Tag: Seattle Police Department

City Council, Police

New Crowd Control Law Includes Few Restrictions on Use of “Less-Lethal Weapons”

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council approved legislation yesterday that retroactively authorizes the Seattle Police Department to adopt its own policies governing how officers can use “less lethal” weapons such as pepper spray, foam-tipped bullets, and blast balls—rubber grenades that can cause serious, even life-threatening injuries when they explode. The bill imposes a handful of new restrictions—requiring cops to throw blast balls “underhand, like a bowling ball,” in most cases—but otherwise retroactively authorizes a set of policies SPD has been using, without official approval, since early 2023.

The council passed legislation in 2021 restricting SPD officers’ use of less-lethal weapons and instructed them to come up with a crowd control policy that complied with the new law. Instead, the police ignored the law for years, eventually adopting their own “interim” internal policy that placed limited restrictions on the use of less-lethal weapons for crowd control.

The crowd control legislation the council adopted Tuesday doesn’t incorporate any of these policies into law; instead, it authorizes SPD to create its own policies, consistent with a handful of new restrictions, and to change those policies (to allow the use of novel weapons in the future, for example) without coming back to the council for approval or review.

The council approved the crowd control ordinance, which explicitly authorizes the use of blast balls, 6-3 vote, with Cathy Moore, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, and Joy Hollingsworth voting “no.” Ever since the WTO protests of 1999, blast balls and other types of grenades have caused serious injuries during protests, and the city of Seattle has doled out millions of dollars to settle lawsuits by people harmed or maimed by the grenades.

As we’ve reported, the new law directs SPD to follow a set of general principles, such as respect for free speech, in crafting its crowd control policy, and says less-lethal weapons should only be used when “specific facts and circumstances are occurring or about to occur that create an imminent risk of physical injury to any person or significant property damage.”

It also restricts the use of tear gas to “riots” (defined in existing SPD policy here), putting SPD in compliance with state law, and directs officers to throw blast balls “underhand” and “away from people,” unless throwing them overhand into a crowd is necessary to stop someone who, in an officer’s opinion, is causing an “immediate threat to life safety.”

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On Tuesday, the council rejected several amendments that would have placed guardrails around SPD’s use of less-lethal weapons, arguing that it would be inappropriate for the council to impose too many restrictions on internal police policies.

Objecting to an amendment from Moore that would have required the mayor to approve any use of blast balls, Council President Sara Nelson said, “If we tie SPD’s hands too much, or complicate things so much in the moment… and they’re not able to use less-lethal weapons or tools in certain situations, we risk the likelihood of of them having to turn to other tools that are not less lethal or are even more dangerous.” (That amendment failed 6-3, with Moore, Hollingsworth, and Rinck voting “yes.”).

The same 6-3 majority voted against another Moore amendment that would have created a legislative pathway for the council to object to, and potentially prohibit, the use of new less-lethal weapons in the future. Councilmember Bob Kettle argued that Moore’s proposal was tantamount to “crowding out our accountability partners,” specifically the Community Police Commission—a purely advisory body that Kettle argued was a more appropriate venue for the public to raise concerns about SPD’s use of new types of less-lethal weapons.

Seven councilmembers, including Hollingsworth, voted down a Moore amendment that would have prohibited SPD from deploying officers from outside jurisdictions, such as the Washington State Patrol or National Guard, if those officers refused to comply with Seattle’s crowd control policies.

Moore said the amendment was more necessary than ever at “a time when we are asking for mutual aid from other jurisdictions [and] we are not entirely sure where they line on the spectrum of law enforcement issues.”

Kettle retorted that if the city imposed this requirement, “”jurisdictions will not come to our aid” in the future. “If we get too precise in terms of policies… that will basically mean that nobody will show up. Nobody will show up,” Kettle said. “And if we’re in a dire situation, and our officers are on the street and they don’t feel anybody’s going to show up, that’s problematic. That creates even more danger, more danger. We should not put ourselves in that position.”

