Tag: Seattle Police Department

Business, Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Harrell, Police

Chamber CEO Leaves, Mayor’s Office Contradicts SPD Explanation for Police Chief’s Bonus, Progressives Prevail in Burien, and More

1. Rachel Smith, the longtime CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, is moving on to become director of the Washington Roundtable, a statewide group that represents large employers.

According to a press release, Smith will leave the Chamber as of October 1; Gabriella Buono, the Chamber’s Chief Impact Officer, will be interim president and CEO until the Chamber’s board picks a permanent replacement.

Smith became head of the Chamber in January 2020, just as the group was reeling from a 2019 election in which the Chamber’s political action committee, Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy, spent unprecedented millions to defeat City Council incumbents. That flood of money appeared to spark a backlash against big-business spending, and the Chamber’s candidates mostly flopped. In 2021, the Chamber decided not to endorse any candidates—and, in that election, the more conservative candidates prevailed.

Under Smith’s nearly five years as its leader, the Chamber  has thrown its weight behind internal and public-facing campaigns to defeat social housing (the Chamber urged the council to delay the election and backed a ballot alternative that would have directed the city to spend existing funds on traditional affordable housing), as well as a number of efforts to squelch progressive tax proposals.

They’ve opposed the business and occupation tax reform proposal, which—if voters approve it—will pay for critical programs at risk for budget cuts; supported Mayor Bruce Harrell’s efforts to sweep homeless encampments, particularly downtown; and backed a proposed city charter amendment, “Compassion Seattle,” that would have required the city to keep all public spaces clear of encampments while imposing an unfunded mandate for homeless services on the city.

Under Smith, the Chamber also backed the Seattle Transportation Levy and connected the dots between the housing crisis and Seattle’s need to upzone, supporting efforts to build “middle housing” across the city.

2. As we reported earlier this week, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes received a $50,000 hiring bonus when he was hired, as did a new deputy chief and assistant chief he hired from Beloit, Wisconsin, and New Orleans, respectively. According to SPD, all three chiefs were eligible for the bonuses under legislation, passed in 2022 and amended two years later, that authorized $50,000 “lateral” hiring bonuses for police officers with existing job experience.

As we also reported, the sponsors of the legislation never intended for the bonuses to go to command staff, and the legislation itself says it applies only to police officers in the civil service, not management or executive-level staff.

SPD told us the city “offered as part of [Barnes’] compensation a ‘hiring incentive’ of $50,000 under the City’s 2024 legislation, which is related to the recruitment and retention of police officers at the understaffed Seattle Police Department. Asked about this, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office gave a somewhat contradictory response.

“Chief Barnes is a nationally recognized leader in the field and the inclusion of the $50,000 was negotiated as part of his offer letter,” a spokesperson said, adding that the mayor was “not involved” in the other two $50,000 bonuses. This suggests that Barnes’ bonus was not actually a standard “lateral” incentive—as SPD has said—but was something the mayor’s office offered him on top of his $360,000 salary and other perks. The two contradictory explanations for Barnes’ hiring bonus leave the true origin of this unusual hiring bonus unclear.

Harrell’s office said Barnes’ “negotiated compensation makes his package consistent with the West Coast Seven (Long Beach, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle), where in 2023 the median salary for police chiefs was $476,454 and the average salary was $424,712.” the spokesperson said.

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3. The Burien City Council, which in recent years has adopted a series of increasingly onerous laws targeting homeless people, could soon take a more progressive turn. Progressives (including incumbents Sarah Moore and Hugo Garcia, plus Sam Méndez, a progressive running to replace Jimmy Matta, who’s leaving the council) hold commanding leads in all three council races on the August primary ballot.

That bodes poorly for Stephanie Mora, the council’s most conservative member, who’s being challenged by progressive Rocco DeVito; their race wasn’t on the August ballot because they were the only two candidates. Mora, a staunch opponent of allowing homeless shelters or authorized encampments anywhere in Burien, has argued that the government has no role to play in addressing homelessness.

