster, Eloise, Andrea, and Matilda, four people who were killed in a March 2024 crash near Renton. That deadly crash resulted in a case that was prosecuted by Leesa’s administration, with the defendant pleading guilty to all felony counts.

• Proactively put together education and awareness information for how King County residents, especially older adults, can protect themselves from scams.
• Shined a spotlight on financial scams to help inform the public on how to avoid becoming a victim of predatory actions.

• Eliminated the backlog of thousands of unfiled pandemic-era cases.
• Launched a 30-day Case Review policy, ensuring timely processing for adult felony and all juvenile cases referred by law enforcement to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to determine whether charges will be filed.
• Leesa worked to repair and strengthen relationships with law enforcement throughout King County – attending monthly King County Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Association Meetings, and creating new, proactive accountability reports that show the case outcomes of police detectives’ investigations.
• Identifying and addressing chronic perpetrators – interrupting repeated cycles of crime and offering services to address behavioral and mental health issues.

In her next term, Leesa will build on this record of leadership, holding criminals accountable while continuing to strengthen crime prevention strategies, behavioral health interventions, effective diversion programs, and alternatives to incarceration.

Leesa’s administration – as the chief legal advisor to King County – has supported numerous lawsuits and legal actions aimed at protecting King County residents from unconstitutional federal overreach. King County is an active plaintiff in litigation that aims to stop the Trump administration from requiring that local governments comply with anti-immigrant, anti-DEI, anti-abortion, and anti-LGBTQ+ federal directives. With Leesa’s backing, our county has signed on in support of lawsuits to thwart challenges to the rights of immigrants, prevent the federalization of the National Guard, and protect resources that support scientific and environmental efforts.

As the daughter of an immigrant who faced difficulties and challenges, Leesa knows what is at stake in protecting all of King County’s communities from federal overreach that undermines our laws, rights, and values. She will make sure that King County’s government is fighting back to protect us. 

Under Leesa’s leadership, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office is leading the state in juvenile justice data transparency, with a public dashboard featuring improved race and demographic data, interactions by law enforcement agencies, and enhanced trend information. 

These data help not only address crimes committed by juveniles, but also help identify areas for proactive, upstream interventions that prevent criminal behavior. 

Leesa is ensuring that community organizations and prosecutors work together to divert non-violent cases out of the justice system and combat youth violence by strengthening pro-social norms and protective factors in youth and decreasing risk factors.

Leesa knows our youth deserve opportunities to succeed, and everyone deserves diversion programs that produce positive results and improve public safety. She has called for King County’s diversion programs to be transparent and accountable, help lower recidivism, and help decrease disproportionality, among other measures.

Prior to election as Prosecuting Attorney, Leesa was a co-founding partner of Choose 180, helping at-risk youth, and a key stakeholder in launching Family Intervention and Restorative Services (“FIRS”), an evidence-based program that offers immediate services to address conflict and bring healing to families in crisis.

As Prosecuting Attorney, Leesa is ensuring that juveniles are not prosecuted as adults except in cases of exceptional violence and extreme harm.  Before her election as Prosecuting Attorney, she helped create the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office’s Juvenile Division, staffed with experienced prosecutors committed to the specific areas of law designed to rehabilitate and improve outcomes for youth, protect public safety, and more effectively serve victims of crime.  

Moving forward, Leesa is committed to strengthening juvenile justice through the traditional court system AND diversion efforts so that our young people are met with an appropriate, individualized response that meets their needs, provides healing for people who have been harmed, and delivers meaningful, measurable outcomes for our community. 

Leesa believes gun violence is preventable, and we all deserve to live in communities free from firearm threats and tragedy. She is a proven gun violence prevention leader who has worked effectively to address the gun crisis in King County and in our State.

