By Erica C. Barnett

Tension between the head of the Seattle Police Department’s communications office, Lt. John O’Neil, and his staff boiled over last year, when a detective in the division, Valerie Carson, accused him of retaliation after he addressed an internal dispute by filing a police-misconduct complaint against her.

The complaint against O’Neil, by one of just 150 or so female officers in the department, came at a time when SPD is openly struggling to recruit and retain women (of 61 officers who left last year, nearly a quarter were women), and when female officers are speaking out about what they describe as an environment of casual misogyny, discrimination, and harassment.

In a recently released report commissioned by SPD, women in the department described it as a hyper-masculine, misogynistic environment—one in which male officers frequently characterize female officers as inherently inept, comment on their appearance, and gossip about their sexual history.

Carson and O’Neil had clashed previously, including once when she failed to respond to a text while volunteering for on-call duty from a scheduled vacation on the East Coast. But the conflict reached a breaking point when Carson turned down an interview with a TV station, something she said she ordinarily had discretion to do. After a junior officer, Judinna Gulpan, told Carson she didn’t feel prepared to do the interview herself, O’Neil ordered Gulpan to tell Carson she had to do it. Carson refused again, went home, and requested medical leave for her mental health.

An hour after Carson informed O’Neil she was taking leave, O’Neil filed a complaint against her with the Office of Police Accountability, alleging that Carson had violated SPD’s policy requiring officers to obey any lawful order. (O’Neil said he was already planning to file the complaint but had been busy all day and didn’t get around to it until late that afternoon).

Carson declined to speak on the record for this story. In an interview with SPD’s internal EEO investigator, Rebecca McKechnie, Carson said she declined the interview with FOX 13 News because she was stressed to the breaking point after being on call every day for months and “felt as though I could burst into tears at any moment.”

“I was not feeling well that day,” Carson told McKechnie. “I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted [by the] increasingly frustrating situation at work which I had already reached out to HR about. … I did not want to be at work, but I felt an obligation to stay because our office is very understaffed and because I was the most experienced person in the office.”

McKechnie also investigated O’Neil’s complaint against Carson. In his interview with McKechnie, O’Neil brought up a number of issues outside the scope of his official complaint, including whether Carson really had a legitimate mental health condition and the way she dressed.

O’Neil said Carson’s clothes were often “inappropriate,” and claimed that she “argued with me” over the requirement that she wear “business attire” when showing up to calls. “She is the face … on TV—we are the face of the department,” O’Neil said.

Citing reports from “a couple of lieutenants,” O’Neil continued, “One person said that she looked like she just came from a club, and it was a very short skirt and the shoes were inappropriate. … It was more party attire, stuff like that.”

“I received complaints, which is what happened, and one of the main complainants was Chief [Adrian] Diaz—that’s who the main complainant was.”

O’Neil acknowledged that he didn’t see the “club” gear Carson was allegedly wearing, and did not mention any evidence, such as TV footage, that would substantiate these secondhand claims. He also mentioned one instance—which is not in dispute—when Carson wore Birkenstocks and casual clothes when she showed up to an incident while off-duty.

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In his interview with McKechnie and a later email appealing OPA’s decision, O’Neil referred to Carson as “combative,” “angry,” and “hostile,” and claimed that her only “mental health condition” was being too emotional about a recent breakup. “Not a disability. A breakup,” he said.

Far from being a victim, O’Neil told investigators, Carson and two other white staffers were engaged in a racist effort to oust him and prevent him from receiving a promotion by filing baseless complaints and refusing to follow orders. (O’Neil is Black). The issues, he said, started as soon as Diaz appointed him to head the communications office in August 2022. Previously, O’Neil was in the department’s canine unit, where he was the subject of multiple EEO complaints that he called “frivolous.” (Prior to that, he was part of a nightlife safety team that, according to bar owners, cracked down on porn at gay bars on Capitol Hill.)

“This all has to do with me being a Black sergeant,” O’Neil told McKechnie.

Ultimately, both Carson’s complaint against O’Neil and O’Neil’s complaint against Carson fizzled. The OPA dismissed Carson’s complaint because they found his timeline credible, and dismissed her complaint. They recommended a “supervisor action”—effectively, a slap on the wrist—in O’Neil’s complaint against Carson, calling her refusal to do the interview “minor misconduct” at most.