Kevin Schilling, the council member who currently serves as mayor of Burien, isn’t doing so well in his own race to defeat 33rd District state Rep. Edwin Obras, either. With the election certified, Obras has 48.2 percent of the vote to Schilling’s 34.6 percent. Schilling lost by the highest margin in the city where he’s mayor, trailing Obras by 15 points in Burien.

4. PubliCola obtained a copy of the permit for a controversial “Revive in ’25” rally in Gas Works Park. As PubliCola was first to report, the contentious event was relocated from Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill after negotiations between its anti-LGBTQ organizers and city officials, including City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth and Mayor Harrell.

The permit reveals few details about the event, except that the group, led by Christian nationalist minister Sean Feucht, expects 350 people to attend—less than a similar “Mayday USA” rally at Cal Anderson earlier this year.

Although the permit goes from 9 am to 9 pm, the rally and concert is scheduled for 5 pm—leaving organizers plenty of time to hold a planned “Jesus March” in the streets around Cal Anderson before heading over to Fremont for the main event. Organizers have removed references to this march from their Facebook page, but have not publicly said they won’t be marching. According to city officials, Feucht’s group did not apply for a street use or special event permit for a march.

labor, Mayor Harrell, Police, Uncategorized

New Police Chief Shon Barnes Accepted $50,000 Hiring Bonus Created for Rank and File Officers

SPD says the city offered Barnes the bonus, first approved in 2022 to boost police officer hiring, “as part of his compensation.” 

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post is an update to yesterday’s story revealing that the Seattle Police Department paid $50,000 bonuses intended for new rank and-file-officers to new Deputy Police Chief Andre Sayles and new Assistant Chief Nicole Powell. Sayles and Powell’s positions, along with other positions added by Barnes, are new, and add ongoing costs to the Seattle Police Department’s budget.

The Seattle Police Department confirmed that Police Chief Shon Barnes, appointed by Mayor Bruce Harrell in December and confirmed by the Seattle City Council last month, received a $50,000 recruitment bonus under legislation first passed in 2022 to promote the “recruitment of new police officers” during what proponents called a crisis-level officer shortage. (In 2024, the council increased the bonus from $30,000 to $50,000).

“While recruiting Shon Barnes, a respected law enforcement leader, the City of Seattle offered as part of his compensation a ‘hiring incentive’ of $50,000 under the City’s 2024 legislation, which is related to the recruitment and retention of police officers at the understaffed Seattle Police Department,” an SPD spokesperson told PubliCola.

As we reported yesterday, the legislation that created lateral hiring bonuses was explicitly about police officers, not executives. According to the 2022 legislation, the bonuses are meant to entice trained officers who “require minimal training and can immediately bolster the department’s 9-1-1 response ability or provision of investigative services.”

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Lisa Herbold, the former councilmember who sponsored the 2022 legislation, confirmed that the bonuses were intended for police officers, not command staff. Council President Sara Nelson, who sponsored a 2024 bill  that increased the lateral hiring bonus from $30,000 to $50,000, said her intent was to provide an extra incentive to help SPD recruit more “lower-level officers.”

SPD’s statement suggests that Mayor Bruce Harrell proactively offered Barnes the $50,000 bonus on top of an annual salary of more than $360,000 a year. We’ve reached out to Harrell’s office to find out whether and, if so, why he initiated this offer.

SPD said they’re splitting Barnes’ payment into two parts in accordance with the hiring-bonus legislation. “To date, $25,000 has been paid to Barnes according to the City’s agreed-upon compensation structure,” the SPD spokesperson said.

The section of the about splitting the hiring bonuses actually highlights the fact that the bonuses were never intended for the top SPD brass. According to the legislation, “Half of the hiring incentive will be paid in the first paycheck and the second half upon completion of any probationary period required by the Public Safety Civil Service Rules.” The probationary period isn’t there just to require cops to prove they can do the job—once they’re off probation, they get job protections as part of the civil service.

Chiefs (including deputy and assistant chiefs) aren’t part of the civil service—they can be fired at will. As such, they don’t have any probationary period. Put another way, Barnes’ position falls outside the parameters of the legislation, so he isn’t subject to the two-payment structure mandated in that law.

We’ve asked SPD to clarify this explanation.