Speaking to reporters before the vote, Kettle said he considered the crowd-control legislation the final step before US District Judge James Robart will lift a 12-year-old consent decree between Seattle and the US Department of Justice. Last year, Robart said the city needed to adopt crowed control policies that complied with the settlement, which also covered biased policing and use of excessive force by SPD officers.

“We have a very different Seattle Police Department today” than when the consent decree started in 2012, Kettle said, “and this legislation is the final piece of the puzzle, [to] get to a place where we can go to Judge Robart, go to the court and seek for the consent decree to be ended,” Kettle said. “Going through this process, getting this bill complete, and [enabling] the end of the consent decree would also acknowledge all the work that’s been done over the last dozen-plus years in terms of reform of the Seattle Police Department.”

Mayor Harrell, Police

Incoming Police Chief Shon Barnes: “Our Job Is to Prevent Crime”

By Andrew Engelson

On Thursday, PubliCola sat down with incoming Seattle police chief Shon Barnes, who has served as the chief of police in Madison, Wisconsin since 2021. Barnes has 12 years of command-level police experience and worked as a civilian police accountability executive in Chicago, where he helped create training programs designed to meet the conditions of a federal consent decree with the Department of Justice, which mandated police reforms. Seattle has been under a similar order since 2012.

Mayor Bruce Harrell has touted Barnes’ leadership in helping the Madison Police Department achieve a police force that is 28 percent women, atlhough that figure declined to 21 percent in 2024. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PubliCola (AE): You’re taking over for the a chief who’s faced a lot of issues, including discrimination and harassment claims and a climate that’s difficult for female officers. The mayor has said one of the reasons they chose you is that Madison is making good progress on the 30/30 Initiative. What have you done to improve things for female officers, and what would you do here to reset the climate?

SB: I think it’s important to note that the culture and climate in Madison was set years before I showed up. They had a chief, David Cooper. David came to Madison from Minneapolis, and he was chief for twenty years, and he was the first one to say: Hey, why are all the women in [the] juvenile and traffic [divisions]? And he changed that culture. 

Some of the things we’ve done under my tenure in Madison are making sure that people have the opportunity to do special teams and special assignments, making sure that people are trained and get the same opportunities as everyone else. It’s really a zero tolerance culture for any behaviors that would be misogynistic or sexist. 

AE: What specifically would you do here? Are you willing to clean house and fire people, if needed, and hire new people?

SB: The answer is, yes, you have to hold people accountable. Accountability is looking internally first and asking yourself: As the leader or chief, did I set people up for success? Do people know the culture, which is what you will and will not accept? Do they know the rules? Have they actually had training on this issue—or did we just watch a PowerPoint and scroll through it? Having some substance behind it, I think, is very, very important, and that’s something that I will certainly do: make sure that everyone knows what the culture is, what the rules are, and that everybody feels comfortable.

AE: You’re coming into a police department where there’s been a culture of retaliation within the accountability system. The Office of Police Accountability director recently left amid questions about whether OPA was delaying investigations into Diaz. Officer Kevin Dave killed a pedestrian and officer Daniel Auderer made horrible comments about her death. What can you do to reassure folks that there’s going to be some teeth to accountability?

SB: Everything that you stated didn’t happen overnight. So if you’re suggesting that there is a culture of non-accountability, then it’s going to take some time, I will admit, to fix that. And if the accountability system is broken, and you can’t go to OPA and get a fair shot, then we need to fix that, and we need to make sure that people are being held accountable. I’m the only police chief in the country that’s worked for civilian oversight and been a police chief. The issue is that when the process isn’t fair, timely and thorough—that’s going to be my responsibility. Because if I want to complain, or I have a complaint and I don’t believe in that [process], then guess what happens? People start not talking. Bad behavior starts to grow. 

