Category: Police

LGBTQ+, Police, Uncategorized

SPD Chief Puts Cop Who Called 2020 Protesters “Cockroaches” In Charge of East Precinct
SPD’s East Precinct in 2020

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct, located at 12th Ave. and East Pine St. in the heart of Capitol Hill, came under new leadership in September, when SPD Chief Shon Barnes quietly removed the precinct’s gay acting commander, Doug Raguso, and placed a newly promoted captain, Mike Tietjen, in charge.

If Tietjen’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he was at the center of two high-profile incidents during protests against police violence in 2020.  In the first, then-sergeant Tietjen was suspended without pay for shoving a man forcefully into a bus stop, causing him to hit his head. In the second, he was moved to a different precinct after driving an unmarked vehicle onto a sidewalk full of protesters, later comparing them to “cockroaches” because of the way they scattered in the path of his SUV.

In 2007, Tietjen and his partner were accused of choking a man in a wheelchair and planting drugs in his hoodie; although then-SPD chief Gil Kerlikowske exonerated both officers in a press release, they were subsequently reassigned to Harbor Patrol. Two years earlier, according to KUOW, Tietjen was accused of ” punching and choking a man” he was arresting “to the point of unconsciousness.”

In an internal email announcing eight promotions, including Tietjen, Barnes wrote that everyone he was promoting had shown “the ability to rise to challenges, embrace innovation, and guide others with clarity and purpose. … The leaders we celebrate today represent our commitment to building an organization that is resilient, forward-thinking, and deeply connected to the community we serve.”

Raguso, a 22-year SPD veteran, was a fixture at the East Precinct who previously served as SPD’s LGBTQ liaison. SPD declined to say why he did was not promoted to captain. A department spokesperson said, “We promote our captains based on input from Command leadership, their Civil Service test scores, and other feedback.”

In 2021, Tietjen was disciplined for a 2020 incident in which four officers, including him, pulled up on a trans woman who was walking along the sidewalk and allegedly harassed her by asking her if she “had a dick under” her skirt.

Tietjen has an adult child who belongs to the LGBTQ+ community, from whom he is estranged. PubliCola is not providing any further details about Tietjen’s child in order to protect their privacy.

Raguso is now overseeing operations at SPD’s Real Time Crime Center—a recently expanded downtown facility where officers and civilian SPD staff monitor live surveillance footage from around the city. PubliCola was unable to interview him.

The SPD spokesperson acknowledged that Tietjen “had been the subject of complaints five years ago,” but said he had completed “an opportunity for training and growth” and “has successfully delivered results to the community” since then. “In his current role, he is building positive relationships in the community, in line with Chief Barnes’ promise to police forward and continuously improve our organization,” the spokesperson said.

Andrew Ashiofu, a member of the city’s LGBTQ commission who spoke to PubliCola on his own behalf, said Tietjen’s appointment “sends a deeply troubling message” to people living in “one of Seattle’s most LGBTQIA+-dense neighborhoods. His presence in this role is not just inappropriate, it’s dangerous. It sets a precedent that undermines trust and signals to marginalized communities that their safety and dignity are negotiable.”

“As a Black gay man living within this precinct, I do not feel safe,” Ashiofu continued. “How can we trust the police to protect us when those in charge are the very people we need protection from?”

Joel Merkel, the co-chair of the Community Police Commission, said that “promoting someone who’s had these type of disciplinary actions” against them raised concerns about the new police chief’s  “knowledge and insight into SPD’s history history and dynamics … particularly as we’re trying to change the culture of SPD. With the consent decree going away, it sends a concerning message.” SPD had been under a federal consent decree since 2012, and was seeking to have it lifted when President Trump announced he was unilaterally dismissing all Justice Department consent decrees over local police departments, including Seattle’s.

City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, who represents Capitol Hill and the rest of District 3, did not respond to a request for comment.

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The complaints against Tietjen in 2020 were serious and highly publicized. All occurred on Capitol Hill within a short distance of the East Precinct headquarters.

