Not Art, say the city and county: A memorial mural for tagger Joseph “Gride” Johnson, whose personal struggles were documented in the film “Make It Rain.” Both the mural and the film were used as evidence in this week’s felony graffiti case.
The mayor’s war on graffiti, ex-police chief Adrian Diaz fired, and much more.
The city council will take up Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposal, sponsored by council public safety chair Bob Kettle, to repeal most of the legal restrictions on their use of “less-lethal” weapons for crowd control, in January. Cathy Moore and Alexis Mercedes Rinck were discussing amendments to the bill that would restore some guardrails, such as requiring council approval for new weapons and putting police from other departments on desk duty if they won’t agree to follow Seattle policies.
Edmund Witter, the longtime head of the Housing Justice Project, is leaving to become general counsel for the regional homelessness agency; two top King County human services staffers will also take top roles at the agency. Also: Council president Sara Nelson went on KUOW to gaslight Tammy Morales, who’s leaving the council, in part, over a toxic work environment, and some Gov. Elect Ferguson-adjacent news that could lead to a search for another Seattle state legislator.
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After praising ex-police chief Adrian and calling him a “good man” and a friend earlier this year, Mayor Harrell officially fired the former police chief this week, citing an investigation that found he had an affair with a woman, Jamie Tompkins, whom he as his chief of staff, bypassing a standard check and violating four SPD policies, including one requiring honesty.
An audit from the city’s Office of Inspector General (who conducted the investigation into Diaz) concluded SPD has not made progress on problems identified several years ago, including chiefs’ tendency to impose the lowest possible discipline for officers who violate policy. Also, the city attorney’s office confirmed that taxpayers will fund lawyers for Diaz, who currently faces four lawsuits by women who say he sexually harassed or discriminated against them.
City, county and state prosecutors and police have been working for much of this year to build felony cases against 16 local taggers who they say are responsible for nearly $100,000 in damage. Officials, and the business reps they invited, spent a surprising amount of time defining what “art” is and isn’t and trying to distinguish between appropriate “murals” and illegal “graffiti.”
We discussed the biggest news of the week (with details from the investigation that were first published on PubliCola) before turning to the tragic killing of a Metro bus driver this week, which (I argued, and believe) was immediately and inappropriately politicized by fear-mongering politicians who want infinite spending on police. Finally, we talked about graffiti: I’m fine with it (and like quite a lot of it), Sandeep says Seattle will look like NYC in the ‘70s if we don’t send a strong message that graffiti is unacceptable.
I had AI generate “a beautiful sunrise” on a freeway wall as an example of what would qualify as “art,” according to Mayor Harrell. It’s fine I guess?
By Erica C. Barnett
Continuing with the era of good feelings on Seattle Nice, we had some mostly cordial disagreements this week on the issues of public safety, graffiti, and the firing of former police chief Adrian Diaz, although it’s hard to say we fully agreed on any of it (would it be Seattle Nice if we did?)
We started with this week’s biggest news—Mayor Bruce Harrell’s decision to finally fire former police chief Adrian Diaz, nearly seven months after formally removing him from his position and replacing him with interim chief Sue Rahr. (Harrell’s selection of Madison, Wisconsin chief Shon Barnes as permanent police chief, announced this morning, hadn’t happened yet when we recorded on Thursday).
Diaz was accused of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and several SPD policy violations stemming from a long-rumored affair with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins. After his removal as chief, Diaz went on a right-wing talk show to announce he was gay, calling the allegations against him “absurd.” He’s been receiving a salary of more than $350,000 since May.
Sandeep gave Harrell his flowers for firing Diaz after months of diligent investigation; I said the situation was more complicated than that, noting that former Office of Police Accountability director Gino Betts was shown the door after some on his staff complained that Betts had slow-walked the OPA’s own investigation into Diaz, slowing down the process and potentially keeping Diaz on the payroll longer than necessary.
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We also discussed the murder of a Metro bus driver in the University District earlier this week. Like many local elected officials, Sandeep said the tragedy demonstrated the need for more police, security guards, and fare enforcement officers on buses and at transit stops to prevent future violent crime.