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AE: The police officers guild negotiated for a pretty tough contract, and the city didn’t really get any concessions in terms of accountability. 

SB: It’s going to take some time for me to dig into what they’re asking for. I do believe they’re involved in some negotiations. Now, usually the chief is not involved in that. But one thing I will always advocate for is accountability, on both ends. Accountability for myself and making sure people know what the culture and the rules are. It has to start with me and my integrity.

You mentioned the line of [previous] police chiefs. I don’t know them. I can’t speak for them. But I can speak for myself. And when they see me being professional—the way I speak, the way I talk, the way I interact with people, that sets the culture and tone for everyone else. And on the back end, I’ll do everything I can to make sure that people feel comfortable, and that they have somewhere to go if they want to file a complaint and that they feel like that complaint has merit.

AE: The city has adopted new drug use laws and they’re doing more rigorous policing in places like downtown. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a broken windows approach, but it’s this idea that we may need to arrest more people. Where do you fall in the spectrum between cracking down, arresting more folks, versus diversion or providing more services?

SB: Let me be very, very clear. Our job is to prevent crime, and sometimes the presence of police in dealing with crime doesn’t always signal that we’re doing the greatest job. And so I think the mayor is right when it comes to partnerships and working to clean up areas, making sure people get the help they need. It’s just unfortunate that in this country, sometimes you don’t get help until you’re justice-involved. That’s counterproductive to how I’ve always looked at policing. Coming up as a young officer, I’m always around officers and supervisors who didn’t want to arrest people—we’d talk or work our way through problems. So that’s kind of my DNA.

But I do believe that there’s crime and there’s fear of crime. And so what I do hear a lot is that people are fearful when they are walking in places and they see someone suffering from a mental health episode, or someone who may be unsheltered, or even graffiti and aesthetics. We know the “broken windows” [approach] wasn’t the thing that reduced crime in the 1990s. But that doesn’t mean we have to let things deteriorate. We have a responsibility, I think, to the community. 

AE: One of the last steps for SPD to come out of the consent decree is a new policy on crowd control. Right now, the city council is looking at allowing blast balls, among other changes. There’s concern in the community that there may be more protests during the Trump era. How will you reassure folks that we’re not going to have a situation like we did in 2020?

SB: I think the situation in 2020 was a little different, in  that the focus of the protest was on the police. I think that changes how you operate. But I want to be clear. I want to make sure that we have the best possible tools available to protect everyone.

AE: Including blast balls?

SB: Including blast balls. But I want to make sure that we don’t have to use blast balls. And that starts long before a protest even starts, with community dialogue, with making sure we have an understanding. But as someone who’s from a part of the country where the police truly treated people poorly who were protesting, I will tell you this. I will do everything in my power to prevent ever having to use any of those tactics, even if I have to get out there and stand there myself. 

I have seen it firsthand. In 2020 when I was a police deputy chief in North Carolina, we had two things going on at the same time. We had Confederate statues in the middle of town. And we had people protesting the killing of George Floyd. And [protesters supporting Confederate statues and BLM protesters] converged together. It was a situation where, as a commander, I’m not going to be in a command center. I was on the ground trying to de-escalate the situation. And I will do that here if I have to. Because I do not believe in those tactics against our community members. I will do everything in my power to prevent that.

AE: After the Abundant Life school shooting, you said you supported putting police officers in schools. That’s a controversial prospect here. Would you push for that in Seattle?

SB: I would support that, under my definition of school resource officer (SRO), and that is police officers who are in school to support the school and to ensure that students do not get arrested. I was a public school teacher, which is how I got into this. I was an SRO, and then I supervised SROs.