In the first incident, for which he was suspended without pay, Tietjen violently shoved a man who had been trying to help another demonstrator who was blinded by pepper spray, pushing him and slamming his head into a bus stop.

Although Tietjen claimed he had simply tried to get the man to “spin around” and rejoin the crowd of people SPD was pushing out of the area,  video from his body-worn camera later revealed that he had “forcefully pushed” the man “down and towards the bus stop” as he was trying to assist a demonstrator who had taken shelter there, according to the Office of Police Accountability’s investigation into the July 25, 2020 incident.

“Moreover, but for the fact that the Complainant was wearing a helmet, he could have suffered very serious injuries based on the manner in which [Tietjen] pushed him, his momentum in falling to the ground, and his striking the bus stop with his head,” the report said.

In the second incident, on August 12, 2020, Tietjen was driving an unmarked SUV when he  accelerated suddenly and drove onto a crowded sidewalk at 11th and Pine, forcing people to scatter to avoid being hit. When someone confronted him, according to the OPA report, he compared the people he almost hit to scattering “cockroaches.” A widely posted video shows him saying he still works for SPD “because they pay me like 200 grand a year to babysit you people.” Tietjen was suspended without pay and received a “disciplinary transfer” to the North Precinct for that incident.

In the third incident, Tietjen was in an SUV with three other officers that pulled up to talk to a trans woman who was walking on the sidewalk during a protest. According to the OPA investigation, one of the officers took her picture with his phone and asked if she “had a dick under” her skirt. “She said that she told the officer to ‘come take a look’ and he replied that he would ‘need a microscope’ to do so,” the report says..

Later, the woman told OPA investigators, “the unmarked SUV again drove by her and an officer again yelled out to the Complainant to ‘show them what’s under my skirt.’ She started yelling at them, but they drove off while still saying things to her.” The OPA report says Tietjen acknowledged taking the woman’s picture and hearing someone in the car say something about a microscope, but denied most of the other details. The officers said they stopped the woman because they suspected her of “throwing rocks at” the East Precinct building.

Tietjen got a written reprimand for failing to document or report the interaction with the woman, and for failing to “counsel” another officer who shouted transphobic comments about why that was unacceptable behavior.

Five years later, Barnes promoted Tietjen to captain and put him in charge of public safety in city’s historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood.

Elections, housing, King County, Mayor Harrell, podcasts, Police

Seattle Nice: Harrell’s Election-Year Budget, King County’s RealPage Ban, and Mayor Pete’s Endorsement

 

By Erica C. Barnett

On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we discussed Mayor Bruce Harrell’s election-year budget proposal, a one-year plan for 2026 that increases spending by more than $50 million, including “one-time” programs that will almost certainly require ongoing funds. Harrell’s budget also adds $26 million to hire new police officers, on top of the Seattle Police Department’s existing budget; public safety, including police and fire, now makes up more than half the city’s discretionary budget.

The one-time spending in Harrell’s budget includes temporary funding for programs that are likely to lose federal funding under the Trump Administration, as well as assistance for immigrants being targeted by the federal government. These needs are likely to accelerate, rather than diminish, over the next several years.

Sandeep and I actually agreed that the city should be doing more to address future budget deficits (Harrell’s budget, not counting the one-time funds, assumes a deficit that will grow from $140 million in 2027 to $374 million in 2029). Where we departed ways was on the question of whether the city should be “”goring some oxes” in the budget by telling some human services organizations they’re “not going to get money because we’re not seeing results. … I think there would be a human cry coming from the progressive side saying, this is austerity budget[ing]. ”

While it’s definitely true that slashing the city’s budget for human services would anger progressives, I argued that the call for cuts seems to always focus on programs designed to help people directly with needs like food, housing, and other basic needs, rather than departments like SPD, whose funding only goes up every year. (Police are always a sacred cow, never a gored ox). This year, public safety departments will consume more than half the city’s discretionary budget, with SPD accounting for half that amount, at $486 million.