Since 2015, Leesa has served on the Board of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility (AGR), where she fought for laws that served to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals:

• SHB 2410, restricting access to firearms for certain felonies;
• HB 1840, increasing victim safety by creating a process where judges could require domestic violence perpetrators to surrender their firearms;
• I-594, establishing universal background checks in Washington State;
• I-1491, the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) initiative, empowers families and law enforcement to prevent harm by temporarily restricting access to guns for individuals who are at an elevated risk of harming themselves or others

Leesa brought this passion and expertise to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, where she has led with focus and compassion. 

• Developed a monthly firearm case report detailing the cases involving firearms charged by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. These reports are shared directly with law enforcement, local government leaders, and posted publicly. 

• Leesa launched her “Safer Schools Strategy,” which seeks to prevent tragedies and support safer schools for all King County children. In the first two years, the Safer Schools Strategy made 200 notifications to schools of children facing felony firearm charges.
• As part of the Safer Schools Strategy, Leesa helped coordinate with King County schools to improve safety planning and threat assessments. Under her leadership, Leesa’s team highlighted the connection between lapsed attendance and dangerous behavior, and her team made required attendance part of any conditions of release to help get at-risk young people on the right track.
• Leesa created an Extreme Risk Protection Order pilot program to help remove firearms from the homes of children who are a threat to themselves or others.

Leesa’s efforts are working – in 2024, we started seeing the first decrease in countywide gun violence since 2018, a trend that is continuing into 2026. 

While acknowledging progress, Leesa knows even one instance of gun violence is too many. That’s why she’s doubling down on her two-prong approach: 1) using the tools of the justice system to hold perpetrators accountable and 2) engaging a network of community-based organizations to reach out to the individuals who the data show are likely – but have not yet – become impacted by gun violence.

Leesa has called on leaders at all levels of government to make crime survivors – who she has said “are too often forgotten” – a priority. She’s also pushed for government leaders to acknowledge that, under the Washington State Constitution, the rights of crime victims must be upheld in a manner “no less vigorous than the protections afforded criminal defendants.” In 2025, Leesa testified in support of SB 5362, which would make resources for crime survivors (which have seen a 90% decrease in federal funding since 2017) sustainable in the long term. 

Leesa knows that this work requires understanding and consulting victims and survivors of crime – including those who have been traditionally underserved, such as victims of color or disability, gender-based violence survivors, victims of bias and hate crimes, and those with cultural and language barriers.

Prior to election as Prosecuting Attorney, Leesa created and secured funding for a brand new Director of Victim Services position within the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, and added ten new victim advocate positions. She also increased advocacy for victims of sexual assault.

As Prosecuting Attorney, Leesa expanded victim services and support in King County: 

• Championed SB 5397, which helps ensure rape and trafficking victims’ right to pre-trial hearings and gives crime victims the right to participate in hearings remotely where resources are available. 
• Collaborated with Microsoft to leverage technology to support gender-based violence and other crime survivors through a first-of-its-kind online Protection Order Portal, which makes civil protection orders available to the public online. In the first year, more than 3,200 survivors accessed the portal.
• Was a lead proponent of SB 5202, boosting protections for survivors of gender-based violence. SB 5202 helps improve Washington’s protection order statute through several key provisions:
  • Ensures prosecutors have the information they need to notify survivors when their abuser has petitioned to restore their firearm rights or when their abuser is ordered to relinquish their firearms.
  • Ensures abusers face swift consequences if they are found with an undetectable or unserialized firearm while prohibited. 
  • Empowers survivors by providing clear processes to modify or terminate their ex parte (temporary) orders if circumstances have changed, giving survivors greater flexibility in the protection order process.
  • Allows newly adult children to seek renewal of protection orders by offering a trauma-informed pathway to continued protection and healing. This will make it easier for children who are on an adult’s protection orders to seek continued protection as they turn 18.

Leesa won’t back down from a fight to ensure victims’ rights, voices, and experiences are honored. With our vote, Leesa will continue to be a champion for victims and survivors of crime and will work for stronger laws that protect us all.