Police

SPD Chiefs Received $50,000 Bonuses Meant to Address Police Hiring Shortage
Image by Kyah117, via Wikimedia Commons. CC-by-4.0 license.

By Erica C. Barnett

PubliCola has exclusively confirmed that two of the top-level staff hired by new Police Chief Shon Barnes, Deputy Chief Andre Sayles and Assistant Chief Nicole Powell, received lateral hiring bonuses of $50,000 each. A source familiar with the payments tells PubliCola that Barnes himself also received a $50,000 bonus for coming to Seattle from Madison, Wisconsin, where he was police chief.

Sayles transferred to SPD from Beloit, Wisconsin; Powell transferred from New Orleans.

As we’ve reported, the positions Barnes added include a second deputy chief, a new assistant chief, a new chief of staff, a new executive director of crime and community harm reduction, and a new chief communications officer, all making more than $200,000. The new positions add ongoing annual costs to SPD’s budget, including $1.34 million in salaries alone.

PubliCola reported last week that Barnes and Deputy chief Yvonne Underwood each received bonuses for recruiting Powell and Sayles. Barnes and Underwood received $1,000 each for recruiting Sayles, and Barnes received a separate $1,000 bonus for Powell.

In an email confirming the bonuses that Sayles and Powell received for joining SPD’s command staff, an SPD spokesman said, “They’re eligible. The $50,000 bonus is part of their compensation package.”

Neither SPD nor Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office responded our repeated inquiries about the bonus Barnes reportedly received. Harrell’s office did respond to our questions about Sayles and Powell, by saying they had asked SPD to respond to our questions.

This week, Barnes reportedly launched an internal investigation to find out who at SPD is “leaking” information about the department to members of the media. SPD did not immediately respond to questions about this purported investigation on Tuesday; we’ll update this post if we hear back.

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City employee compensation is a matter of public record that all city departments, including SPD, are required to provide to any member of the public through a public disclosure process outlined in the state Public Records Act.

The hiring bonuses, which Harrell proposed as a way to quickly recruit trained officers to address high attrition and lackluster hiring in the wake of mass protests against police violence in 2020, were intended to increase the number of deployable officers, not chief-level executive staff.

City Council president Sara Nelson, a fierce proponent of the bonus legislation, told PubliCola her understanding was that the two chiefs “are eligible for those bonuses,” but added, “I’d always thought of them going to lower level officers.” Nelson noted that she wasn’t involved in the hiring negotiations for Sayles or Powell.

It’s unclear under what authority the police chiefs are eligible for lateral hiring bonuses created to recruit rank and file police officers.

The initial legislation, which authorized $30,000 bonuses for trained “lateral” hires from other police departments, was meant to address the “declining number of police officers fully trained and ready for deployment,” according to the text of the bill. At the time, Nelson said, “We need to use every tool in our toolbox to accelerate the hiring of officers. If we don’t do this, what else are we going to do?”

The city increased the lateral bonuses to $50,000 in 2024 and made the entire hiring bonus program, which also includes $7,500 bonuses for new recruits, permanent. The update required new SPD officers, including lateral hires, to make a five-year commitment and to pay back the bonus on a pro-rated basis if they leave before the five years is up.

Sayles’ and Powell’s positions are both categorized as Executive 4, the highest executive-level position at the city and the one held by the directors of almost every city department.  (Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department Chief Amy Barden, who oversees 911 and a team of Community Crisis Responders, is an Executive 3, a lower-ranking position than the other public-safety chiefs.)

Under city law, police chiefs, deputy chiefs, and assistant chiefs are exempt from civil service rules, meaning they aren’t required to go through the regular police hiring process, or take the police hiring test, that would appear to be prerequisites for receiving a lateral hiring bonus. Instead, the police chief is directly appointed by the mayor and deputy and assistant chiefs are directly appointed by the police chief.

Additionally, the law authorizing the hiring bonuses says repeatedly that it applies to “police officers” a rank that excludes police chiefs and other high-ranking officials—referencing “new police officer hires,” “police officer candidates,” “police officer positions,” and “police officer training.” Nothing in the text of the law suggests it was intended to help recruit command staff or suggests that there is a shortage of chief-level executives at SPD.

