1. As Parks Department workers and police wrapped up the removal of an encampment in Ballard two miles away, Mayor Bruce Harrell stood in a parking lot near another former encampment site in Lower Woodland Park, declaring, “Under this administration, we don’t sweep. We don’t chase people out. We treat and we house.”

Harrell, along with King County Regional Homelessness Authority CEO Marc Dones, District 6 city council member Dan Strauss, and representatives from city departments and the nonprofit outreach provider REACH, was in Woodland Park to celebrate the removal of an encampment in the park that resulted in 89 referrals to shelter and four housing placements, according to the city. (“Referrals” are not the same thing as shelter enrollments; the number of people who show up to shelter is typically less than half the number of those who get referrals.)

As we reported this week, the city’s original plan was to shelter everyone on a “by-name list” created back in February. Instead, after someone at the encampment reportedly threatened a city outreach worker with a gun, the city directed shelter providers to open up beds and hold beds open so that everyone living at Woodland Park could move out and into shelter, primarily tiny house villages, right away. In the end, nearly half of the 89 people the city moved into shelter were not on the by-name list. More than half the people moved from Woodland Park were relocated not during the past four months of outreach, but in the final week leading up to the park closure on Tuesday.

On Thursday, both KCRHA CEO Marc Dones and Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington said it was actually a good sign that people relocated to Woodland Park after the city started doing outreach there earlier this year. “It’s good news for me that people came at the last minute,” because “they saw there were resources,” Washington said. “And it’s good news that we were able to give them the resources they need.”

Dones said they wouldn’t describe the decision to make dozens of beds available to people living in Woodland Park, as opposed to other encampments around the city, as a “a movement of resources. I would actually describe that as, literally, things came online that we were able to offer. And I think that is broadly a good strategy that we allow the system’s availability to dictate what we do.”

2. Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell, one of two candidates seeking to replace Dan Satterberg as King County prosecutor, said he was surprised to learn he was listed as a speaker at an Enumclaw event sponsored by several fringe groups opposed to mask mandates, abortion rights, and public education, and told PubliCola Thursday that he asked the sponsors to remove his name from the list of participants.

The event came to light when Washington State Democratic Party Chair Tina Podlowdowski posted an image promoting the event on Facebook and Twitter; the ad listed Ferrell as one of the speakers at the “17th Patriot Gathering,” alongside Republicans including state Rep. Jim Walsh (R-19), who wore a Star of David, invoking the Holocaust, to protest vaccine mandates; state Sen. Phil Fortunato, a vocal abortion-rights opponent who was kicked out of the state Capitol for refusing to take a COVID test; and Matt Larkin, who’s running for Congress in East King County on an anti-Seattle agenda and also opposes abortion rights.

“I’m a Democrat. I’ve been a [precinct committee officer] for the past ten years. I’ve got a lot of labor support and Democratic support,” Ferrell said.

Ferrell said he found out about the event after a Federal Way council member, Huong Tran, referred him to one of the organizers, describing her as “someone who’s pretty prominent in the real estate community,” he said. “I gave her a call and she says they’re having a barbecue or some sort of gathering, but didn’t say who it was or the organization,” Ferrell said. “I had no idea what it was, but [when I found out], I immediately called and said I didn’t know it was a partisan event. I wouldn’t go even if I was available.”

“My manager wrestled to the floor today and was like, dude, you’ve got to tel me what you’re doing,” Ferrell said.

Ferrell, who is running on a “back to basics” law-and-order platform, has endorsements from a number of police and trade unions as well as current and former elected officials from around King County, though not Seattle. He has said the prosecutor’s office went “off the rails” by focusing on things like diversion programs for defendants rather than justice for crime victims. His opponent, Leesa Manion, is the chief of staff for retiring prosecutor Dan Satterberg, a former Republican who switched parties in 2018. Ferrell worked for the prosecutor’s office for 16 years before being elected mayor in 2014.

3. Members of the city of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Network sent a letter earlier this month to Mayor Harrell, the city council, Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, and top officials at the Seattle Fire Department demanding an investigation into, and consequences for, a February incident in which firefighters found a noose hanging inside Fire Station 24 in Bitter Lake. The noose was the second found at a Seattle fire station in two years.

In the letter, the city employees—including representatives from the Human Services Department, Seattle Silence Breakers, Seattle City Light, and a number of race and social justice affinity groups and caucuses—ask the officials to thoroughly investigate the incident and identify and fire the perpetrator(s); acknowledge “the pervasive culture of racism that exists within the Seattle Fire Department, and many other departments across the City”; and “[p]rioritize and resource a culture of trauma-informed care for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color employees at the City,” among other actions.

“These recurring actions are a clear symptom of workplace culture toxicity and institutional racism,” the letter says. “It signals the persistently unsafe (physical and emotional) workplace Black employees face coming to work each day at the City. How many other instances of hate crimes, threats to personal safety, and threats of death have occurred at City worksites?”

A spokeswoman for the fire department said Scoggins “plans to respond to the letter from the City’s RSJI network this week,” which the department would share with the media then. Right now, our focus is on providing a timely response to the letter, followed by an update to SFD members regarding information shared in response to the letter.”