Perhaps the city could reduce some of this year’s expansion plans for SPD, I suggested, by taking a peek into the extremely opaque police budget and finding some money there; personally, I’d stop the CCTV surveillance program, which Harrell added to the budget as a new ongoing obligation last year, and look for other places where money is sitting unused or being spent ineffectively.

We also talked about the King County Council’s recent vote to ban the use of rent-pricing software like RealPage. David noted that bans on rent-fixing software are similar to “trust-busting,” in which the federal government cracked down on mergers, price-fixing, and other anti-competitive practices. Landlords use algorithmic pricing tools to charge the highest rent possible, a rate that can vary day by day—much like Ticketmaster, Expedia, and Uber use “dynamic” pricing to determine the price of tickets, flights, hotels, and rides.

Finally, we all issued our verdict on former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s endorsement of Harrell. Our assessment: A big “whatever.”

City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police, Uncategorized

Black-Led Group Responds to Mayor’s Claim They “Darkened” His Skin; Real Estate-Backed Harrell PAC Tops $1 Million; Police Chief Disparages PubliCola

1. On Friday, Mayor Bruce Harrell accused his opponent, Katie Wilson, of “darkening” his photo in a social media post, blaming her for “another chapter in the troubling history of manipulating skin color to dehumanize candidates of color” like himself. The image Harrell circulated, an Instagram post by the Black-led progressive nonprofit Common Power, made his skin looked unnaturally orange.

In a statement, Harrell campaign manager Marta Johnson said, “We are asking the Wilson Campaign and Common Power to immediately retract the manipulated image and apologize for the clear intent to darken Bruce’s skin tone. There is no excuse to alter the tone of a candidate’s skin, especially given the troubling history of racist intent behind these types of manipulations.”

Harrell made the accusation again during a debate on Saturday at the Royal Room in Southeast Seattle, saying she had used the “common tactic—to darken my image in a regular picture, to make me look ominous, okay?”

The practice of darkening Black and brown people’s skin tone in photographs has a long and ignominious history based in colorism and the racist idea that darker-skinned people are more threatening than those with lighter skin. The most famous example comes from Time magazine, which dramatically darkened OJ Simpson’s skin color on its cover in 1994.

Beyond the screen shot, Harrell presented no evidence for his claims.

On Sunday, Common Power director Charles Douglas responded to Harrell’s accusation that his group had darkened Harrell’s skin to make him look “ominous”: “The claim that we ‘darkened’ Mayor Harrell’s photo is both offensive and untrue. As a Black man leading an organization primarily run by people of color, I know firsthand the harm caused when racial tropes are weaponized in politics.”

“To suggest that Common Power engaged in such tactics is a sensationalist smear that reeks of desperation from a mayor who has repeatedly contributed to inequality and hurt the very communities he now claims to represent.” On Sunday, Common Power and the 36th District Democrats swapped out the photo of Halloween Harrell for a less orange version.

The source for the image appears to have been a story by the (UK) Independent about the 2021 mayor’s race. The photo appears to have been taken in low light at this debate, creating the unnaturally orange cast.

Smartphone photos taken by several different people in similar conditions at Saturday’s low-light debate at the Royal Room made both Harrell and Wilson look orange, with Harrell’s black hair coming through as grayish in the photos. For example, a reader contributed this photo of Harrell checking in on the Huskies game during the debate; my own, unedited iPhone photos, taken from the front row, turned Harrell an even more extreme orange color and tinted Wilson orange as well.

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2. As I reported on Bluesky last week (seriously, follow me there for the latest breaking news, short news items, and live coverage of everything from mayoral debates to the council’s budget deliberations), the  business-backed political action committee supporting Mayor Bruce Harrell, Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future, has raised more than a million to defeat Harrell’s challenger, Katie Wilson. Most of that money, $554,000, has come in since the beginning of September—revealing a rush to fill the pro-Harrell campaign’s coffers after the mayor’s dispiriting 41 percent showing in the August primary.

