Tag: Seattle Police Department

Courts, Police

Tort Claim by Two Fired SPD Employees Alleges Gender, Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination Under Police Chief Shon Barnes

Barnes’ chief of staff reportedly responded to concerns about a crackdown on the longtime nude beach at Denny Blaine Park by saying, “We’re not here for the gays.”

By Erica C. Barnett

Two former civilian Seattle Police Department employees, former general counsel Rebecca Boatright and former chief operating officer Brian Maxey, have filed tort claims against the city, alleging they were “subjected to a widespread course of retaliation and wrongfully terminated” because they opposed decisions made by Barnes and his predecessor, Sue Rahr.

Boatright is also claiming gender discrimination. Maxey is seeking $4.5 million, while Boatright is seeking $6.5 million.

Barnes abruptly fired Boatright and Maxey early in the morning on November 5, less than 12 hours after the first ballots dropped in the mayoral election.

The two were among the longest-serving civilian members of the department, and “the only City employees to navigate the Consent Decree between the United States and the City from start to finish,” according to their claim.

The tort claim, which will lead to a lawsuit if the city declines to settle within 60 days, claims that the department retaliated against Maxey and Boatright for objecting to a number of decisions, including “personnel moves (promotions, demotions, and assignments) that reasonably appeared to be rooted in retaliation or discrimination based upon sexual orientation or gender.”

This is an apparent reference to two hiring decisions. First, Barnes chose to promote Mike Tietjen, a lieutenant who became infamous for his over-the-top misconduct during the 2020 protests on Capitol Hill, to captain of the East Precinct, passing over a gay lieutenant who had been serving as acting captain and was well-liked within the surrounding Capitol Hill community. (Barnes later rescinded his decision and put a different captain in charge at the East Precinct).

In an email to command staff earlier this year, Barnes blamed PubliCola’s reporting for community backlash against his decision to promote Tietjen, as well “a lack of comprehensive input from those involved in employee assignments and internal leaks within our department.”

Barnes had previously come under fire for overseeing a dramatic crackdown on the historic LGBTQ+ nude beach at Denny Blaine Park,  in which officers showed up prepared to arrest or trespass anyone who wasn’t wearing clothes. According to people familiar with the conversation, Barnes’ chief of staff, Alex Ricketts, brushed Boatright off when she told Ricketts he and Barnes needed to take the LGBTQ+ community’s concerns seriously, telling her, “We’re not here for the gays.”

Second, Barnes’ Deputy Chief Yvonne Underwood allegedly decided not to promote a gay detective who was serving as acting sergeant over SPD’s policy division, passing her over for the permanent position despite the fact that, like the acting East Precinct Commander who got pushed aside in favor of Tietjen, she was already doing the job. Instead, the woman, a single mom, was assigned to an overnight patrol position, which conflicted with her duties as a parent—a common issue faced by female cops, and one SPD has claimed it wants to solve as part of the “30 by 30” effort to have a recruit class that’s 30 percent women by 2030.

Boatright, Maxey, and executive staff in Harrell’s office also questioned Barnes’ decision to award $50,000 hiring bonuses, created explicitly to recruit trained rank and file officers, to two of his new command staff, and to accept the same bonus himself. Barnes and Deputy chief  Yvonne Underwood also took $2,000 recruitment bonuses for hiring the same two executives. PubliCola reported exclusively on the bonuses in a series of stories earlier this year, which led to another search for “leaks” in the department, according to multiple internal sources.

During a conversation about the bonuses that took place in his office, Ricketts reportedly dismissed Boatright’s legal concerns, saying she didn’t know what she was talking about, according to people familiar with the conversation. When Underwood arrived at the office, Ricketts reportedly told the deputy chief, “This girl’s talking foolishness.”

The claim also alleges that in order to justify the highest possible pay classification, Executive 4, for a new position he created for his longtime colleague Lee Hunt, Barnes handed a significant amount of Boatright’s work, along with employees she supervised, to Hunt. “The Chief of Police told Ms. Boatright that the effective demotion was necessary to ‘justify [Hunt’s] Exec 4 classification,'” according to the claim. Boatright had a lower job classification—Executive 3—that tops out in the high $200,000s. Hunt’s salary is $302,000 a year, more than the mayor and most city department heads.