My SRO program that I supervised doesn’t fit the definition of what I have heard throughout the country. It makes me sad when I see police officers dragging kids out of chairs because they don’t want to do homework. That’s not the program I was involved in. Our officers were out of uniform. Most of their time was spent in or around the neighborhoods. They had a one-minute response time to the school. They didn’t do school discipline. They were involved in mediation. They were involved in talking to parents. They’re involved in conflict resolution. We taught classes. When I was a SROm I would teach literature classes, because I love literature. I think it’s about redefining what that program truly is, before I would ever ask to bring SROs back to the schools.

AE: My daughter went to Garfield, where there was a shooting last year. And I think students of color and families are extremely skeptical of SROs. Having an officer in a school is going to be a hard sell.

SB: I can understand that. I have a Black son. If you tell me that if he goes to one particular place, and he has a 70 percent chance of being arrested, I would say that I want him to go somewhere else, unless we fix that. I think there’s a lot of smart people in this city, and I always believe in being collaborative, not simply imposing your will. I’m not that kind of person. But I do believe we have enough smart people that we can figure it out.

Police

Kevin Dave, Officer Who Struck and Killed 23-Year-Old Student in 2023, Appeals His Firing
The intersection of Dexter and Thomas, where police officer Kevin Dave struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula.

By Erica C. Barnett

Kevin Dave, the Seattle police officer who struck and killed 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula in January 2023, is appealing his firing and seeking reinstatement as a police officer, PubliCola has learned. Interim police chief Sue Rahr fired Dave earlier this month, noting that he had violated several SPD policies on emergency driving as well as the law.

Dave was driving 74 miles an hour—about three times the speed limit—on a wet, rainy night two years ago when he hit Kandula, who had just entered a marked crosswalk on Dexter Ave..

Last year, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Dave, finding that he was responding to a “legitimate emergency”—a reported overdose in South Lake Union. Former police chief Adrian Diaz claimed at the time that Dave was responding “as an EMT” with training in overdose reversal.  However, a disciplinary report signed by Rahr in October found that Dave met all three of the requirements for vehicular homicide—regardless of whether the prosector’s office, using a higher standard of proof, charged him with a crime.

Dave told OPA investigators that he was “responding to a ‘life or death situation,'” the report says, and that he would not have been able to reverse the overdose in time if he had driven more slowly. However, PubliCola’s reporting revealed that the person who called 911 to report the “overdose” was, in fact, “freaking out” after taking too much cocaine; he walked down to the street outside his building before calling 911 and was lucid and relatively calm.

Overdose reversals—which involve rescue breathing or Narcan— are for opiates, and their purpose is to get an unresponsive person breathing again. There is no such thing as an overdose reversal for cocaine.

According to Dave’s discipline report, he told Office of Police Accountability investigators that in the seconds prior to the collision, he “saw a ‘long straight road’ ahead [and] had a ‘clear line of sight,'” so didn’t feel the need to activate his siren before accelerating rapidly. (Dave also claimed he wanted to avoid community complaints about the noise).

But, Rahr’s report notes, “OPA found that you drove faster than was reasonably necessary to safely arrive at the scene under the circumstances, citing, again, the multiple crosswalks and reflective signs indicating the possible presence of crossing pedestrians.”

As for possible “community complaints” about siren noise, the report says, “It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate circumstance for using a continuous siren than the factors [you] faced.”

“When OPA noted that an independent investigative entity concluded that the collision might have been avoided if you had been traveling at 50 MPH, you described this as ‘hindsight’ and stated that if you ‘had been doing 20 miles an hour, a collision wouldn’t have occurred, but that speed isn’t reasonable for someone who’s going to have brain damage in under five minutes because of an overdose,” the report continued. Dave also told investigators that Kandula’s “inattention” and the fact that she “ran out in front of” his car were partly to blame for her death.

“You said:  ‘I’m not a jerk, I haven’t s[o]wed mistrust in the community,” Rahr’s report notes, as “an apparent attempt to distinguish your conduct from that of” Daniel Auderer, the officer who was fired after joking with his fellow police union leader Mike Solan about Kandula’s death.