The biggest donations to the PAC, which is separate from Harrell’s official campaign, come from real estate advocacy groups, development and property management companies and their current or retired CEOs, and land-use attorneys who work for real-estate interests. Overall, real-estate interests contributed at least $592,000 of the $1,080,500 the PAC has collected so far. Tech companies and their leaders, including retired tech company founders as well as current executives like Microsoft CEO Brad Smith, gave another $257,000, at a minimum.

A majority of the 218 contributors to the pro-Harrell PAC listed their occupations as “retired” (59 total) or did not list their occupations (56 total), so the true percentage of both real estate interests and tech company executives is almost certainly higher than the ones I was able to confirm.

A pro-Wilson PAC, Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle, has raised about $85,000.

3. During a meeting about the city’s police department budget on Monday, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes responded to a question from Council President Sara Nelson by saying he couldn’t answer it because Nelson cited PubliCola as her source.

“I came across an article in PubliCola … that mentioned [the city’s proposed contract with the south King County jail] SCORE, and I wanted some information on this,” Nelson said. “I think that it mentioned that we are no longer depending on that contract. Is that the case?” 

In response, Barnes told Nelson he would not answer her question, forcing her to reframe her factual question about SCORE. “I’ll be clear. I do not read PubliCola, so I won’t respond to that,” Barnes said. After Barnes answered the rest of Nelson’s questions, but not the one about SCORE,  budget director Dan Eder had to jump in and answer in the affirmative. 

Barnes’ dismissive comment about PubliCola was the first time I can recall, in this publication’s 16-year history, that a department director has used a public meeting to disparage us directly. SPD’s communications department has reportedly stopped including stories from PubliCola in the department’s daily news clippings email, and in a recent social media post, Barnes said he wouldn’t be “swayed by opinions, criticism, lies, or the stories that others may fabricate.” He added, cryptically, “This is my leadership journey and you won’t make me quit! The battle is not mine.. It’s the Lords!”

PubliCola will, of course, continue to apply a critical lens to SPD and other city departments in our coverage, as we have since 2009.

 

Mayor Harrell, Police, Taxes

Harrell’s Latest Budget Spikes City’s Deficit by Piling On New Spending In Election Year
Screenshot from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s recorded budget speech.

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2026 budget proposal is an election-year proposal that piles on funding for priorities that are broadly popular—including immigrant legal aid, small business assistance, and help for renters struggling to pay their bills—while deferring costs for major projects and using one-time funds to pay for long-priorities, including the city’s response to the Trump Administration’s policies and funding cuts.

The biggest new spending areas, as usual, are in the Seattle Police Department budget, whose budget will increase by around $35 million, including $26 million in new funding to pay for a net total of 76 new officers. The Real Time Crime Center, which monitors live CCTV surveillance cameras across the city, will expand, with $2 million in new funding for 12 new positions on top of at least $625,000 to expand camera surveillance into new neighborhoods.

Harrell’s budget expands new Police Chief Shon Barnes’ office substantially compared to that of his predecessor as permanent chief, Adrian Diaz. In 2025, the budget funded 70.5 full-time employees at the chief’s office, up from 59.5 the previous year. Next year, the budget expands Barnes’ office staff to 81.5 employees.

As we’ve reported, Barnes brought on his own team when he came to Seattle from Madison, WI, including a second deputy chief, a new assistant chief, a new chief of staff, a new executive director of crime and community harm reduction, and a new chief communications officer. The new positions, which all pay more than $200,000, add ongoing annual costs to SPD’s budget, including $1.34 million in salaries alone.

In all, Harrell’s one-year budget update increases general fund spending by more than $50 million, at a time when the city is facing an estimated $150 million revenue shortfall (with another forecast coming in October).

In 2027, Harrell’s budget assumes the budget will be $140 million in the red, an increase of $62 million over the $78 million deficit he projected for 2027 in last year’s budget. In 2028 and 2029, Harrell’s budget numbers get steadily worse, with a projected shortfall of $269 million in 2028 and $375 million in 2029. If he isn’t reelected in November, Harrell won’t have to deal with the consequences of this year’s spending spree; Katie Wilson will.