I argued that the murder—the first such killing in more than 26 years—would not have been prevented by flooding the transit system with officers, nor does it demonstrate that “transit is dangerous.” (Murders and assaults, obviously, do contribute to a perception of danger, as the killing of a bus driver on the Aurora Bridge did in 1998. After that tragedy, elected officials and the drivers’ union also said buses were unsafe and called for more police.)
Even if flooding the system with police was an effective strategy for preventing crime, it would be financially impossible for King County to put an officer on each of the hundreds of buses that are running at any given time in order to prevent assaults on bus drivers, or retrofit all its buses with inaccessible driver compartments, as some are already suggesting. Such assaults, though terrible, are fairly rare: According to the Seattle Times, there have been 15 reported assaults on bus drivers in the first 11 months of 2024, down from 31 in 2023.
Finally, we talked about the graffiti arrests I reported on earlier today. If you think the tone of my story is too relentlessly neutral, and you’re wondering how I REALLY feel about government officials defining what is “art,” listen to this segment and find out.
1. The city’s Office of the Inspector General just completed an audit into the city’s disciplinary system for police officers accused of misconduct, which found that in a majority of cases, officers who are disciplined receive punishments “at the minimum of recommended ranges, and sometimes below,” largely because former police chief Adrian Diaz gave more weight to mitigating factors, such as an officer’s length of services, than aggravating ones.
An audit in 2021 reached similar conclusions, indicating that under Diaz, SPD did not address the the concerns OIG raised about previous police chiefs’ disciplinary decisions three years ago.
The audit, released Monday, got lost in yesterday’s news about an OIG investigation into Diaz that resulted in Mayor Bruce Harrell firing the former chief, who has been on SPD’s payroll since his demotion in May, for dishonesty, lack of professionalism, and other violations related to an alleged affair between Diaz and his former chief of staff.
As in the 2021 audit, the OIG concluded that the police chief often decided to impose the lowest possible discipline after meeting with an accused employee in a Loudermill hearing—an opportunity for employees to tell their side of the story.
A “pattern of lower discipline highlights the imbalance between officers who are entitled to speak with the Chief before a disciplinary determination, and complainants who do not have a similar avenue to provide their perspective” to the police chief, the audit notes. This, in turn, can lead the arbitrators who consider officers’ disciplinary appeals to lean more and more into the lower end of the disciplinary range, lowering penalties for misconduct over time, according to the audit.
The audit also found that there is still a massive backlog of 106 officer appeals awaiting arbitration, with most of those (82) still unresolved since the 2021 audit. Almost three-quarters of these appeals involve cases where an officer received a verbal or written reprimand or no discipline at all, but still appealed the decision.
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2. The Seattle City Attorney’s Office confirmed that the city will continue to defend former police chief Adrian Diaz in the claims several women have filed against him for sexual harassment and gender discrimination. A spokesman for City Attorney Ann Davison’s office said the city will continue to defend Diaz because the lawsuits “involve actions allegedly taken (or not taken) by [Diaz] in the course and scope of his employment as the Chief of Police.”
Diaz filed a $10 million tort claim against the city in October, claiming Mayor Bruce Harrell and other city officials discriminated against for his sexual orientation after he told a local right-wing talk show host that he was gay.
On Tuesday, the city’s Office of Inspector General released its report on an investigation that concluded Diaz had an inappropriate relationship with a employee, Jamie Tompkins, failed to disclose his relationship with her, lied about it, and behaved unprofessionally.
The investigation does not weigh in directly on whether Diaz was lying in that interview, but does note that Diaz brought up being gay “as a basis for why an intimate or romantic relationship with” Tompkins. “Based on a preponderance of the evidence provided,” the investigator wrote, “I find that Mr. Diaz and [Tompkins] had an intimate or romantic relationship.”
It’s unclear how much defending Diaz in the lawsuits against him (and any future lawsuits about his alleged behavior as chief) will cost the city. The amount the city spends on civil lawsuits against the city, including outside lawyers and settlements, has been rising steadily every year. As a result, the city has begun adding $10 million or more to its existing judgment and claims fund every year to deal with “extraordinary” or “increasingly expensive” claims; in the budget that just passed, the city added $10 million to pay for “extraordinary, high-cost cases” that involved “higher-than-anticipated expenses.”