Another issue Boatright and Maxey raise is Barnes’ response to their concerns about an anti-prostitutions initiative in which undercover officers photograph men they believe are paying sex workers on Aurora Ave. N and send the photographs, along with a sternly worded “john letter,” to their homes, with the goal of shaming the men out of paying for sex in the future. (Seattle has had similar programs in the past but found them ineffective). The two expressed concern that the letters could violate people’s state constitutional right to privacy in their own homes and family affairs and lead to potentially violent confrontations with partners.

In the same email that blamed “leaks” and media coverage for the LGBTQ+ backlash against Tietjen’s appointment, Barnes noted “internal resistance” to the new “initiative to combat human trafficking along the Aurora Street [sic] corridor.”

“I want to reiterate that both I and the mayor’s office fully support this program,” Barnes wrote. “Leadership sometimes involves taking risks, and I firmly believe that proactive measures are necessary, even in the face of opposition Those who are not aligned with this mission are encouraged to have an open conversation with me or consider their place within our department.” This email, which quickly circulated outside its intended audience, was widely viewed as a threat: If you disagree with the chief, keep it to yourself or GTFO.

Mayor-elect Katie Wilson, who will take office on Friday, announced earlier this month that she will keep Barnes as police chief.

Maxey and Boatright declined to comment. SPD’s communications office respond to questions by saying, “The department respects the legal process and cannot comment on ongoing legal matters.”

Mayor Wilson, Media, Opinion, Police, public disclosure

Mayor Wilson: Audit SPD’s Public Disclosure Office!
A few of PubliCola’s records requests that have been “grouped” by the Seattle Police Department. SPD’s public disclosure unit will not begin (or resume) responding to any of these requests until they’ve completed the one they’re currently working on. We filed that one, for information about SPD’s use of generative AI, in September; so far, we’ve only gotten only a delay notice in response.

SPD has shown they won’t comply with the state Public Records Act on their own. So make them.

Erica C. Barnett

It’s time for the city to audit the Seattle Police Department’s public disclosure office—and, if they ignore the auditor’s recommendations, for incoming Mayor Katie Wilson to force SPD to follow the law.

The state Public Records Act makes it clear that the government’s obligation to disclose information is no trivial responsibility. “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them,” the PRA says. “The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”

For years, SPD has failed to comply with this bedrock premise.  Instead, they’ve evaded disclosure by delaying responses until the records they’ve held back are no longer timely, refusing to work on more than one request at a time, and using the public disclosure process to conceal information that used to be public as a matter of course, including police reports and responses to basic factual questions.

Public disclosure of public information is in everyone’s interest, but for PubliCola and other media outlets, the availability of public records also affects our ability to keep our readers informed. Currently, PubliCola has 10 open records requests with SPD, with the oldest dating back to mid-2023. (We had older unfulfilled requests, but closed them in an effort to triage requests that were still relatively timely).

In all of 2025, SPD provided a single document in response to one of our public disclosure requests—a one-page Excel spreadsheet showing the total compensation for police officers in 2024.

Not only did SPD fail to meaningfully respond to our outstanding requests, they will no longer respond to more than one request at a time from individuals or entities with multiple requests. This practice, known as “grouping,” violates a 2023 agreement between the city and the Seattle Times, which is currently fighting SPD in court to eliminate grouping entirely. It also appears to violate the Public Records Act, which requires agencies to respond to individual requests “promptly,” with specific estimates for the time it will take to respond to each request.

As the Times’ recent motion for summary judgment puts it, “The Grouping Policy denies prompt responses to those disfavored requesters who cannot wait for an old request to slowly emerge from SPD’s backlog before making a new request. …  Nothing in the PRA authorizes an agency to choose which requests to process and which ones to leave on a dusty shelf.”

I’ve filed a declaration in support of the Times’ latest lawsuit, describing the ways in which SPD has thwarted PubliCola’s requests for public records and how these actions have affected my ability to keep the public informed about what SPD is up to—from former chief Diaz’ alleged coverup of an unethical affair with a staffer he hired into a specially created position, to the investigation into a police union official who whooped it up over the killing of a pedestrian by a speeding cop. Times reporter Mike Carter’s own declaration shows a similar pattern of selective inaction by SPD—including one request for which he waited 19 months, only to receive the documents unexpectedly because SPD fast-tracked a similar request from a KOMO reporter.

