Tag: Seattle Police Department

Mayor Wilson, Police

As Incoming Mayor Mulls Police Chief’s Future, SPD Pays Consultants for Media Training, Executive Assessment
Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks at a press conference.

1.  Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes expanded the police chief’s office and command staff earlier this year, adding a second deputy chief, a chief of staff, an assistant chief, an Executive Director of Crime and Community Harm Reduction, and a Chief Communications Officer, each earning between $222,000 and $302,000 a year.

Given that extensive restructure, PubliCola was surprised to learn about a separate, $100,000 contract SPD signed earlier this year to “conduct a leadership and positional inventory to review the structure, responsibilities, and operational effectiveness of executive roles within the Office of the Chief to enhance accountability, efficiency, and strategic alignment across SPD’s leadership team.”

The contractor, Public Sector Search and Consulting, previously led the national search for a new Seattle police chief in 2022, making $75,000 for a process that led to the appointment of then-SPD lieutenant Adrian Diaz. The following year, Peterson received $150,000 to conduct a second national search for an assistant chief and deputy chief in 2023; that search, too, concluded with the promotion of two internal candidates.

By the end of 2025, Public Sector Search and Consulting is supposed to produce a report on what each person on command staff does and how their work might be streamlined “to enhance efficiency”; a comparison of command-staff responsibilities between Seattle and similar-size cities, and “recommendations for leadership development that includes a succession planning framework to ensure long-term leadership stability and a recommendation to improve leadership training and mentorship programs.”

A spokesperson for SPD responded to PubliCola’s detailed questions with a statement saying the new contract is necessary “to ensure accountability, efficiency, and efficacy, and to allow for continuous improvement. … In keeping with his desire for feedback, Chief Shon Barnes values outside perspectives that are usually unbiased.”

2. Multiple sources have confirmed that incoming Mayor Katie Wilson has not decided yet whether to keep Barnes, who was directly appointed by Bruce Harrell without the usual public process, or find a new police chief. (The city council rubber-stamped Barnes’ appointment in July). In recent weeks, Barnes’ supporters have reportedly been engaged in an all-out lobbying effort, including a letter-writing campaign, aimed at Wilson’s transition team—which includes multiple people who are pushing Wilson to oust Harrell’s pick.

Barnes has come under internal and external scrutiny for some of his high-profile actions, which included firing SPD’s top two civilian staffers, accepting hiring and recruitment bonuses meant to boost the number of deployable rank-and-file officers, and appointing a captain infamous for driving his SUV onto a sidewalk filled with protesters to head up Capitol Hill’s East Precinct. As chief, Barnes has emphasized strategies he deployed in Madison, such as “stratified policing” (focusing on crime “hot spots” and putting more resources into more serious crimes) and “Seattle-centric policing” (like “Madison-centric policing,” but for Seattle).

Before coming to Seattle, he told an interviewer in Madison that God was sending him to be a “blessing to others” outside Wisconsin and “extending” the prayer he had previously granted when Barnes became Madison police chief in 2020.

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3, SPD hired another consultant—North Carolina-based Tufano Media—to do a three-day “command-level media training” for SPD command and executive-level staff in January. According to a memo about the event, the training will focus on “strengthening the department’s communication strategy, improving media engagement, and preparing leadership to effectively communicate, both internally and externally.”

The lessons will cover topics like the “Anatomy of an effective press briefing,” “Advanced presence and tone control,” and “Strategies for managing hostile or misleading questions,” according to the overview.

SPD’s media relations department did not respond to PubliCola’s detailed questions about their media relations training, including how much the training will cost the city, how Tufano’s firm was chosen, or why the department is paying for command and executive staff to attend a media training so soon after a similar series of media trainings for command and executive staff just last year.

Instead, they provided a statement describing the trainings as a move toward transparency: “The Seattle Police Department believes that the public has a right to know what is happening in their city when it comes to public safety. Given leadership changes during 2025, we are preparing our current Command staff to be trained by a national expert. Speaking to the public through Seattle’s media is an important skill and one that doesn’t come easy to everyone, which is why Chief Barnes is providing people with training and practice.”

 

 

 

Police

After Overspending, SPD Scrambles to “Drastically Reduce” Overtime

No overtime for property crime investigations through the end of the year, according to internal memo.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department is running so far over its overtime budget this year that officers have been barred from taking overtime except “to respond to urgent life safety events, address chronic public safety issues, or meet time sensitive administrative, contractual, or legal requirements (e.g., court appearances),” according to a November 18 memo.

