By Erica C. Barnett

Former police chief Adrian Diaz appeared to accept his fate when Mayor Bruce Harrell removed him as chief last week, but some of his most ardent supporters are still fighting for his reinstatement, claiming he is the victim of disgruntled employees who fabricated stories to take him down.

Six women and one man have sued or filed intent to sue the Seattle Police Department over allegations that include gender and racial discrimination, retaliation, and sexual harassment. Some of the allegations are against Diaz himself, along with his public relations director, John O’Neil.

Some of Diaz’ supporters, including nd Seattle Community Police Commission co-chair Harriett Walden, said Diaz’ accusers were disgruntled employees engaged in a racist campaign against Diaz, who is Latino.

On Wednesday, two of Diaz’ most vocal supporters, SPD employee and police advocate Victoria Beach and SPD Latino community liaison Carmen Martinez, organized a pro-Diaz demonstration in front of City Hall. As protests go, it was a small one: Around a dozen people, counting children, marched around the downtown block that includes both City Hall and SPD headquarters, holding with slogans like “Due Process for Chief Diaz” and “Honk 4 Diaz ❤️”. Over the course of an hour, a handful of drivers honked their support, prompting cheers from the group, which included Pacific Merchant Shipping Association vice president Jordan Royer and Burien City Councilmember Jimmy Matta.

Some of the demonstrators told PubliCola they supported Diaz because he had been present and available in their communities when other police were not. “I’m here to support the chief because he’s always been there to support the [Chinatown/International District] ever since he came on board,” said Gary Lee, cochair of the CID Public Safety Council. “And he would come to our events.”

Matta said he respected Diaz for reaching out to the South Park community as a patrol officer in the area and providing a positive model to kids at a time when “we were losing a lot of our children to gang violence, to drugs, the same things that we’re having now going on in our streets. … I just believe that it’s important to make sure that we support an individual that’s done the hard work.”

Royer and Lee both said they just didn’t think Diaz is the kind of person who would sexually harass women or engage in gender or racial discrimination.

“We go back a long way,” Royer said said. “I know his character. I know who he is, and that’s why I’m supporting him. … What happens if the investigation comes back, and he’s cleared? How does he clear his name? It just seems like a really good man is getting trashed.”

None of the people PubliCola spoke to said they were 100 percent certain Diaz was innocent, as Beach and Martinez have suggested. “If the process played out he was found factually [guilty] of wrongdoing, then you let the chips fall where they may,” Royer said. “I’d be very disappointed. I’d be upset. But I wouldn’t be out here.”

“I’m glad that the mayor has given [Diaz] the benefit of doubt in this deal” by keeping him on at the police department, Matta said. “Now, when the investigation comes through, we’ll see what happens. There may be a different conversation, because no woman, no personal of color, nobody should be put in a situation where it’s not a healthy work environment.”

Instead of firing Diaz outright, Harrell assigned him to an unspecified “special projects” role. When he returns to the department (from an indeterminate personal leave), Diaz will almost certainly have to return as a lieutenant—the rank he held before Harrell appointed him police chief.

Civil service rules for police stipulate that anyone assigned to the rank of captain or higher, then removed, has the right to return to their previous highest rank—for Diaz, who never took a test to become a captain, that rank is lieutenant. New interim chief Sue Rahr could get around this requirement by appointing Diaz assistant or deputy chief, but that appears unlikely, given the still-unresolved allegations that led to his removal last week.

A lower rank would come with a significant reduction in pay and perks for the former chief, who makes a base salary just shy of $340,000. Currently, the top pay for a lieutenant, before overtime, is just over $199,000, although long-serving lieutenants also receive “longevity premiums”; Diaz, who has been with the department for 27 years, would presumably be eligible for a 12 percent salary bump, which would put his base pay in the low $200,000s.

Rahr will make a base salary of nearly $350,000 a year, setting up the next chief, whoever they are, to make even more. Earlier this year, the city signed a contract with Seattle’s largest police union that gave rank and file officers a retroactive pay increase of 24 percent, making Seattle police officers the highest-paid in the region, with six-figure starting salaries.

Neither SPD’s communications office nor Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office responded to PubliCola’s inquiries about Diaz’s status at the department.

Note: This story has been corrected. Due to a brain freeze, I incorrectly identified Jimmy Matta as the mayor of Burien. Kevin Schilling is, of course, the current mayor of Burien. Here’s a story about him.