If the Times prevails over SPD, it will directly benefit those in the public and independent press who can’t afford to fight years-long legal battles against the deep-pocketed police department. Meanwhile, though, SPD is still claiming the right to effectively deny records requests by putting them off for years. Earlier this month, the department moved its generic “placeholder date” for PubliCola’s nine inactive “grouped” requests from December 31, 2025 to December 31, 2026. Unless something changes, the remaining unfilled requests will get pushed forward to 2027 at the end of next year.

The single PubliCola records request SPD says it is working on—for information about SPD’s use of generative AI—has already been delayed by three months, until January, and could move again. Until SPD has finished responding to this one request, they will do no work at all on our other nine requests.

Because SPD refuses to process more than one request at a time, I have stopped filing records requests with them. It’s pointless. In effect, their obstructive decisions have succeeded—whether I go through the motions of filing a request or not, SPD will never respond “promptly,” as required by the PRA, or provide the “fullest assistance” the law requires.

 

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So, in addition to conducting a formal audit, Mayor-elect Wilson should send down legislation to eliminate “grouping,” which has not accomplished its purported goal of weeding out bot requests and those that are excessively burdensome or “extraordinarily broad.” If bots are a problem, separate legislation can address that issue; if a huge number of people are filing harassing or unreasonable requests, the burden should be on SPD to prove this is happening, and to work with the mayor and city council on legislation to address that narrow problem. SPD is currently using city dollars in a legal battle to use “grouping” to conceal public records. It’s long past time (and should not require a lengthy legal battle) to take this tool away from them.

SPD’s lack of compliance with basic public disclosure standards has gotten worse in recent years. But it isn’t new. In 2015, the City Auditor’s Office audited SPD’s public disclosure unit and found serious problems with how the office handles public disclosure requests.

That audit recommended that SPD hire more public disclosure officers, implement a centralized system for managing records requests, and streamline the response process by handling simple requests before more complex ones and prioritizing timely responses. It also recommended some basic best practices—like asking requesters for clarification when necessary and “proactively communicat[ing]” with people who ask for records—something that currently does not happen consistently, if at all.

SPD did not concur with most of the 13 recommendations in the 2015 audit, agreeing explicitly with just two—the recommendation to hire more public disclosure staff, and the one suggesting they set up a new records management system. Over the past 10 years, SPD has added nine new positions to the public disclosure unit to keep up with the increasing pace of requests, up from just five in 2014. That’s a positive step on paper, but it doesn’t actually help if public disclosure officers are steeped in SPD’s current culture of concealment.

Another practice SPD uses to evade public disclosure is expanding the type of records the department refuses to hand over without a public disclosure request.

In the recent past, for instance, SPD put ordinary police reports online as a matter of course—an extension of the department’s earlier practice of printing out copies of police reports and making them available at police precincts. (Yes, you could just walk in to any precinct and grab the day’s police reports!)

Today, police reports are no longer available to the general public through SPD’s website and the reports SPD provides to media (when they choose to do so) consist of heavily redacted and edited “narratives” that omit important information that the public generally has the right to know, such as the names of the officers who respond to calls and write the reports.

Additionally, SPD sometimes refuses to provide police reports, including those cleaned-up narratives, without explanation. Although SPD’s policy manual says explicitly that “Media Representatives May Obtain Copies of Police Reports Through the Public Affairs Unit,” that unit frequently directs PubliCola to file a records request for police reports.

This “file a records request” brushoff applies not just to written reports but to questions of all kinds. If SPD’s communications office—headed, under Police Chief Shon Barnes, by a former corporate PR representative with no prior experience in government—doesn’t want to answer a question, “file a records request” is a polite synonym for “fuck off.” Too far? Not when you consider that even the simplest records requests often take years—if I want to know about a crime that took place downtown last night, the Wilson administration could be halfway over before I find out.

The police, in short, are getting away with refusing to follow the letter and spirit of our state’s strongly worded public disclosure law—a law explicitly designed to ensure that the public has access to information that isn’t mediated and managed by government agencies and their press offices.

SPD has made it very clear that they won’t meet their legal obligation to provide public records unless they’re forced to do so—by legislation, a court order, or a directive from the mayor, who has the ability to fire for reprimand the police chief if his department is failing to comply with expectations.

It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that the Seattle Times will prevail in its current attempt to get SPD to stop grouping records requests, taking away one of the department’s current methods for withholding public documents.