“SPD must drastically reduce its overtime usage and costs in the remaining weeks of the year to address a projected budget overrun,” the memo reads. “To that end, ALL overtime usage must be pre-approved at the Assistant Chief / Executive Director level, including overtime in authorized categories.” (Emphasis in original).

For the rest of the year, according to the memo, SPD will not fund overtime for property crime investigations, including burglary and theft—effectively deprioritizing property crimes through the end of 2025. Police also can’t use overtime to investigate nonviolent drug crimes, attend community meetings, or work at the Real-Time Crime Center, among many other types of work for which officers routinely rack up overtime hours.

Other types of overtime—from homicide investigations to parking enforcement—will have to be approved directly by a member of Barnes’ command staff.

It’s unclear how SPD ended up spending down its overtime budget so much faster than planned.

SPD’s media relations team, headed by Chief Communications Officer Barbara DeLollis, did not respond to detailed questions about the directive sent last week.

SPD routinely overshoots the overtime budget it receives from the city. The 2025 city budget included an additional $12.8 million for overtime, bringing SPD’s overtime budget to more than $53 million. That’s about $8 million more than the city spends on the entire Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) team, a group of social workers who are authorized to respond to a limited number of 911 calls that don’t require police.

The extra overtime money still fell short, and even with an anticipated fundingboost from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s final supplemental budget, SPD was already planning to “absorb” 11,000 extra hours—about $1.2 million—by “repurposing unused funding from other parts of the budget,” according to a budget memo.

All those extra hours didn’t just go to patrol and crime investigations. Officers get paid overtime, plus a $225 premium, for working at special events and directing traffic outside sports stadiums—work that doesn’t need to be done by cops, but is guaranteed in their contract.

At a public budget meeting in September, Police Chief Shon Barnes defended SPD’s use of overtime, saying it was conceivable that the department will need less overtime in the future, as more new officers are hired and trained, “but because we’re in a very busy city, we do have a lot of special projects and priorities that we’re, quite frankly, trying to manage, and most of them today we are managing with overtime. … And it does take time… at best, a year before an officer, or maybe two years, before that [new] officer has fully realized [their] potential.”

Next year’s SPD budget actually assumes police will use less overtime—450,000 hours—than in previous years. A budget memo earlier this year noted that this was probably an unrealistic goal, given SPD’s tendency to use more overtime than it initially requests, and noted that if SPD continues to use its typical amount of overtime, the department will run up a $5.5 million deficit.

The city council, which includes several members who promised to “audit the budget” for waste when they ran in 2023, passed an amendment requiring SPD to include overtime data in its quarterly hiring reports “when available.”

Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police

Friday Fizz: Latest Ballots Trend Toward Wilson, Barnes Moves Controversial Cop Out of East Precinct, Harrell Says Shaming Sex Buyers Works

1. Some quick math on the latest ballot drop from King County Elections, which included another 56,118 votes in the Seattle mayor’s race:

Katie Wilson narrowed the gap with Mayor Bruce Harrell, who’s now leading 50.74 to 48.86 percent, to 4,300 votes, compared to around 10,000 in the previous (Thursday) count.

In this batch, Wilson increased her showing from 51 percent to almost 55 percent of the vote—exactly the percentage she needed of all outstanding ballots as of Thursday. That means that if she can maintain or gain on that percentage in the final rounds of ballot counting, she can win.

Historically, late ballots tend to be very progressive. (They also tend to be in by now, but the count has been delayed slightly this year because two-thirds of King County voters used ballot drop boxes rather than the mail, heeding warnings that the US Postal Service would not guarantee that ballots received on Election Day would be postmarked on time for them to count.)

At the same time, there are a still a few reasons for caution. First, Harrell and the business-backed PAC working on his behalf hit Wilson hard on experience in the final days of the campaign, which appears to have dampened some of Wilson’s support. (She ended the primary above 50 percent with several more people in the race).

Second, late ballots can be somewhat unpredictable. If the ballot boxes that remain uncounted are from more conservative areas, like Magnolia, they’ll move the final tally in Harrell’s direction regardless of the truism that late voters pick progressive candidates.

Bottom line: It’s still anybody’s guess, so try not to think about it until Monday, when the county will announce the next big batch of results.

2. Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes announced yesterday that he’s reassigning Michael Tietjen, the recently promoted captain who became commander of Capitol Hill’s East Precinct in September, and appointing Captain Jim Britt as head of that precinct.