Dave’s attorney argued that he couldn’t possibly have anticipated a pedestrian stepping out into a crosswalk on Dexter Ave., and argued that he was dazzled by all the signs, lights, and reflective construction barriers that lined Dexter Ave. at the time. But Rahr said these factors “should have caused you to slow down,” not speed up.

“The signs warning you that pedestrians might be crossing ahead, the reflection of your lights off of those signs, the oncoming headlights in your eyes, the construction barriers lining and narrowing the lane and inhibiting your view, and the presence of well-marked crosswalk itself, all should have caused you to proceed cautiously rather than speed through the obvious hazard zone. ”

“The most basic foundational principal of emergency vehicle operation is your duty to exercise due care for the safety of all persons when responding to an emergency. It is inconceivable to me that you didn’t understand that at the time of the collision,” Rahr wrote.

“Or that you did not understand the risk to pedestrians that YOU created by driving through a crosswalk at freeway speed, on a dark, wet night, through a construction zone with limited visibility,” Rahr’s report continued. “The risk you created FAR outweighs the risk to a possible overdose victim suffering potential brain damage if you had arrived a few minutes later so you could drive at a safer speed. As it was, you never made it to that call at all.”

The Public Safety Civil Service Commission will hold an initial case conference meeting on Dave’s appeal on January 16, but it could be months before the full commission considers his request for reinstatement. Dave remained a paid SPD employee for two years after killing Kandula.

City Council, Police

Bill Allowing Police to Use Less-Lethal Weapons, Including Blast Balls, Moves Forward

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council’s public safety committee advanced legislation to formally approve an amended version of the Seattle Police Department’s “interim policy” on the use of so-called less-lethal weapons, such as pepper spray and blast balls for crowd control, after rejecting a half-dozen amendments from Councilmember Cathy Moore that would place some restraints on SPD’s use of such weapons. Bob Kettle, Rob Saka, and Council President Sara Nelson all voted to advance the legislation, which has been fast-tracked after years of inaction by the city, while Moore voted no and Hollingsworth, who was silent for most of the meeting, abstained.

I previewed some of the amendments that failed today  in December.

The legislation, which the full council will take up again  repeals a 2021 law governing SPD’s use of less-lethal weapons that SPD has never followed, instead creating 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 council adopted a few changes to the bill that Kettle added as part of his “chair’s amendment,” which says that SPD can’t use blast balls—rubber grenades that move and explode unpredictably and can cause serious, even life-threatening injuries—unless an on-scene commander has approved their use and a crowd qualifies as an “unlawful assembly” where “unlawful behavior within or of a crowd cannot be controlled through intervention strategies” short of police use of force, according to a matrix in SPD’s interim policy.

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Kettle’s amendment also says that police officers from other jurisdictions called in to provide “mutual aid” during mass events in Seattle “must agree to follow the command and control of the on-scene SPD Incident Commander,” but does not go as far as a failed Moore amendment that would have prohibited SPD from deployong officers from other cities who refused to comply with SPD’s crowd control policies. Kettle said he thought that amendment would cause other police departments to refuse to help Seattle in the future, because their city attorney “would likely recommend, for legal considerations, for legal exposure, not to comply with a request for mutual aid.”

And it would require SPD to let the council know any time they add a novel less-lethal weapon to their arsenal, a toothless version of an earlier proposal that would have required council approval before SPD could use brand-new weapons for crowd control.

Moore offered several amendments to limit the use of blast balls, but none passed; Rob Saka said he would have supported one Moore amendment to “require that blast balls be deployed only when directed away from people, underhand, at a distance of at least 10 yards” if it wasn’t for the word “underhand”; SPD Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis argued that police may sometimes need to throw blast balls overhanded, like a baseball, to directly “reach those people” who might be throwing frozen bottles of water or other “implements” during a protest—exactly the opposite of the way the Community Police Commission said blast balls should be deployed.