But undoing a culture of obfuscation could require forcing, rather than asking, SPD to meet its obligation to provide records that ultimately belong to us, the public.

An audit laser-focused on these tactics will outline the problem and lay out solutions and a timeline for compliance. Mayor Wilson can then show she’s serious about transparency by requiring SPD to show progress on public disclosure, and holding Chief Barnes directly accountable if his department fails to act. SPD has had plenty of chances (and received plenty of public funding) to fix a broken process. It’s time they face consequences for their inaction.

Morning Fizz, Police, public disclosure

Police Chief Takes the Holidays Off, SPD Won’t Answer Questions About Two Anti-Prostitution Stings They Announced
During the holidays, a rotating group of deputies will take over for Police Chief Shon Barnes, who’s out of town.

1. If you’re wondering who’s in charge at the Seattle Police Department during the historically busy holiday season, including New Year’s Eve, it isn’t Police Chief Shon Barnes, who’s been taking a two-week vacation since December 20. Barnes’ family lives in Chicago, and he has not bought a home in Seattle, continuing a practice from his days as police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, when his family remained in Chicago.

During Barnes’ absence, the role of Acting Chief of Police will rotate between Deputy Chief Yvonne Underwood, Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis, and Deputy Chief Andre Sayles. Underwood and Davis were at SPD prior to Barnes’ arrival; Sayles was previously police chief in Beloit, Wisconsin, a small town outside Madison with a population of 36,000.

Police chiefs are generally expected to be on call for incidents that happen outside regular working hours, including on weekends, evenings, and holidays, and typically show up in person at events that involve a major police response, which isn’t possible when the chief is out of town.

SPD’s communications office did not respond to a list of questions about Barnes’ lengthy absence. Earlier this year, when PubliCola asked why Barnes was spending almost every weekend out of town, a spokesperson told us that crime was down and that Barnes was “tirelessly working to protect the Seattle community.”

Historically, Seattle’s police chiefs have lived in or near Seattle full-time, as have other high-ranking SPD officials, making Barnes’ administration an outlier. At least three of Barnes’ top staffers reportedly rent apartments in Seattle while their families live in their permanent homes out of state.

During Barnes’ time out of the office, he will earn just under $12,500.

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2. SPD’s communications office also declined to respond to questions about two recent operations—one involving alleged “human trafficking” at a strip club on Aurora, and one about the “Dear John” letters SPD sends to men whose cars they photograph during sting operations targeting menwho pay for sex. The department announced both anti-prostitution operations with blog posts claiming success at fighting sexual exploitation, the legal term the city uses to describe any exchange of money for sex, but said they could not answer any questions about either announcement because “This [sic] is an open investigation.”

Another spokesperson declined to provide copies of the three police reports related to their strip club sting, telling us to file a records request. (In the past, SPD put police reports online, but they have made these public records increasingly inaccessible). PubliCola does not file records requests with SPD because they do not meaningfully respond to them. In 2025, SPD provided a single one-page document in response to one of our 10 unfulfilled requests, which go back to 2023, giving us a new “placeholder date” of December 31, 2026 for the rest of our requests.

A spokesperson for the King County Prosecutor’s Office said the city has not referred any cases from the strip club sting for charging or a first appearance, despite the seriousness of SPD’s allegations—human trafficking is a Class A felony.

As for the “Dear John” notices, which are designed to embarrass men who pay for sex and potentially sprak explosive conflicts with their partners,, SPD did eventually provide the sample letter we requested. It says the women and girls who work on Aurora are “almost always the victims of criminal trafficking” and that prostitution “is not a victimless crime.”

The letters include photos taken by police conducting the stings and note that any vehicle used when buying sex is subject to impoundment, with fees that “often exceed $2,000” to get a vehicle back.

SPD’s legal counsel reportedly argued against sending the letters on the grounds that people have a right to privacy in their own homes, opening the department up to potential lawsuits.

Police

SPD Paid for New Executive to Stay at Four-Star Hotel for a Month; Unclear Whether New Contract Would Have Let Police Handle Auderer Case Internally

1. The Seattle Police Department spent more than $6,300 on a month-long stay at the four-star Arctic Club Hotel in downtown Seattle for Lee Hunt, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes’ Executive Director of Crime and Community Harm Reduction, after Barnes appointed him to the newly created position earlier this year. Hunt, who makes more than $300,000 a year, also worked for Barnes in Madison, WI, where Barnes was previously chief.