The JumpStart tax, which was originally dedicated to a specific set of spending priorities that included affordable housing, small business support, and Green New Deal programs, will once again serve as a slush fund to backfill general-fund priorities the city wouldn’t otherwise have the money to pay for. (Last year, the council passed legislation that allows this targeted tax on big businesses to pay for anything.) Almost half the anticipated 2026 JumpStart revenues—$189 million—are peanut-buttered all over the budget; my personal pick for the most off-topic use of this tax is $1.8 million for planning, cleaning, and emergency response for the FIFA World Cup soccer games.

The budget accounts for two new revenue sources that PubliCola has covered previously: A new business and occupation (B&O) tax that is supposed to mitigate Trump-era cuts, now expected to bring in about $81 million next year, and a 0.1 cent sales tax increase for public safety, which the council will have to approve by October 14 in order to start collecting revenues by next year.

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About $27 million of the new B&O tax will go toward mitigating Trump cuts and policies; the rest, a little more than $50 million, will go into the general fund to help address the budget deficit. (This idea was controversial for a hot second in July). About half the revenues from the sales tax increase, or around $20 million, will go to new public safety spending on programs like the CARE Team, treatment, and Health 99; the rest, like the majority of B&) tax revenues, will backfill general fund spending on existing city programs.

Overall, Harrell’s budget adds tens of millions of dollars of new spending and avoids tough choices at a time when the mayor is fighting an uphill battle for reelection, and pushes budget deficits and decisions about “one-time” allocations off to next year, when it’s very possible Harrell’s challenger Wilson will be in office.

That new spending includes millions of new dollars for graffiti abatement, prevention, and renewal, which Harrell and City Attorney Ann Davison have repeatedly suggested is one of the top public-safety problems in Seattle. (There’s even $160,000 to extend one-time spending for a “graffiti specialist,” funded in last year’s budget, who works with teens to get them to channel their creative energy toward city-sanctioned “graffiti art” and other “constructive” pursuits).

It also includes about $5 million, across several departments, to expand the city’s Joint Enforcement Team, which was in the news last year for a series of raids targeting so-called lewd conduct at gay bars on Capitol Hill. The team includes fire, police, and SDOT staff; it also targets mobile food vendors operating without a license, such as fruit sellers and taco stands.

On the campaign trail, Harrell has touted what he calls his superior budget expertise, calling himself an experienced executive who makes “tough choices” and deriding Wilson, the former head of the Transit Riders Union, as someone who never managed a budget over $200,000. Looking through the budget, though, it’s hard to find examples of tough choices, which might have included decisions such as finding $26 million for new police officers somewhere in SPD’s half-billion-dollar budget, rather than increasing SPD’s budget to pay for them.

Next year, whoever gets elected mayor, the city will have to decide whether to continue paying for a slew of new spending Harrell defined in his 2026 budget as “one-time” projects, a designation that means the budget does not have to account for them in future budget projections. If the one-time projects were included in those projections, they would increase those future deficits even more; if the next mayor makes them permanent, he or she will have to figure out how to pay for them, either with new taxes or by cutting other existing programs.

Here are just a few of the new programs for which Harrell’s budget provides no funding beyond 2026:

  • Expansion of the Fresh Bucks program to include larger benefits ($60 a month toward fresh food instead of $40) and more recipients. The budget calls this a “one-time expansion” using new B&O tax revenues; however, access to healthy food is not likely to be less of a problem in 2027 than it is next year.
  • $4 million in new spending, also from the B&O tax, to assist immigrants with naturalization, legal assistance, outreach, job training, and many other programs that have become urgently necessary under the Trump administration.
  • Funding to help food banks procure food and expand their services, including mobile food banks and home delivery. The one-time $3 million add in Harrell’s budget nearly doubles the amount the city’s Human Services Department currently spends on food banks.
  • $1 million for meal programs serving older adults, people experiencing homelessness, and other people who lack access to nutritious prepared meals.