SPD’s hiring page says that to be eligible for the lateral hiring bonus, officers must pass a lateral hiring test and “currently be working full-time as a Police Officer, Deputy Sheriff, Tribal Officer or State Trooper with two (2) or more years of experience with full police powers and duties.” SPD did not immediately respond to questions about whether Barnes, Sayles, and Powell went through the lateral hiring process. We’ve requested these records.

Police

Police Chief and Deputy Chief Received Recruitment Bonuses For Bringing on New Staff

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to reflect the fact that SPD would not tell us whether two new executive-level SPD officials received $50,000 hiring bonuses and told us to file a records request. The story also reflects that Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office did not respond to our request for this information.

Seattle’s new police chief, Shon Barnes, and Deputy Police Chief Yvonne Underwood each received recruitment bonuses for hiring new high-level staff, including a second deputy police chief, when Barnes became police chief earlier this year. Both Underwood and Chief Barnes make more than $300,000 a year.

Barnes received $2,000 for recruiting a new assistant chief overseeing investigations, Nicole Powell, and a second deputy chief, Andre Sayles. Yvonne Underwood received $1,000 payment for recruiting Sayles. Sayles came to the department from Beloit, Wisconsin, a town about 50 miles south of Madison, where Barnes was previously chief. Powell came to Seattle from New Orleans, where she was the lieutenant in charge of recruitment.

According to a spokesman for SPD, the bonuses—part of legislation passed in August 2022 intended to increase police hiring in Seattle—are available to any city employee, with a few exceptions, and were added to Barnes’ and Underwood’s paychecks once Sayles and Powell joined the department. Barnes makes $360,485 a year; Underwood makes $302,016.

Overall, the spokesman said, the city has made 21 $1,000 payments to city employees who recruit new SPD officers, including the three that went to Barnes and Underwood.

PubliCola also asked SPD if Sayles and Powell (whose salaries are $302,016 and $294,549, respectively) received the city’s standard lateral hiring bonus of $50,000. The department’s communications department refused to respond to our yes/no question, directing us to file a records request for the information.

As we have reported previously, SPD has adopted an official policy called “grouping” for individuals and media outlets that file multiple records request. Under the policy, SPD’s public disclosure division refuses to work on multiple records requests at one time. Instead, they work on one request until it is completely fulfilled—a process that can take years—before moving on to another request and beginning the same process again. The policy is designed to discourage multiple records requests—a standard part of reporting—and has made it essentially pointless to file records requests for information.

Although we have been unable to directly confirm the $50,000 payments, the fact that SPD would not answer this question is suggestive.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office also did not respond to a request for an answer to our question.

A 2024 amendment to the 2022 hiring incentive legislation, sponsored by Council President Sara Nelson, raised the size of lateral hiring bonuses, which were previously $30,000.

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Barnes has brought on a number of new staffers since his appointment, including three new executive-level staff—Chief of Staff Alex Ricketts, Executive Director of Crime and Community Harm Reduction Lee Hunt, and Chief Communications Officer Barbara DeLollis.  Ricketts previously worked with Barnes in Madison, WI, where Barnes was chief before coming to Seattle, and in Greensboro, NC, where Barnes was a captain. Hunt worked with Barnes in Greensboro.

The new staffers’ salaries collectively cost $1.34 million, and most are new positions that add permanent costs to SPD’s budget at a time when other city departments have been asked to make cuts. The city is currently facing a two-year budget shortfall of around $150 million.

Police

In First Four Months, Seattle’s New Police Chief Spent Most Weekends Out of Town

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes, selected to lead SPD by Mayor Bruce Harrell earlier this year, has spent most of his weekends out of town since taking the $360,485-a-year job earlier this year, according to his schedule, social media posts, and sources familiar with his travel.

Between February 1 and June 20, the last date for which PubliCola obtained Barnes’ schedule, Barnes’ schedule is blocked out almost every Friday afternoon, either completely or starting in the early or midafternoon. Usually, this is represented by a blank space after 3 or 4pm; on a few occasions, the afternoon is marked as “admin block” or “travel.”

This is in contrast to Barnes’ schedule on other weekdays, which is generally fully booked during regular work hours.