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, former police chief Adrian Diaz, and interim police chief Sue Rahr in May.
By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Bruce Harrell has fired former Seattle police chief Adrian Diaz, citing a recently completed investigation by the city’s Office of Inspector General that found Diaz violated SPD policies by having an “improper… intimate relationship” with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, lying about it, and failing to disclose the relationship.
Harrell removed Diaz as police chief in May, but he has remained on the city’s payroll; as of September, a database maintained by the city listed his salary as $338,560 a year.
Altogether, Harrell wrote in a letter he sent city officials on Tuesday morning, OIG found Diaz violated SPD policies on dishonesty, professionalism, avoiding or disclosing conflicts of interest, and improper personal relationships.
“Diaz made numerous statements denying that he engaged in an intimate or romantic relationship with [Tompkins],” Harrell wrote. “These statements were public statements and statements to the Mayor’s Office and SPD colleagues. Relying on the factual findings in the Report, these statements were false.”
According to Harrell’s letter, the investigation concluded that Diaz had an “intimate or romantic relationship” with Tompkins; that he hired and then directly supervised her; and that Tompkins wrote a card to Diaz “that indicates a romantic or intimate relationship took place” between the two.
The card was found by a member of Diaz’ security detail, who held onto it for a year, according to the report, telling investigators he feared retaliation if came forward. It featured an Ewok on the cover and a handwritten message that read:
Adrian, When I think about you, I think of the first time I saw you smile. You were so shy, but sweet. And I loved the way you chose your words so carefully. I wondered what you were filtering out. What made you tick? What made you laugh? Why would a person want to take on such a challenging role? Now that I know you, I know the answers to those questions. What I did not expect was how knowing you would bring me closer to me. More in line with who I am. How I feel. What I want. Where I want to go. Before I knew you, I didn’t really know me. You woke me up. Like a prince in one of your Disney movies. I hope I always know your kiss. I hope I always feel your influence. I hope to always know you and me. I love you, Me.
Diaz told investigators he had no idea who had written the message, but that “several people know about how much he loves Disney.” Investigators took a handwriting sample from Tompkins to compare it to the writing on the card and concluded that it was “highly probable” Tompkins wrote it. Tompkins resigned in November after OIG alleged she had lied to investigators and falsified a handwriting sample taken as part of the investigation.
PubliCola is naming Tompkins because interim police chief sue Rahr identified her by name when she placed both Diaz and Tompkins on leave in October.
In the report, an outside investigator hired by OIG, Shayda Le, quoted multiple SPD employees who told investigators Diaz frequently talked or bragged about having a sexual relationship with Tompkins. Here are a few examples from the report, which is partly redacted; we’ve included Diaz’ and Tompkins’ names where appropriate, and noted that the statements were from the same person when the redactions are identical.
“[An employee] said [Diaz] joked that the people in their vicinity likely knew his name was Adrian because of how loud [Tompkins] was during their sexual activity.”
The same employee “said Mr. Diaz told him had a sex toy, specifically a Rabbit, for when Mr. Diaz was not around.”
A different employee “said on one occasion, Mr. Diaz was talking about sexual activity with [Tompkins]and expressed that he could not keep up with her level of sexual activity. [The employee] responded that he could seek sexual enhancement medication to help.”
One staffer said Diaz showed him a partially nude photo of a woman who appeared to be Tompkins; Diaz told an investigator the photo was probably taken from Tompkins’ Instagram account, but, the report noted, the Instagram photo Diaz showed them “was of a woman standing upright, and the one Mr. Diaz showed him looked to be of a woman laying horizontally.”
SPD staff also described Diaz bragging about his relationship with Tompkins and discussing the logistics of divorcing his wife.
According to the report, a member of Diaz’ security detail employee told investigators Diaz had asked him how best to hide messages with Tompkins from possible public disclosure, which Diaz denied. The same person also said Diaz talked to Tompkins on the phone while he was driving Diaz around, which Diaz also denied.