Some of the one-time spends, as in all city budgets, are truly for one-time projects—including about $6 million in new spending for the 2026 FIFA World Cup games, which includes $495,000 for “community activations and celebrations,” $265,000 for a “FIFA coordinator,” and a $6.2 million FIFA operations reserve, on top of the currently unknown cost of police overtime while the games are going on.

The budget also include a number of cuts, which budget director Dan Eder said yesterday would protect “public-facing” city services. These come largely from eliminating one-time spending, cutting vacant positions and other unnecessary spending, and deferring projects that were supposed to happen this year until 2027.

Harrell’s budget also saves $3 million by removing a line item for a contract to transfer people arrested in Seattle to the SCORE jail in Des Moines; some skeptics considered this contract a bargaining chip to get the King County Jail in Seattle to start incarcerating more people accused of low-level misdemeanors, which it did, eliminating the need for the city’s deal with SCORE.

The city council will take up Harrell’s budget proposal starting tomorrow; the budget process runs through mid-November.

Mayor Harrell, Police, Taxes

Harrell Proposes New Sales Tax to Expand CARE Team, Fund Treatment, and Backfill Budget
Mayor Bruce Harrell, with Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins.

About half the $39 million in funding from the sales tax increase would backfill spending on existing programs; the rest would shore up the city’s crisis response system and fund new treatment beds.

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell announced his plans to allocate a new 0.1-cent sales tax to a slate of non-police public safety programs yesterday, including programs that might otherwise face budget cuts as well as an expansion of existing programs such as Health 99 and the CARE team, which responds alongside police to low-risk 911 calls.

Standing inside Fire Station 10 a few blocks from City Hall on Thursday afternoon, Harrell called the new tax plan part of a “comprehensive approach to investing in both quality, safety and public health as two sides of the same coin and interconnected and not in conflict.” The city council has to approve the tax before it can go into effect.

In all, Harrell announced, the city would be investing $39 million from the new sales tax on non-police public safety investments. Governor Bob Ferguson’s budget, passed earlier this year, authorizes local jurisdictions to pass a 0.1-cent sales tax to pay for public safety.

King County just passed its own 0.1-cent sales tax increase to help fund the county’s public-safety budget; assuming the Seattle tax increases passes, the combined sales tax in Seattle will total nearly 10.6 percent.

Only about half of the funding Harrell announced yesterday will be new. Of the $39 million, $15 million will supplant existing general-fund spending for the city’s CARE Team, a group of 24 civilian first responders who respond alongside police to certain 911 calls—freeing up general fund dollars to fund other city priorities.

Another $5 million will replace one-time federal funding (from several sources) for LEAD, whose operator, Purpose Dignity Action, was facing a budget cliff for the nationally recognized diversion program. Last year, in response to a new law that made simple drug possession and use a misdemeanor, LEAD started taking referrals exclusively from police, rather than community members; the new funding, according to PDA co-director Lisa Daugaard, will allow the group to help about 100 more people next year.

The remaining $19 million will including funding to:

  • Add 20 new fighter recruits in 2026 ($2 million);
  • Expand the Downtown Emergency Service Center’s “field-based” work to provide opioid treatment and medicine to people living in shelters and permanent supportive housing, among other locations ($1.2 million);
  • Expand the fire department’s Health 99 response team, including two new case managers and new vehicles ($1.6 million);
  • Add funding for the Seattle Indian Health Board’s Thunderbird Treatment Center, a rehab center that was previously located in Rainier Beach that’s reopening on Vashon ($1.8 million);
  • Add funding for future detox and inpatient treatment beds through a competitive bidding process ($2.8 million);
  • Hire 12 new 911 call takers, plus three trainers and three administrative staff—an investment that will offset current overtime spending at the city’s 911 call center ($2.6 million);
  • Double the CARE team  from 24 to 48 responders, a change CARE Department director Amy Barden said will allow them to respond to calls across the city for about 20 hours every day ($6.9 million).