For example, his schedule for a typical Monday in March includes meetings with the head of the state Criminal Justice Training Commission, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste, and Office of Police Accountability Interim Director Bonnie Glenn, along with a briefing on the city’s new 911 AI technology and a ridealong with the city’s Downtown Activation Team. From Tuesday through Thursday, Barnes’ official schedule is similarly busy.

On Friday of that week, Barnes’ schedule looks like this:

 

Barnes’ schedule, combined with his social media posts, either confirms or suggests (by the absence of scheduled events on Fridays) that he was out of town 13 of 18 weekends between February and May. Barnes’ absence from Seattle is documented in his public schedule or on his public social media posts, or both, for nine of those 13 weekends.

Police chiefs are generally expected to be on call for incidents that happen outside regular working hours, including on weekends. Historically, police chiefs have often showed up on site at events that involve a major police response, such as mass shootings and protests that result in clashes and arrests, among other types of high-profile events.

However, Barnes has been out of town for a number of such incidents, including a recent anti-trans rally in Cal Anderson Park that led to the arrests of 23 counterprotesters. At the time, SPD told PubliCola it was “unrealistic to expect that any individual in the police department can be available around the clock for unexpected emergencies.”

We sent a list of detailed questions about Barnes’ schedule to SPD earlier this week. We wanted to confirm the specific dates when Barnes has been out of town, along with other details, and to find out what contingencies SPD has put in place, if any, for the times when Barnes is not in Seattle.

Barbara DeLollis, Barnes’ new chief communications officer, responded:

Here you go.

“Since taking the helm of Seattle’s police department in February, Chief Barnes has been tirelessly working to protect the Seattle community. So far this year, crime is down 9 percent compared to the same time last year and SPD has hired 94 officers,” said Alex Ricketts, SPD’s Chief of Staff. “The Seattle City Council’s 9-0 unanimous confirmation of Barnes last week as Chief of Police underscores his commitment to making the department a model for policing excellence by prioritizing transparency, collaboration, and accountability.”

Thanks for your interest in SPD.

When we wrote back to again ask for responses to our questions, noting that the police chief’s availability in Seattle is a matter of public interest, DeLollis responded, “The statement you have addresses your questions.

Barnes’ schedule isn’t always completely blank on weekends. In some cases, it shows that he was attending a conference, delivering a keynote speech, or attending a personal or family event (Barnes’ family lives in Chicago). For instance, from April 4 to 6, Barnes was attending a gathering of his college fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, in Greenville, North Carolina, where he delivered the keynote address. A schedule note in May indicates he attended a graduation ceremony for one of his children out of town. And on the weekend of May 30, which is blank, a social media post by Barnes shows that he was attending a Freemason meeting in Philadelphia where he was inducted as a 33rd degree Mason.

On other occasions, Barnes was busy attending conferences, often as a panelist or keynote speaker.

From Thursday, February 27 through Monday, March 2, Barnes attended the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives CEO Symposium in Glendale, AZ, where he was part of a panel called “Law Enforcement CEO Roundtable: From Chaos to Control: Best Practices in Critical Incident Response.”

Between Sunday, March 23 and Sunday, March 30, Barnes’ schedule shows he was at a conference in Kingston, Jamaica held by the Police Civilian Oversight Authority, where he delivered a keynote speech on March 26. (Barnes’ schedule is blank beginning on March 21, a Friday.) The schedule notes that the event was a “prior commitment.”

And from Thursday, April 24 through Monday, April 27, Barnes was at a public safety summit held by Leadership for a Networked World at Harvard, where he was the keynote speaker. According to its website, the group “creates transformational thought leadership and learning experiences for executives building the future of outcomes and value”; it’s headed by Antonio Oftelie, the federal monitor for the consent decree between the US Department of Justice and SPD.

PubliCola’s unanswered questions to SPD included how much, if anything, Barnes was paid for delivering keynote speeches at events like the conference he attended in Jamaica.

Between March 3 and March 13, Barnes was attending the lateral police academy, a condensed training for police transferring from other agencies.

