By Andrew Engelson

A March 2023 letter from Office of Police Accountability director Gino Betts, obtained by PubliCola through a records request, provides details about 13 investigations into into former police chief Adrian Diaz, who was removed from his post in May amid allegations about his conduct.

Currently, OPA confirmed, 14 investigations are in the intake stage, four are going through full investigations, three are under legal review, and three are being investigated by outside firms.

Diaz, who is still on the city’s payroll with a $338,000 salary after being removed as chief by Mayor Bruce Harrell in May, is the subject of three lawsuits alleging gender and racial discrimination, retaliation and harassment. The letter confirms that the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) has been investigating the former chief for a variety of complaints over the past two years, including issues raised in the lawsuits.

The allegations detailed in the letter range from fairly frivolous citizen complaints to more serious matters, including charges that Diaz was a “predator” who bullied SPD employees and “preys on women.” 

KUOW described two of the more recent investigations into Diaz: One claiming that Diaz hired a woman with whom he had a romantic relationship without disclosing this information, and one claiming he used SPD vehicles and personnel for personal trips, such as having his driver take him to Portland to catch a flight to watch the UW football team play in the Sugar Bowl.

In July, KUOW reported that an anonymous letter written by an OPA investigator claimed that Betts had delayed investigations of Diaz, sometimes for as long as 16 months. Unlike investigations into police officers, which must be completed within 180 days, there is no specified time frame to complete investigations into the chief of police.

In an emailed response to PubliCola’s questions about current investigations into Diaz, Betts said that Diaz has been the subject of a total of 52 complaints alleging misconduct since September 2022, including 28 OPA closed after determining they did not merit an investigation. Betts also noted that the city’s police accountability ordinance requires complaints against the police to be handled by civilian investigators, on top of their already “substantial workload”—and OPA only has two civilian investigators on staff.

Betts said there are 14 intake investigations of Diaz pending, including three that are under legal review, four that are pending full investigations, plus three that had been sent to an outside investigator. OPA declined to provide additional information about the pending investigations, including what they are about and whether they include any of the 13 complaints that were outstanding in March 2023.

Because of the volume of complaints against the chief, OPA is  preparing to launch an online tracker specifically dedicated to investigations into chiefs of police.

The 13 complaints in Betts’ 2023 letter listed include one accusing Diaz of “using public funds to compensate a community member for a volunteer position” and one alleging that Diaz gave inaccurate testimony to the city council’s public safety committee—claiming, falsely, that Homeland Security regulations require cops to direct traffic at sporting events.

Another complaint claims that Diaz ordered officers not to file a report after a collision, while another concerns a possible ethics violation when Diaz attended an event at which then Mayor-elect Bruce Harrell spoke. According to documents acquired by PubliCola, OPA consulted with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (SEEC) for guidance on this complaint. SEEC director Wayne Barnett told PubliCola that SEEC staff determined that Diaz’s attendance at the event, an Asian American/Pacific Islander unity celebration held in December 2021, was not an ethics violation. 

The most serious accusation mentioned in Betts’ letter—that Diaz preyed on female employees—likely involves the alleged behavior that led four female SPD officers to file a lawsuit against Diaz in April. 

Another accusation, which OPA assigned a private contractor to investigate, claims Diaz lied about events that happened during the CHOP/CHAZ protests of 2020. Regarding another investigation, which involves accusations that the chief and SPD neglected to address carbon monoxide emissions from SPD vehicles in one of its garages, Betts noted in the letter that “the allegation is uniquely intricate and overlaps with civil litigation.” An SPD officer was awarded $1.325 million in damages in 2022 as a result of a related lawsuit about the garage.  

Yet another OPA investigation, which appears to be an officer-filed complaint, concerns whether SPD, under Diaz’s leadership, improperly awarded a contract to Truleo, a company that uses AI-based software to analyze body-worn video for inappropriate police behavior. SPD canceled Truleo’s contract in 2023 after SPOG, the police officers’ union, raised concerns about the software. The letter said OPA is looking into whether the contract violated SPOG’s collective bargaining agreement.

Another complaint accused Diaz of contributing to biased policing, a claim related to an incident in which SPD officers were accused of unnecessarily aiming rifles at a suspect. OPA ruled in 2023 that the accusations against the officers were not sustained. 

PubliCola editor Erica C. Barnett also filed an OPA complaint against Diaz in August, alleging that he violated an SPD policy that prohibits SPD employees, including the chief, from retaliating against anyone who engages in any legal action, such as exercising their constitutional rights or publicly criticizing an SPD employee.

Diaz personally threatened to sue Barnett and PubliCola if we did not remove an article that described an interview Diaz did with right-wing commentator Jason Rantz to announce that he is gay—a “secret,” Rantz wrote, that has hidden “his innocence” of several women’s allegations against him. The piece summarizing Rantz’ interview with Diaz was not false or libelous, but was arguably critical of Diaz as well as Rantz: We expressed the view that gay men can and do harass women, and that being gay is not a defense against charges of harassing or discriminating against women.

Betts’ letter also lists several frivolous accusations against Diaz, including one accusing Diaz of “encouraging people to break the law,” one for something the complaint called “self induced grand theft auto,” and one that faults Diaz for protecting Union Gospel Mission, which the citizen complaint claimed was a “CIA front covering up a murder.”