Council president Sara Nelson, who proposed dedicating 25 percent of the new tax to treatment earlier this year, said she was not “going to split hairs” about how much of the funding in the new plan will go to fund new treatment beds (in all, the treatment portion of the proposal amounts to about 16 percent of the overall proposal).

“Because of my subject [expertise], my personal experience, because I see such a great need—throw all the money at this,” Nelson continued. Nelson has talked publicly about her own experience going to treatment for alcohol addiction and has frequently advocated for more direct city funding for rehab, which has not traditionally been under the city’s purview.

The CARE team is currently under a memorandum of agreement that restricts its size to 24 responders, does not allow CARE to go out on calls without police, and restricts the kind of calls CARE can respond to. This has limited the team’s ability to do what it was established to do: Respond to calls that are more appropriate for social workers than police.

Additionally, because police officers can choose whether to respond to calls themselves or hand them off to CARE, the volume of calls CARE can respond to has fluctuated fairly dramatically over time.

According to Barden, a city analysis of more than 50,000 calls the CARE team believes they can respond to, but can’t because of the MOU, that only 300 included any kind of police action, such as a citation.

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The MOU expires at the end of the year, and any new agreement with CARE will be part of the next contract between the city and the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG). Ordinarily, SPOG contract negotiations tend to drag out for months or years, but the union is reportedly amenable to reaching an agreement quickly now that it appears likely that Katie Wilson, not Bruce Harrell, will be mayor next year. It now appears likely that the new contract will allow CARE to respond to more types of calls, expand to 48 members, and respond to calls without police in tow—a huge turnaround from the extremely restrictive MOU.

Harrell said he couldn’t comment on the MOU because the negotiations with SPOG are ongoing. But Barden, who is not a party to the negotiations, said she was optimistic. “I get along with [SPOG president] Mike Solan personally and I feel his support is genuine.”

If the city doesn’t manage to reach a contract with the police union that gives CARE more freedom to respond to calls, Barden continued, she has about “47 contingency plans,” such as working with King County to direct the CARE team to respond to calls to 988, the mental-health crisis line. Because 988 isn’t a city system, responding to those calls wouldn’t require negotiations with Seattle police. But that’s the nuclear option. Reading through the lines of Harrell’s and Barden’s comments Thursday, the city appears to believe SPOG will work with them to let CARE’s responders actually perform the jobs they were hired to do.

Police, Tech

Police Department Acknowledges Using AI, But Says It Isn’t “Substantive” Enough to Label

By Erica C. Barnett

A recent complaint alleging that the Seattle Police Department used generative AI without attribution, in violation of the city’s AI policy, has been referred by the Office of Police Accountability as a supervisor action—“a minor policy violation or performance issue that is best addressed through training, communication, or coaching by the employee’s supervisor.”

The complaint, which is anonymous, alleged that a number of public statements from SPD—including an August blog post about recent shootings, an April statement from SPD Chief Shon Barnes about a new “Immediate Violent Crime Prevention & Enforcement Plan,” and a blog post about Barnes’ confirmation in July—were created with a generative AI tool such as ChatGPT.

According the widely used GPTZero AI detector, the August blog post is likely “100 percent AI”-generated, as is the April statement from Barnes; the July blog post appeared to be a mix of AI and human inputs, according to GPTZero, with 29 of its 42 sentences “likely AI generated.” ZeroGPT, another AI detector, found similar results, except that it was more confident that most of the July post was AI-generated.

As a baseline, I checked PubliCola’s last several posts using both AI detectors; both found them to be 100 percent human-generated.

Since 2023, the city has had a policy on generative AI that requires city departments to label AI-generated text.”If text generated by an AI system is used substantively in a final product, attribution to the relevant AI system is required,” the policy said. According to IT Department spokeswoman Megan Erb, city departments are supposed to “determine their standard for substantive use in line with the AI policy principles and relevant intellectual property laws.”

None of SPD’s communications have been labeled to indicate they were produced with AI.