Barnes, who is being sworn in Wednesday afternoon, has brought on at least five new high-level staff, including DeLollis, Ricketts, and a second deputy police chief, Alan Sayles. (Former interim chief Sue Rahr appointed Lieutenant Yvonne Underwood to deputy chief last year.) According to publicly available data, DeLollis and Ricketts each make $221,562 annually; new assistant chief Nicole Powell makes $294,757, and both new Executive Director of Crime and Community Harm Reduction Lee Hunt and Sayles make $302,016.

Mayor Harrell, Police

Barnes’ New Hires Top $1 Million, SPD Will Pay $30,000 for Training on “Stratified Policing”

1. New police chief Shon Barnes brought on five new SPD staffers last month, including a second deputy chief, Andre Sayles; a new assistant chief, Nicole Powell; and three new executive-level staff—Chief of Staff Alex Ricketts, Executive Director of Crime and Community Harm Reduction Eleazer Hunt, and Chief Communications Officer Barbara DeLollis.

Most of these roles, including the second deputy chief, the executive director of crime and harm reduction, and the chief communications officer, are new; the chief of staff role was revived by former chief Adrian Diaz when he hired Jamie Tompkins into the position, but before that, the most recent SPD chief of staff was Clark Kimerer, who left the job in 2001. All five are direct appointments, meaning they did not involve an open hiring process, and none of the new hires are replacing people who currently hold jobs at SPD.

All those new top-level positions won’t come cheap.

DeLollis, most recently the head of communications for the

Hunt, previously a strategic planning and analysis administrator at the Greenville, South Carolina Police Department, will make $302,016.

Powell, previously the lieutenant commander over the New Orleans Police Department’s Recruitment and Applicant Investigation Section, will earn $294,757, assuming her salary is the same as that of all four of the current assistant chiefs.

And Sayles, currently the police chief in Beloit, WI, a town of about 36,000 about 50 miles south of Madison, will most likely have a salary on par with the city’s current deputy chief, Yvonne Underwood, who makes $302,016, the same as Hunt.

Ricketts’ salary is not publicly available yet, but the other non-administrative members of SPD command staff make between $260,770 and $294,757, so his pay will likely be in that range. Ricketts was previously a community engagement specialist working for Barnes in Madison.

Barnes was previously police chief in Madison, Wisconsin; deputy chief in Salisbury, North Carolina; and a captain at the Greensboro, NC police department. His salary is $360,485 a year.

All told, the salaries of Barnes’ five new hires add up to at least $1.38 million, and that’s not counting the cost of benefits, such as health care and retirement, and moving costs, since all are coming to Seattle from other cities.

The city is facing a $150 million budget deficit, and most departments are under a hiring freeze; even SPD, which has been on a spending spree, has been asked to temporarily freeze spending on consultant contracts and civilian hires.

Mayor Bruce Harrell has asked executive departments have been asked to shoot for a 5 percent underspend this year, directed all non-public safety departments (except for “homelessness,” a broad category that cuts across multiple departments) to come up with 8 percent cuts going into the upcoming city budget cycle. Even the police weren’t spared entirely from the budget-cutting exercise (which is theoretical until the mayor proposes the budget); they’ve been asked to come up with 2 percent in potential cuts.

2. Speaking of expenses, SPD spent more than $5,000 on drinks, snacks, and lunch for the officers who worked at the anti-trans “Mayday Seattle” event in Cal Anderson Park, PubliCola has learned. That’s the rally where police arrested 23 counterprotesters after pepper-spraying the crowd en masse and Mayor Bruce Harrell blamed “anarchist” infiltrators for “prompting SPD to make arrests.”

SPD would go on to provide security for the same group when they held another rally and concert, for which they did not have a required permit for amplified sound. Police closed down Fourth Avenue and other major bus corridors during rush hour and set up barricades to prevent counterprotesters from accessing the event, which was in held in the public plaza outside City Hall.

Barnes also got approval for a $30,000 department-wide training in “stratified policing,” a concept he implemented in Madison. As far as I can tell, the idea is that police should “stratify” different types of “problems,” such as immediate, short-term, and long-term issues, and apply different strategies to each type of problem. This four-pager from the Madison Police Department goes into more details about the approach, which appears to involve a very large number of meetings.