Expense records PubliCola has reviewed show that Hunt stayed in a room that cost between $221 and $293 a night between May 7 and June 7 of this year. The total cost to the city for the long-term hotel stay, according to an itemized receipt, was $6,330.

It’s unclear if the city paid for other Barnes appointees to stay at hotels as part of their moves to Seattle. As we reported earlier this year, Barnes brought in a number of new hires from outside Seattle, including a second deputy police chief, an assistant chief, a chief of staff, and a chief communications officer, in addition to Hunt, at an annual cost of more than $1 million.

In response to detailed questions, which included an inquiry about whether other Barnes hires also received an extended hotel stay as part of their moving costs, SPD’s communications office said, “All Command leaders who joined Seattle Police Department from locations outside of Seattle to bring their expertise here received a specific relocation package.

“Under that process, they submit receipts for review – and if approved, they get reimbursed per their agreed-upon package.”

SPD did not respond to questions about whether other out-of-town executive hires, including Barnes, were put up in hotels long-term after they moved to Seattle; nor did they respond to a question about whether SPD is currently subsidizing or paying for Barnes’ apartment. Many of SPD’s new top executives, including Barnes, live in Seattle while their families continue residing in the states where they used to live.

2. Under the Seattle Police Officers Guild’s just-approved contract with the city, police sergeants are authorized to deal internally with any police misconduct that falls below the level of “serious” misconduct, defined in SPD’s policy manual to include violations like insubordination, “serious neglect of duty,” and dishonesty.

Supporters of the change, including Seattle City Council public safety chair Bob Kettle, have said that authorizing sergeants to deal with minor misconduct helps build a more ethical, self-governing police force and frees the Office of Police Accountability to focus on more serious matters.

It’s unclear, however, precisely what kinds of misconduct sergeants will be authorized to dispense with internally. In SPD’s current policy manual, “serious misconduct” does not include behaving unprofessionally—raising the possibility that incidents like the one in which former SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer laughed about the killing of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula by officer Kevin Dave, would be handled internally and never come to light.

(Auderer’s “joke” that Kandula’s life was only worth $11,000 because she was young was caught on camera and discovered by a civilian SPD staffer reviewing video for records requests filed by PubliCola and other outlets).

A spokesperson for the OPA told PubliCola the new “frontline investigation” process “is not effective until finalization of an updated policy. OPA will take an active role in the creation of the new Frontline Investigations program to develop accountability and consistency.”

Police

SPD Invites Officers in “Officer Involved Shootings” to Attend Billy Graham Evangelical Ministry Retreat
Slide from this year’s Billy Graham National Law Enforcement Ministry conference, meant to illustrate that love “can’t be coerced” (it got a big laugh)

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Police Department sergeant Christopher Gregorio sent a department-wide email Monday morning inviting officers and their spouses who have been involved in an Officer Involved Shooting and/or officers who have been injured in the line of duty” to sign up for a free retreat hosted by the Billy Graham Law Enforcement Ministry.

The ministry is part of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which is now headed by Graham’s son Franklin, a close ally and vocal supporter of Donald Trump who—like his father—has a history of bigoted comments about LGBTQ people, believes that the Bible commands women to obey their husbands, and believes women who have abortions are committing “murder” for the sake of their own “pleasure” and convenience.”

The email, which was cc’d to SPD Chaplain Charlie Scoma, said the invitation had been approved by Lieutenant Gregory Fliegel from SPD’s Employee Support Services.

In 2021, then-police chief Adrian Diaz rescinded an internal invitation to a dinner hosted by the same organization, saying the email had “raised concerns that the SPD may not be committed to the equity of our community’s LGBTQ members.”

According to its website, the Billy Graham Law Enforcement Ministry’s next law enforcement appreciation retreat will be held next March at a Marriott near Dulles Airport, outside Washington, D.C. In addition to free admission, officers’ rooms will be paid for by the ministry, along with their meals. At the cheapest available rate for those dates, the lodging alone is likely worth at least $550.

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Videos from this year’s retreat show speakers discussing how to share the gospel of Jesus with nonbelieving coworkers, joking about how to sustain a healthy marriage (see screen shot above), and complaining about the media.