In April, DivestSPD and other outlets reported that OPA recommended SPD come up with its own AI policy after discovering that a sergeant was using ChatGPT to generate reports. OPA said it could not comment on the complaint alleging AI use by the communications team, and SPD did not respond to questions about that recommendation. Currently, SPD does not have its own AI policy.

Last week, Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city’s IT Department director Rob Lloyd announced a new citywide AI policy aimed chiefly at allowing AI pilots to help automate city functions like permitting (a prospect that raises unrelated, but serious, questions about the human labor force doing many jobs that the city may eventually replace with AI.) When it comes specifically to using generative AI to produce text-based documents, however, the new policy is identical to the old one.

Lloyd said there “aren’t any penalties, per se,” for departments that misuse AI tools, “but you do have to go through a rigorous process.”

City departments are required to get permission to use AI systems, including free software such as ChatGPT that poses potential privacy risks. Erb told PubliCola that “SPD was authorized to use specific generative AI applications under City policy following a standard security and privacy review.” (We’ve followed up for more details on which applications SPD is authorized to use).

The city’s generative AI policy does not set specific thresholds for what constitutes “substantive” use of AI-generated text, leaving the term open to interpretation. According to a spokesperson for SPD, the department “has not used generative AI in any substantive way as part of its communications.”

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However, the spokesperson continued, “We are testing use cases, always with a human in the loop. To the limited extent it has been tried, we have explored using it to improve the clarity of existing writing for the public, find ways to get closer to presenting information in plain language, and brainstorm ideas. It is not used as a primary author of content.”

SPD’s legal counsel, Becca Boatright, said that “tools that use AI for grammar, suggested wording changes, suggested brevity/clarity, etc. are not considered ‘generative’ AI for purposes of this policy.”

“Technology is always evolving, and like laptops, social media, and spellchecking tools, AI is another tool in our toolbox to evolve communications, especially given staffing levels and our commitment to share information that educates residents,” the SPD spokesperson said. “It can help do tasks for experienced individuals, allowing them to dedicate more of their time to other responsibilities that align with SPD’s mission and values.”

Because the OPA complaint has been referred as a “supervisor action,” it’s likely that SPD’s Chief Communications Officer Barbara DeLollis, will decide whether and how to respond to the issues it raises about the use of AI by her own office. SPD did not respond to PubliCola’s question about whether the department will take any action to address the issues raised in the recent OPA complaint.

AI detectors like GPTZero are not infallible. They use large datasets, including both AI- and human-generated text, to analyze patterns that indicate the likelihood that a text was AI-generated. Signs that a document was generated by, or with the help of, AI, include buzzwords or repetitive phrases, uniform sentence structure and length, predictable formatting (such as bullet-pointed lists and frequent use of em-dashes), frequent use of passive voice, and an excessively formal or robotic tone.

Here, for example, is the conclusion of the statement from Barnes the AI detector determined was 100 percent AI-generated, which featured a bullet-pointed list: “Public safety is not just about enforcement—it’s about collaboration. The support of our city officials, and our community is vital in ensuring we create long-term, sustainable solutions. I appreciate our ongoing partnerships and look forward to working together to build a safer Seattle.”

And here are the first two paragraphs of the August post about gun violence, which the two AI detectors also suggested was completely AI-generated:

Over the past four days, the Seattle community tragically experienced three separate incidents of gun violence, resulting in the loss of lives. On Thursday, we were confronted with a targeted homicide occurring in front of a place of worship. While the motive for this premeditated act is still under investigation, we recognize the profound impact it has had on those who witnessed this traumatic event, as well as the broader community.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, two additional homicides occurred. The first stemmed from an unauthorized and unregulated gathering, which culminated in the loss of another community member. Shortly thereafter, a third homicide was reported, involving an individual discovered deceased in a parking lot, potentially linked to a vehicle collision or altercation.”

Of course, humans can also write robotically or use AI-style formatting.

To find out more about SPD’s use of AI, PubliCola has filed a records request seeking all AI inputs and outputs, among other information, produced by department communications staff.