Barnes, previously the police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, reportedly reprimanded SPD staff for not letting him know promoting Tietjen and putting him in the heart of Capitol Hill might cause a backlash. (PubliCola broke the news about Tietjen’s appointment last month). Tietjen has been at the center of several high-profile controversies, going back to 2007, when he and a partner were accused of planting drugs on a man in a wheelchair.

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In 2020, Tietjen was suspended after driving his SUV onto a sidewalk filled with people and mocking them as “cockroaches,” as well as a separate incident in which he threw a protester against a bus stop, injuring them. He also failed to report officers’ alleged harassment of a trans woman during the same period, according to an Office of Police Accountability investigation.

SPD did not respond to detailed questions about Tietjen’s reassignment PubliCola asked on Tuesday. Instead, they announced Britt’s assignment on SPD’s website on Thursday, describing Tietjen’s “recent assignment” in passive voice and saying Barnes took action as soon as he learned about Tietjen’s history. In reality, Barnes announced plans to reassign Tietjen in an internal announcement, also reported exclusively by PubliCola, that blamed our story and “internal leaks” for creating “a crisis of confidence among our LGBTQIA+ community members.” Then he left Tietjen in charge for a month.

Tietjen is reportedly moving to the department’s Internet Crimes Against Children/High-Risk Victims unit.

If the new commander of the East Precinct’s name  name sounds familiar, that’s because Captain Britt has been

of the city’s Real Time Crime Center, a facility at SPD headquarters where police monitor the new CCTV cameras the city is installing in neighborhoods across Seattle. Britt has been the face of the RTCC, so his reassignment after just a few months leaves a void.

Barnes also announced that East Precinct patrol officer Haden Barton will be SPD’s new LGBTQ+ liaison, a position that has gone unfilled for months after the reassignment of the previous liaison, Doran Koreio.

3. If Tietjen is now in charge of the high-risk victims unit, he’ll be overseeing a program SPD announced last week in which detectives stake out and photograph the cars of men paying for sex on Aurora Ave. N, trace their license plates, and send “Dear John” letters to their homes. The idea is that shaming men and provoking fights with their partners will reduce demand for sex work.

Despite the centuries-long history of shaming as a demand reduction strategy, there’s little to no evidence that it works as a deterrent or decreases the demand for sex work (though there is evidence that it pushes some street-based sex workers to move online). Advocates who work against sex trafficking have argued that “john shaming” harms sex workers and destabilizes the families of the men who end up on “john lists” or receive letters from police at home, with little to no impact on sex trafficking, usually the ostensible purpose of such campaigns.

Deputy city attorney Scott Lindsay, a former public safety advisor to ex-mayor Ed Murray, has been trying to get SPD to adopt the “Dear John” program for years, but was rebuffed by previous police chiefs. (Lindsay’s boss, Republican city attorney Ann Davison, just lost her bid for reeelection).

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office told PubliCola he supports the program. “’John Letter’” programs have been adopted in roughly 100 cities across the United States, including San Francisco last year, and are endorsed by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation as a best practice in addressing commercial sexual exploitation,” a spokesperson for the mayor said. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a national Christian fundamentalist group previously known as Morality in Media, campaigns against pornography, sex work, comprehensive sex education, sex shops, same-sex marriage, among other right-wing crusades.

 

 

Mayor Harrell

Police Chief Shon Barnes Fires Two of SPD’s Top Civilian Staff

By Erica C. Barnett

This morning, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes fired two of SPD’s top civilian staff, Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey and General Counsel Rebecca Boatright. The two were members of Barnes’ command staff, and both had worked under multiple police chiefs for a decade.

According to internal sources, Barnes relies heavily on a small, tight-knit team of staffers he hired from outside SPD, including chief of staff Alan Ricketts, crime and Community Harm Reduction Director Lee Hunt, and communications director Barb DeLollis, along with deputy chief Yvonne Underwood. Barnes’ decision to bring in a large cadre of executive-level staff has created a budget issue at SPD, because the chief only has a certain number of executive positions, or “pockets,” he can fill on a permanent basis; firing Maxey and Boatright potentially gives Barnes the authority to move some of his new staff into these permanent roles.

Barnes’ inner circle, which multiple insiders have described as reflexively supportive of the chief’s ideas, did not include Maxey or Boatright, who pushed back on some of his proposals as impractical or politically nuclear. Both were reportedly blindsided repeatedly by some of Barnes’ decisions, including some that blew up publicly for reasons that might have been obvious to people with longer tenure at SPD.

For example, when we reported that Barnes had appointed Michael Tietjen, a former lieutenant who was disciplined for injuring and endangering protesters in 2020 (and who failed to report alleged harassment against a trans woman by officers under his command), Barnes was apparently shocked by the public blowback and angry that no one had warned him Tietjen would be controversial.