Four women who have sued the city for $5 million, alleging Diaz sexually harassed female subordinates and created a hostile work environment. Diaz, who has bristled at “unsubstantiated allegations” and rumors about him and Tompkins, claimed that one of the women was only making accusations because she was sleeping with someone else in the department and both of them were motivated to lie about him for that reason. Le did not consider that explanation credible, she wrote in her report.
In October, Diaz told the investigator that he was willing to consider providing his phone records to demonstrate that his subordinates’ allegations were false, but hadn’t done so by the time the report was finished more than two months later.
In June, Diaz announced to right-wing talk show Jason Rantz that he was gay, and called the allegations that he had an affair with a woman “absurd” for that reason. Diaz also said that, as “a gay Latino man,” he was unlikely to sexually harass women or behave inappropriately toward them. In his writeup of the interview, Rantz said Diaz had been “hound[ed]” by allegations that were “unsubstantiated.”
Two SPD staffers recalled Diaz telling them, shortly after he told Harrell he was gay, statements to the effect of “there no way he’s going to be able to get rid of me now.” Diaz told investigators that one of the reasons he spent so much time with Tompkins was that they talked “about my sexual orientation because I came out as gay to her,” not because they had a romantic relationship.
During the investigation, Diaz accused investigators of improperly focusing on his sexual orientation. “I explained that the topic was relevant to the extent that Mr. Diaz had himself introduced his sexual orientation as a reason for why the alleged relationship could not have happened,” Le wrote.
On Tuesday, Tompkins sent Rantz a statement calling the the allegations “completely false and highly damaging to both his and my professional reputations,” according to KIRO Radio. Diaz will reportedly go on Rantz’s show again on Wednesday.
Before she resigned from SPD and “declined further participation” in the investigation, Tompkins told investigators she and Diaz were just friends, and that he helped her out around her condo and did “countersurveillance” after Tompkins’ doorman said uniformed officers had come by the building late one night and asked if she lived there.
Diaz also claimed he was being “followed and surveilled” by unknown people as he drove around alone in his car, and suggested someone might have put some kind of “GPS tracker” on his vehicle. He also “shared a concern or suspicion that there were listening devices placed in his office,” one SPD staffer told the investigator, and had his office swept for bugs.
Legislation to repeal Seattle’s current restrictions on police officers’ use of “less-lethal” crowd-control weapons is moving forward quickly, with a committee vote scheduled for January 14, shortly after the council returns from a winter break that starts this Friday afternoon.
That leaves just five days for council members to propose amendments to the bill; council public safety committee chair Bob Kettle, who’s sponsoring legislation sent down by Mayor Bruce Harrell, told council members in an email last week that he needs amendments to come in early “in part to ensure transparency but also because of the unique aspects of the Federal Monitor, DOJ, and the Court as this impacts the Consent Decree process.”
The legislation repeals a law governing SPD’s use of less-lethal weapons that has been in effect since 2021. SPD has never followed that law, which their legal counsel argued would “compromise public safety”; instead, the department created its own “interim policy” that does not specifically restrict or bar police from using any less-lethal weapons. (The 2021 law replaced a total ban on less-lethal weapons that the federal district judge overseeing the consent decree, James Robart, enjoined earlier that year).
The bill the council is considering empowers SPD to come up with its own crowd control policy, guided by with a list of “values and expectations” in the legislation—effectively instituting a lightly amended version of the interim policy SPD has been using, in defiance of existing law, for more than three years.
The passage of the crowd-control bill could set the stage to end the 12-year-old consent decree between the city and the US Department of Justice.
Council public safety chair Bob Kettle, who’s sponsoring the legislation sent down by Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, was unavailable for comment Friday, so we weren’t able to ask him directly why he wants to push the legislation through so quickly. After all, the council and mayor have known for years that the Seattle Police Department considered the law on less-lethal weapons unworkable, and took no action.
Last week, Councilmember Cathy Moore expressed concerns about the timing, noting that passing a new crowd-control law isn’t a guarantee that Judge Robart will release the city from the consent decree.