Moore’s other amendments, including one written by Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck to reinstate a private right of action for people injured or otherwise harmed by less-lethal weapons, also failed; Kettle said it might create an “incentive” for people to file claims at the city. The private right of action would have allowed individuals to claim up to $10,000 in damages.

In an aside, Saka said that prior to a recent visit to SPD’s Tukwila firing range, where he and Kettle watched a demonstration of blast balls, he tried to get approval to be subjected to a blast ball directly, but was unsuccessful. “Being a military veteran” and attending the 2020 protests on Capitol Hill personally, Saka said, he’d been subjected to all kinds of weapons, but not blast balls. “I made the request, and the executive declined my request,” Saka said. (The mayor’s office told PubliCola Harrell did not personally convey this to Saka). Even so, he said, conflicting expert testimony had convinced him that barring cops from throwing blast balls in the air was “too prescriptive for my personal liking and comfort.”

Kettle, like Saka, brought up his military experience, saying he was fortunate to have served in Iraq at a unit whose military prison, Camp Cropper, was “well resourced,” with plenty of officers on the ground.

“As you know, in detention prisons, at Abu Ghraib, a lot of bad things happened because of the underdeployment,” Kettle said. “Because we were a CIA-DIA unit along with Australian members as well, we were the best resourced unit probably in the country, so that operation was done well and done ethically with great leadership.”

Joy Hollingsworth abstained during the vote, saying only that she was more focused on hiring more officers and that “this was not a priority of mine.”

gender, Police

New Police Recruits Remain Overwhelmingly Male, Despite “30 by 30” Pledge
Shon Barnes, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s pick for police chief

By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, Mayor Bruce Harrell announced that, for the first time since before the COVID pandemic, more people are entering the Seattle Police Department than leaving it—precisely one more person, but still a step in the right direction for advocates of a larger police force. However, a closer look at those numbers reveals that the latest group of applicants, as well as the smaller cohort that makes it through the hiring process, are still overwhelmingly male—a bad sign for the city’s goal of having an incoming recruit class that’s 30 percent women by 2030.

According to numbers provided by the mayor’s office, 86 percent of the 84 new officers hired in 2024 were men, and 14 percent were women. Those numbers closely mirror the larger group that applied for police jobs last year; women also represented 14 percent of that group, with 84 percent identifying as male, 0.7 percent as trans or nonbinary, and 1 percent declining to identify their gender.

SPD has signed on to the national 30X 30 initiative, committing to have a recruit class that’s 30 percent women by 2030. It’s a lofty goal for an overwhelmingly male department whose culture has been described by women who work there as misogynistic, discriminatory, and rife with sexual harassment.

SPD’s most recent permanent chief, Adrian Diaz, was removed from his job after being accused of sexual harassment and discrimination, and finally got fired last year after an investigation revealed he had an inappropriate relationship with a woman he hired and promoted and lied to investigators to cover it up.

Mayor Bruce Harrell has touted the gender-equalizing credentials of his police chief nominee, Shon Barnes, who was police chief in Madison, Wisconsin for just under four years. ” Chief Barnes brings proven experience advancing the Madison Police Department’s inclusive workforce initiative that has resulted in 28% of officers being women,” Harrell said in his announcement.

In reality, Madison’s police force has been a national anomaly for decades, and hit the 28 percent level Harrell credited to Barnes four years before Barnes joined the department in 2021. Madison’s recruit class was 35 percent female in 2023 before declining to 21 percent in 2024, according to the city. Barnes may well be the best pick for Seattle’s police chief (the mayor did not reveal who any of the other candidates were prior to choosing Barnes, and there was no public selection process), but he didn’t create a culture where women see policing as a viable career option in Madison; he joined a department that had spent decades creating and nurturing that culture.