During one panel, three men and one woman responded to a male officer’s question about how he could take back his role as head of his family by saying he needed to let his wife know that God made him the “leader” of her and their children. “It’s your role to be the head of the household, and it’s the wife’s role to be the mother to those kids,” a retired Houston police officer said.

SPD’s communications office told PubliCola on Tuesday that the event “is a well-intentioned opportunity for officers. It is not endorsed by the Department or the Chief of Police,” Shon Barnes. ”

“There are many conferences available from multiple organizations throughout the country that officers can consider attending on their own time,” the SPD spokesperson added, in response to a question about the legality of accepting gifts with financial value from a religious group.

Gregorio, the sergeant who sent the email, may sound familiar to PubliCola readers: He’s one of the officers who killed Terry Caver, a 57-year-old Black man who suffered from mental illness, on a Queen Anne sidewalk in 2020. Gregorio received a 20-day suspension for the shooting, on the grounds that he violated SPD’s policy on deescalation by driving right up to Caver, who appeared to be in crisis, and almost immediately shooting him. Since then, he has been promoted to sergeant.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office would not answer our questions about SPD’s invitation to the Billy Graham retreat, saying they would “defer” all questions to SPD.

PubliCola has also reached out to City Councilmember Bob Kettle, who chairs the public safety committee, and will update this post if we hear back from him.

 

 

City Council, Police, Uncategorized

Divided Council Passes New Police Contract That Raises Officer Pay 42 Percent, With Few Accountability Concessions
Councilmembers Sara Nelson, Debora Juarez, and Maritza Rivera confab before leaving council chambers Tuesday.

The contract, which provides $126,000 paychecks to rookie cops after 6 months, also imposes restrictions on the CARE team of unarmed first responders, prohibiting them from responding without a police escort on most calls.

By Erica C. Barnett

With three council members voting “no,” the city council approved a new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild that gives rookie cops a starting salary of $118,000—with an automatic bump to $126,000 after just six months—with few of the new accountability requirements Seattle residents were promised in 2024, when the council approved SPOG’s most recent retroactive contract.

The 2024 contract gave cops retroactive pay increases of 23 percent; the contract adopted Tuesday, which goes through 2027, gives them additional raises of 42 percent over the next two years.

The deal, which goes through the end of 2027,still falls far short of implementing accountability legislation the city passed in 2017. That legislation called for the city’s Office of Police Accountability and Office of Inspector General to have full subpoena power when investigating misconduct (to date, they’re only allowed to subpoena public records, precluding access to things like text messages on officers’ personal phones). It also called for an end to outside arbitration, a process that allows officers to appeal disciplinary decisions to private arbitrators outside Seattle, and a lower standard of proof for misconduct allegations. None of these measures are in the contract; only one, the standard of proof, will be subject to an additional arbitration process (meaning it could still happen if the city wins its case against SPOG.)

In fact, the contract includes just two changes related to accountability. First, it simplifies a 180-day “clock” for disciplinary decisions, removing some carveouts that have contributed to very long delays between the time when someone files a misconduct complaint and when it gets resolved. Second, it allows sergeants, rather than the Office of Police Accountability, to determine discipline for “less than serious” misconduct, theoretically freeing up OPA to investigate more serious claims.

It’s unclear what will happen to cases involving professionalism and conduct unbecoming an officer, which are largely subjective; we’ve asked SPD and OPA whether a case like that of Daniel Auderer, who defended his offensive jokes about the police killing of 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula as “gallows humor,” would be dealt with internally under the new rules and never see the light of day.

“This has been part of a two year process to get here, two years for us on the [Labor Relations Policy Committee] and the Select Labor Committee. This is not a rushed process,” public safety committee chair Bob Kettle said. “One of the things I’m constantly looking at is to create a functional criminal justice—a functional public safety system. This is what we’re doing with this agreement.”

After the contract passed, SPOG President Mike Solan posted this gloating tweet.

Three council members voted against the agreement—an unprecedented number in recent years. Councilmember Rob Saka, who announced his opposition in a press release and op/ed in the Stranger, said he couldn’t support giving such large raises to police without extracting some accountability concessions.

“I have lived through encounters where the actions of an officer cross the line, where I felt fear rather than protection. I’ve experienced police brutality firsthand,” Saka said. “These moments have shaped me, and I carry them with me every single day, not with resentment or animus, but with responsibility. No person in Seattle should ever feel powerless, unseen or vulnerable to unequal justice and an encounter with law enforcement.”