In an email objecting to OPA’s decision in his case, O’Neil said investigators may not have considered the possibility that “racist undertones, biases, and mistreatment due to color” were the reason three white staffers were “giving me and [Gulpan] (Asian) a hard time and ultimately being insubordinate.” PubliCola was unable to reach Gulpan for comment.

OPA director Gino Betts said he couldn’t comment on specific cases.

In an email objecting to OPA’s decision in his case, O’Neil said investigators may not have considered the possibility that “racist undertones, biases, and mistreatment due to color” were the reason three white staffers were “giving me and [Gulpan] (Asian) a hard time and ultimately being insubordinate.” PubliCola was unable to reach Gulpan for comment.

O’Neil told PubliCola he believes the EEO complaint process is “being misused, and is absolutely being weaponized, and it’s terrible because it overshadows the true victims.”

“Valerie was given the opportunity to come back to the unit and then work and follow the rules and regulations, and she didn’t do it,” O’Neil said.

“I realize people are trying to throw out misogyny and all this stuff, which is nonsense when it comes to my unit,” O’Neil continued. “With this unit, it [was] three males, three females”—O’Neil, two other men, and three women, including O’Neil’s own supervisor, Amy Clancy, who supported his complaint against Carson.

“The issues were the same” with all his employees, O’Neil said. “It had to do with insubordination, chain of command, and things that were violations of policy.”

Clancy left the department in April.

After working on light duty in another division after her leave ended, Carson took an demotion in rank and is now a patrol officer.

And Gulpan, who had just started when Carson went on leave, recently filed her own EEO complaint against O’Neil. Earlier this year, she—like Carson—took a demotion in rank and now works on patrol.

O’Neil received his promotion from sergeant to lieutenant last year.

The allegations of discrimination and bias occurred during a heated internal debate over the office’s communications strategy. According to O’Neil, Police Chief Diaz directed the office to put out more information on all platforms—adding video, posting on social media and SPD’s Blotter blog more often, and highlighting the work of individual officers with posts and videos. Internally, some staffers objected to this strategy, saying the office should consider things like newsworthiness and the overall impression the department was creating about the level and severity of crime in Seattle.

“That was absolutely, definitely part of the conflict—the chief wanted to go in a certain direction, [and] I got fought on that,” O’Neil told PubliCola. When I was asking them to do certain tasks, I was told no.”

“This is a paramilitary organization,” O’Neil continued, meaning that people down the chain of command can only say no in certain circumstances, such as a situation that endangers their life or requires them to break the law. “They had no right to tell me no, no matter how much they disagreed,” he said. “You have people with a little bit of time on [duty], and they want stuff their way. It just doesn’t work like that.”

Staffers who worked in the communications office before O’Neil arrived, however, said that even within SPD’s top-down structure, there was room for collaboration and debate. Media relations staffers helped shape SPD’s communications strategy and made suggestions or pushed back when they thought an idea might backfire with the public—like a tour of SPD’s north precinct, requested by then-councilmember Kshama Sawant, that gave critics a chance to confront police in front of reporters and at least one embarrassing story in the Stranger.

“We had structure and rank in the unit, but we also treated each other like people with thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and routinely challenged each others’ ideas to make sure we were doing the right thing,” said former communications office staffer Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, who left the office earlier this year.

Carson told SPD investigator McKechnie that O’Neil took the concept of disobeying orders to an extreme. “I was in the military for five years and no one has ever used the word ‘insubordination’ more than I’ve heard him use that word,” Carson said.

Clancy, O’Neil’s former supervisor, sent an email to OPA supporting O’Neil after the office issued its decision last March.

“I am very concerned that if there is no discipline related to Sgt O’Neil’s filed complaint, the insubordination will only continue in the office, making it nearly impossible for him to lead,” Clancy wrote. “He is an excellent leader, and has always deserved the support of his people. Currently we have three additional employees in the Unit who have been added recently and all of them support Sgt O’Neil and work with him incredibly well. We have harmony for the first time in a very long time.”

But that “harmony”—if it exists—came at a real cost to institutional knowledge and strategic leadership in the media relations division. Since O’Neil was hired, the division has seen turnover of more than 100 percent, including the loss of one staffer, Spangenthal-Lee, who had worked in the office for more than 12 years. The division, which once had gender parity, now has an all-male staff.