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“I appreciate that we want to get out of the consent decree,” she said. But given the many unknowns, Moore added, “I just don’t think there can be a false sense of urgency that we’ve got to get this done so we can get the consent decree lifted. There’s no guarantee that what we do here today is going to result in the consent decree being lifted, and I think we need to use this opportunity as we are to be very thoughtful about this policy going forward.”
Moore (who, like Kettle, said through a spokesperson that she was unavailable on Friday) is expected to propose several amendments, including some co-sponsored with new Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck.
The first potential amendment would require the mayor to approve the use of blast balls—grenades, used widely during the protests against police brutality in 2020, that can cause serious injuries—in addition to tear gas, which requires mayoral approval under a recently passed state law.
In a November memo suggesting changes to the legislation to improve safety and accountability, the Seattle Office for Civil Rights included several examples of injuries caused by police using “less lethal” weapons. At a meeting last week, Councilmember Rob Saka appeared to dismiss these examples, saying they were from “all across the world.”
A second amendment would require council approval for new less-lethal weapons that emerge in the future. The current proposal gives SPD carte blanche to approve new technologies, as long as the department believes they comply with the “values and expectations” laid out in the legislation. According to a central staff memo, the change would let SPD use new weapons against the public “without the delay associated with the legislative process, and without drawing the Council into technical, rather than policy-level, judgements about appropriate tools and methods.”
Saka praised this aspect of the mayor’s bill last week and suggested expanding it, saying he saw no reason the council needed to approve surveillance technologies like “throw phones” used in hostage standoffs.
Another potential amendment would require police departments outside Seattle that provide “mutual aid” during large events to either follow SPD’s policies or be assigned to desk duty, freeing up Seattle officers to respond on the street. The legislation, as written, exempts mutual aid agencies from following Seattle’s law, or SPD’s internal policies, when doing crowd control on the city’s behalf.
Finally, council members are exploring whether to retain a private right of action, included in the 2021 law the new legislation would repeal, for people injured by police using less-lethal weapons. “It is important to provide accessible opportunities for residents to pursue their claims under city law rather than under state or federal law where the proof required is more stringent and the doctrines of qualified immunity and public duty may prevent them from receiving damages for their injuries,” SOCR wrote in its memo.
I was honored to be a fill-in host this week on “News, Views, and Brews,” a podcast on local news and politics hosted by Brian Callanan (probably best known to PubliCola readers as the host of “City Inside/Out” on the Seattle Channel.)
We talked at length about legislation proposed by Mayor Bruce Harrell (and sponsored by Councilmember Bob Kettle) that the city hopes will be the final step before federal judge James Robart releases the Seattle Police Department from the 12-year-old federal consent decree.
The proposal, which is likely to pass early next year, would repeal two previous crowd-control ordinances and lay out general guidelines for the police department to come up with its own crowd control policies; it also removes a private right of action for people injured by “less-lethal” weapons, like blast balls and 40-mm projectile launchers, to sue the city, and lifts restrictions on other police departments that SPD calls on to provide “mutual aid” when they don’t have enough officers to respond to a large event.
One fact that has gotten somewhat lost, or been deliberately obscured, in the current debate over SPD’s crowd control policies is the fact that there is currently a crowd control policy in place, and it sets clear parameters around what weapons SPD can use against the public and in what circumstances.
The current law, as I’ve reported, replaced an earlier ordinance that banned the use of all crowd-control weapons, which, indeed, never went into effect. (Judge Robart enjoined it). But the current law is in effect; SPD has just ignored it, preferring to create and operate under an “interim policy” that is much less prescriptive.
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The new ordinance will allow SPD to continue operating under a modified version of that policy, and will allow SPD to modify that policy in the future, subject to certain “values and expectations,” without the need for legislation. Although some councilmembers have raised concerns about this laissez-faire approach, particularly when it comes to the use of blast balls, most seem eager to be done with the crowd control issue and leave it in SPD’s hands.
One of those council dissenters, Tammy Morales, will leave the council next year, just one year into her four-year term. And Seattle Department of Transportation director Greg Spotts, who oversaw this year’s successful transportation levy proposal, has also announced he is stepping down after just two years on the job.
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By Erica C. Barnett