After our story ran, Barnes reportedly launched an investigation into who “leaked” the information about the promotion, which SPD had announced on their own Instagram page. There have been multiple efforts to find out who is “leaking” to reporters, including when PubliCola reported on the salaries and bonuses Barnes and his new staff are receiving.

Compared to previous police chiefs, Barnes reportedly spends more time in his office and less time talking directly with sworn officers and others on SPD staff, SPD sources say. Since Harrell hired him earlier this year, Barnes has held one full meeting of his senior command staff.

Boatright and Maxey both worked on SPD’s efforts to comply with a federal consent decree imposed on the department in 2012 in response to allegations of racial bias, excessive force, and inadequate accountability for officers who violate SPD policies or the law. As SPD’s most senior civilian leaders, they carried institutional knowledge about the conditions that landed SPD under federal oversight as well as the reasons the city adopted specific accountability measures in the past.

Without talking to people with institutional knowledge about things like accountability, past contract negotiations, and the relationship between SPD and the public, some worry that Barnes is making decisions untethered from important, Seattle-specific context.

Boatright and Maxey reportedly disagreed with Barnes on some decisions and department initiatives. These included SPD’s recently announced “Dear John” operation, in which SPD detectives stake out men paying for sex on Aurora Ave. N and photograph their cars, sending the photos, along with letters saying they were seen participating in “illegal sexual exploitation,” to the vehicles’ registered owners. The theory behind the surveil-and-shame operation, which deputy Seattle City Attorney Scott Lindsay has been pushing for years, is that embarrassing men who pay for sex, and potentially setting off explosive conflicts with their partners, will reduce the demand for sex work.

It’s unclear whether Harrell directed Barnes to remove Boatright and Maxey, or if he even knew Barnes planned to fire the pair. Harrell’s office declined to answer our questions, saying, “We would defer to SPD related to internal personnel decisions.” (None of our questions for the mayor were about SPD’s internal decision making).

SPD responded to our questions with this statement: “This message is to inform you that Brian Maxey and Becca Boatright are no longer serving in their roles as COO and General Counsel. They served the public with honor. We do not discuss personnel matters. More information regarding the department’s organizational structure will be forthcoming.”

 

Drugs, Mayor Harrell, Police, Trump

SPD Drug Arrests Were Part of Trump’s Anti-Immigrant “Operation Take Back America”
Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks at a recent press conference.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes celebrated earlier this week after an anti-drug trafficking operation recovered fentanyl, guns, and cash from a stash house in Sammamish. The operation resulted in at least 10 arrests.

“This violent organization not only trafficked dangerous drugs but was responsible for putting firearms on our city streets,” Barnes said in a press release. “I’m thankful for the great work of our Seattle Police officers and our federal partners.”

Which federal partners was Barnes referring to? The arrests, conducted in collaboration with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, were part of a Department of Justice effort called Operation Take Back America established in a Trump executive order whose primary purpose is “Repelling the Invasion of Illegal Immigration.” All 10 people arrested in the operation have Hispanic surnames.

Trump’s order, according to the press release for which Barnes provided a quote, is “a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime.” In addition to focusing on “Transnational Criminal organizations… such as Tren de Aragua (TdA) and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13 ),” the order expresses support for “bringing back the death penalty” for certain drug-related capital crimes.

Court records do not yet indicate what penalties the DOJ plans to seek against the men, who have all been indicted on felony charges in the US District Court of Western Washington. But the Trump Administration’s approach to both drug trafficking and immigration, in general, has been appalling.

In addition to just straight-up killing people on boats and claiming they were “traffickers,” the Trump administration has falsely accused many immigrants of being members of Tren de Aragua and MS-13, including Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador and is currently fighting a second deportation attempt. Operation Take Back America has resulted in thousands of arrests so far, including “1,300 illegal aliens,” as the DOJ put it in a different press release, during a single operation in May.

State law prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from participating in civil immigration enforcement—for example, by helping out in ICE raids. Earlier this month, Harrell issued two executive orders on immigration—one affirming and strenghtening the city’s commitment to the state law, and one committing to spend more money on immigration services and ban law enforcement officers from wearing masks to conceal their identities.