Saka also noted that the huge pay increases come at an increasing cost—by 2027, an estimated budget increase of $57 million a year— at a time when the city is facing major budget deficits and federal cuts to programs that serve vulnerable people.

The newest councilmember, Eddie Lin, described an incident in his 20s when a cop in St. Paul, Minnesota “ended up putting his hands around my throat while I was handcuffed in the back of the police car and threatening me” after he refused to give up the name of a drunk and disorderly friend who had escaped arrest. After driving him around town for half an hour and “continuing to tell me how they were going to ruin my life,” the officer threw Lin in jail, where he said he stayed “for several nights.” Later, he got pulled over by the same cop and was terrified the same thing would happen again.

“There’s one harm when misconduct occurs,” Lin said. “There’s another harm, which is just as serious, when that misconduct does not get addressed. And if we really want to move toward a more positive relationship between community and the police, toward a comprehensive approach, toward public safety, accountability has to be our priority.”

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Lin also noted that the contract includes no mention of the department’s purported goal of having a recruit class that is 30 percent women by 2030. In 2025, less than 10 percent of SPD’s new hires have been women, and the department never bothered to fill a position that was supposed to help with this goal.

Alexis Mercedes Rinck also voted against the contract, saying the agreement  fails to include meaningful accountability provisions that our community has demanding, has been demanding for years. … In short, this contract asks Seattle taxpayers to invest more in policing without requiring more accountability in return, and that’s not a deal I can support.”

Under the new contract, the CARE Team, a group of social workers who respond to calls that don’t require an armed police response,,will be allowed to dispatch without police officers present, a change Mayor Bruce Harrell and many council members have touted as a significant win. (The CARE Department, which includes the 911 call center, is a part of the SPOG contract because, according to SPOG, their work impacts police officers’ working conditions and therefore must be approved by the guild.)

But as PubliCola reported in October, the deal with CARE effectively prohibits them from responding to most crisis calls, forcing them to call police instead of responding if they see any drugs or drug paraphernalia, such as foil; if the person in crisis is anywhere besides a public sidewalk or public building, such as a library; or if the person is in a homeless encampment, among a long list of restrictions.

CARE Department Chief Amy Barden told PubliCola she’s “happy that the process has concluded” and hopeful that police sergeants will voluntarily refer calls to CARE, as she said they did in 2023 and 2024. “If we return to the level of collaboration that we had for so long, then the contract will not be nearly as restrictive to the work,” Barden said.

But relying on police to voluntarily work with CARE is different than allowing CARE team members to use their judgment and discretion, Barden added. “The neighbors that I’m most interested in helping are people who are struggling with substance use and people who are unsheltered, and those two populations are named specifically in the exclusionary criteria, so that’s a problem.”

She also criticized the prohibition on responding to crises in non-public spaces, such as businesses, comparing it to a medical response. “If somebody’s having a stroke in the lobby of a business, versus a public space, it doesn’t make it not a stroke. If it’s happening in the city of Seattle, there should be a team who goes to that event regardless of location.”

The agreement resolves some grievances between the city and SPOG by cutting additional checks to cops who worked at various special events, such as Seahawks games, in the past; officers who worked at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event in 2022, for example, will receive double their hourly pay plus a full day of vacation, while those who worked at the Seahawks game on October 7, 2021 will get extra pay equal to 10 hours of work. The agreement also provides free parking to 19 additional civilian SPD employees, including the HR unit and a front desk staffer, who work desk jobs at police headquarters downtown—a perk most city employees do not receive.

After the three councilmembers who opposed the contract spoke, Councilmember Dan Strauss began to justify voting yes on the contract, saying it was the only way to “move accountability forward” and allow CARE to assist more people. As a group of people who had testified against the contract earlier began to boo and shout, calling Strauss “complicit in the murders” of people like Christian Nelson, who was shot and killed by SPD officers near the Othello light rail station last week, the council moved quickly to vote, curtailing further speeches. While most of the council left to meet from their offices, Lin, Strauss, and Rinck remained at the dais, their expressions ranging from pained (Rinck) to detached (Strauss) as the crowd chanted “knees off our necks,” “jail killer cops,” and “shame!”

The contract now heads to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s desk.