Seattle is a larger department with a reputation as a place where women’s complaints about misogyny, sexual harassment, and discrimination are not taken seriously. Even as he demoted former police chief Diaz because multiple women accused him of sexual harassment and discrimination, Harrell kept him on at his previous salary and praised him as a man of unimpeachable integrity. For Barnes, fixing that culture—and putting SPD on track to more than double the number of women who want to work there over the next five years—will be a more significant challenge than joining a department that has already done the work.

City Council, Density, housing, neighborhoods, This Week on PubliCola

This Week on PubliCola: January 11, 2025
Cathy Moore says she won’t “sacrifice” her neighborhood to three-to-five-story apartments around an intersection Maple Leaf (circled on map)

Cathy Moore Says Young People Want Yards, Bob Kettle and Rob Saka Test Blast Balls, and PubliCola Predicts the Future

Monday, January 6

Anti-Housing Activists Hope for Receptive Audience as Council Takes Up Comprehensive Plan Update

As the city considers density increases so modest that its own planning commission called them utterly inadequate, single-family preservationists are creating petitions to oppose any changes in “their” neighborhoods, especially those that allow more renters to live in more parts of Seattle.

Tuesday, January 7

SPD Fires Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula Two Years Ago

Kevin Dave, the police officer who struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula while driving almost three times the speed limit, finally got fired after spending two years on SPD’s payroll after killing Kandula, whose family is suing the city for more than $110 million.

Wednesday, January 8

It’s Time to Appoint Another New Councilmember!

Tammy Morales’ resignation opens a spot for yet another new council appointment. The appointment process, which should wrap up before the end of this month, will result in a council with only one member, Dan Strauss, who has served for more than three years, including seven members who have served one year or less.

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“I’m Not Prepared to Sacrifice My Neighborhood”: Councilmember Cathy Moore Takes Hard Line Against Apartments

One of those recently council members, Cathy Moore, came out hard against a proposal to allow apartments along the periphery of single-family neighborhoods, saying that allowing three-to-six story apartments within 800 feet of 30 transit stops across the city would destroy neighborhood character, denude the landscape, and produce “unstable” housing occupied by renters, who, she said, aren’t “engaged socially and politically” the way property owners are. About six in ten Seattle residents rent their homes.

Thursday, January 9

Seattle Nice: Bob Kettle Talks Public Safety, Density, Why He Opposed the Capital Gains Tax, and More

The Seattle Nice podcast sat down with City Council public safety committee chair Bob Kettle to talk about his priorities for 2025, how much density the city should allow in single-family neighborhoods like Queen Anne, and at what point the new council will stop blaming their predecessors for the real and perceived public safety challenges in Seattle.

Afternoon Fizz, SPD Edition: Councilmembers Test-Drive Blast Balls, SPD Sued Over Records Violations, and More

Four stories in this week’s afternoon Fizz: Bob Kettle and Rob Saka take a field trip to SPD’s firing range to test blast balls for themselves; the Community Police Commission proposes changes to SPD’s proposed policy allowing the use of “less lethal” weapons, which is moving forward at breakneck speed; the Seattle Times sues SPD for violating an agreement over public records requests; and former police chief Adrian Diaz loses his longtime attorney.

Friday, January 10

PubliCola’s Seattle Predictions for 2025

PubliCola’s founders give you our predictions for 2025. Sandeep thinks Seattle will fail to break out of its political inertia; Josh says you’ll start to hear more open MAGA rhetoric in public places in Seattle (which, he also predicts, will still be riddled with dogs), and I predict that new, even more stringent tree protections will be used to prevent housing for renters in the name of the environment (despite the fact that car-oriented sprawl, which results from insufficient housing in cities, is an existential environmental risk.)

Also, despite a $2 million budget setaside, I predict that SDOT will find reasons not to remove an 8-inch traffic safety curb that prevents dangerous left turns into the parking lot of the preschool Rob Saka’s kids attended, which Saka claimed his constituents found “triggering” and “extremely traumatizing” because it reminds them of Trump’s border wall.