Neither Harrell’s office nor SPD responded to our questions about the Operation Take Back America arrests.

labor, Mayor Harrell, Police, Renters

Tietjen Still at East Precinct, Harrell Overheard Discussing Tip Credit Rollback, Mayor’s Budget Preserves Cut to Tenant Services

1. Two weeks ago after PubliCola reported that Police Chief Shon Barnes had picked controversial police captain Mike Tietjen to head up Capitol Hill’s East Precinct, Barnes announced internally that he was removing Tietjen, blaming our “recent article that has raised unease within the East Precinct, leading to a crisis of confidence among our LGBTQIA+ community members.”

As of Thursday, though, Tietjen was still in charge of the precinct, with no clear timeline for replacing him. An SPD spokesperson responded to a list of questions from PubliCola by saying, that “no movement has been made of yet. I do not have a timeline for completion at this time.”

Tietjen has been a high-profile, controversial figure at SPD since at least 2007, when he and his bike patrol partner were accused of planting drugs on a man and arresting him. City investigators later concluded that Tietjen and his partner lied about the arrest (and likely pocketed weed belonging to the suspect). The allegations raised questions about the two men’s credibility in 17 other drug and firearms cases.

More recently, Tietjen became notorious for his actions during the 2020 protests against police brutality after driving onto a sidewalk toward a group of protesters, calling them “cockroaches” when they fled the path of his unmarked SUV. (Tietjen was suspended for that incident and another in which he shoved a protester into a bus stop, slamming their head). During the same period, Tietjen failed to report an incident in which a group of officers, including one who was his direct report, allegedly harassed a trans woman in Capitol Hill, asking her if she “had a dick under” her skirt.

SPD did not respond to PubliCola’s questions about why Tietjen is still at the East Precinct and the process for replacing him.

2. During a recent meeting with restaurant owners at a West Seattle cafe, Mayor Bruce Harrell appeared to commit to considering the reinstatement of the “tip credit” for restaurants or other “exemptions” that could make it less expensive to run their businesses.

Seattle’s minimum wage law, passed in 2015, included a “tip credit” that allowed employers to pay sub-minimum wages as long as their workers made enough in tips to bring their overall “minimum compensation” to the city minimum.

The conversation was overheard by a bystander who provided a brief recording of the conversation to PubliCola. In the recording, Harrell can be heard saying that if reelected, “I fully commit, in January, to convene just restaurants” to discuss “what the city can do, from a policy perspective,” to help them deal with Seattle’s high minimum wage—”whether it’s exemptions, or re-discussion of the tip credit, I’ll have that discussion.”

Contacted by PubliCola, a spokesman for the mayor said, “Rolling back the minimum wage and reinstating the tip credit is not a policy we’re considering now or in the future. The mayor will always meet with small businesses to hear their ideas[.]”

The 2015 minimum wage law, passed unanimously by a city council that included Harrell, gave restaurants and other businesses that rely on customers to pay their workers’ wages through tips 10 years to adjust to the fact that they would have to pay the full minimum wage in 2025. Last year, Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth tried unsuccessfully to preserve the tip credit indefinitely.

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3. Harrell’s proposed budget preserves cuts made last year to the Department of Construction and Inspections’ tenant assistance program, which the city reduced from about $2.4 million to $1.6 million between 2024 and 2025. The tenant services program pays for counseling, legal aid,  education, and other assistance to tenants facing eviction or navigating landlord-tenant conflicts. Some of organizations whose city funding was cut or remained flat this year include the Tenants Union, United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, Solid Ground, and the Housing Justice Project, along with half a dozen others.

Harrell’s 2026 budget proposal includes no inflation adjustments, meaning that in real terms, nonprofits whose funding stayed flat will continue to experience reductions in their ability to pay staff salaries and other costs that are funded through SDCI.

In a letter to the city council earlier this month, seven groups that depend on city funding to operate their programs asked the council to reverse the cuts made last year and add more funding to address inflation and augment programs at a time when evictions and homelessness are approaching record highs.  The most cost-effective way to address homelessness is prevention, by helping people stay housed,” the organizations wrote. “When rental assistance is paired with tenant services it becomes far more effective, ensuring resources are used efficiently to keep people stably housed.”

Progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck reportedly plans to introduce a budget amendment that would add $1 million to the budget for tenant services, restoring last year’s cut and addressing some of the inflationary cost increases over the past two years.

Last year, then-councilmember Tammy Morales did manage to get $355,000 in the budget to reduce the mayor’s proposed cuts to tenant services, but failed to get support for restoring another $456,000 in cuts. The council is similarly constituted this year, with Rinck, rather than Morales, as the lone consistent progressive on a centrist council focused on boosting the police budget, not helping tenants access legal aid.

We’ve reached out to Rinck about her amendment and will update this post if we hear back.