By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell has fired former Seattle police chief Adrian Diaz, citing a recently completed investigation by the city’s Office of Inspector General that found Diaz violated SPD policies by having an “improper… intimate relationship” with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, lying about it, and failing to disclose the relationship.

Harrell removed Diaz as police chief in May, but he has remained on the city’s payroll; as of September, a database maintained by the city listed his salary as $338,560 a year.

Altogether, Harrell wrote in a letter he sent city officials on Tuesday morning, OIG found Diaz violated SPD policies on dishonesty, professionalism, avoiding or disclosing conflicts of interest, and improper personal relationships.

“Diaz made numerous statements denying that he engaged in an intimate or romantic relationship with [Tompkins],” Harrell wrote. “These statements were public statements and statements to the Mayor’s Office and SPD colleagues. Relying on the factual findings in the Report, these statements were false.”

According to Harrell’s letter, the investigation concluded that Diaz had an “intimate or romantic relationship” with Tompkins; that he hired and then directly supervised her; and that Tompkins wrote a card to Diaz “that indicates a romantic or intimate relationship took place” between the two.

The card was found by a member of Diaz’ security detail, who held onto it for a year, according to the report, telling investigators he feared retaliation if came forward. It featured an Ewok on the cover and a handwritten message that read:

Adrian, When I think about you, I think of the first time I saw you smile. You were so shy, but sweet. And I loved the way you chose your words so carefully. I wondered what you were filtering out. What made you tick? What made you laugh? Why would a person want to take on such a challenging role? Now that I know you, I know the answers to those questions. What I did not expect was how knowing you would bring me closer to me. More in line with who I am. How I feel. What I want. Where I want to go. Before I knew you, I didn’t really know me. You woke me up. Like a prince in one of your Disney movies. I hope I always know your kiss. I hope I always feel your influence. I hope to always know you and me. I love you, Me.

 

Diaz told investigators he had no idea who had written the message, but that “several people know about how much he loves Disney.” Investigators took a handwriting sample from Tompkins to compare it to the writing on the card and concluded that it was “highly probable” Tompkins wrote it. Tompkins resigned in November after OIG alleged she had lied to investigators and falsified a handwriting sample taken as part of the investigation.

PubliCola is naming Tompkins because interim police chief sue Rahr identified her by name when she placed both Diaz and Tompkins on leave in October.

In the report, an outside investigator hired by OIG, Shayda Le, quoted multiple SPD employees who told investigators Diaz frequently talked or bragged about having a sexual relationship with Tompkins. Here are a few examples from the report, which is partly redacted; we’ve included Diaz’ and Tompkins’ names where appropriate, and noted that the statements were from the same person when the redactions are identical.

“[An employee] said [Diaz] joked that the people in their vicinity likely knew his name was Adrian because of how loud [Tompkins] was during their sexual activity.”

The same employee “said Mr. Diaz told him had a sex toy, specifically a Rabbit, for when Mr. Diaz was not around.”

A different employee “said on one occasion, Mr. Diaz was talking about sexual activity with [Tompkins]and expressed that he could not keep up with her level of sexual activity. [The employee] responded that he could seek sexual enhancement medication to help.”

One staffer said Diaz showed him a partially nude photo of a woman who appeared to be Tompkins; Diaz told an investigator the photo was probably taken from Tompkins’ Instagram account, but, the report noted, the Instagram photo Diaz showed them “was of a woman standing upright, and the one Mr. Diaz showed him looked to be of a woman laying horizontally.”

SPD staff also described Diaz bragging about his relationship with Tompkins and discussing the logistics of divorcing his wife.

According to the report, a member of Diaz’ security detail employee told investigators Diaz had asked him how best to hide messages with Tompkins from possible public disclosure, which Diaz denied. The same person also said Diaz talked to Tompkins on the phone while he was driving Diaz around, which Diaz also denied.

Four women who have sued the city for $5 million, alleging Diaz sexually harassed female subordinates and created a hostile work environment. Diaz, who has bristled at “unsubstantiated allegations” and rumors about him and Tompkins, claimed that one of the women was only making accusations because she was sleeping with someone else in the department and both of them were motivated to lie about him for that reason. Le did not consider that explanation credible, she wrote in her report.

In October, Diaz told the investigator that he was willing to consider providing his phone records to demonstrate that his subordinates’ allegations were false, but hadn’t done so by the time the report was finished more than two months later.

In June, Diaz announced to right-wing talk show Jason Rantz that he was gay, and called the allegations that he had an affair with a woman “absurd” for that reason. Diaz also said that, as “a gay Latino man,” he was unlikely to sexually harass women or behave inappropriately toward them. In his writeup of the interview, Rantz said Diaz had been “hound[ed]” by allegations that were “unsubstantiated.”

Two SPD staffers recalled Diaz telling them, shortly after he told Harrell he was gay, statements to the effect of “there no way he’s going to be able to get rid of me now.” Diaz told investigators that one of the reasons he spent so much time with Tompkins was that they talked “about my sexual orientation because I came out as gay to her,” not because they had a romantic relationship.

During the investigation, Diaz accused investigators of improperly focusing on his sexual orientation. “I explained that the topic was relevant to the extent that Mr. Diaz had himself introduced his sexual orientation as a reason for why the alleged relationship could not have happened,” Le wrote.

On Tuesday, Tompkins sent Rantz a statement calling the the allegations “completely false and highly damaging to both his and my professional reputations,” according to KIRO Radio. Diaz will reportedly go on Rantz’s show again on Wednesday.

Before she resigned from SPD and “declined further participation” in the investigation, Tompkins told investigators she and Diaz were just friends, and that he helped her out around her condo and did “countersurveillance” after Tompkins’ doorman said uniformed officers had come by the building late one night and asked if she lived there.

Diaz also claimed he was being “followed and surveilled” by unknown people as he drove around alone in his car, and suggested someone might have put some kind of “GPS tracker” on his vehicle. He also “shared a concern or suspicion that there were listening devices placed in his office,” one SPD staffer told the investigator, and had his office swept for bugs.

Investigators asked Diaz why his car was seen so often outside the West Precinct, “adjacent to” Tompkins’ condo building, when Diaz didn’t enter the precinct. In response, the report says Diaz gave a convoluted explanation that involved going to the gym, going to a personal trainer, going to Tompkins’ building to learn a workout regimen from Tompkins’ brother in a conference room, and getting picked up by his wife or possibly workers in a truck for trips to pick up “tile or lumber for his parents’ renovation project,” for which he left his car outside the precinct. At one point, the report says, Diaz started paying for parking at a nearby Whole Foods instead of parking for free on the street outside the precinct.

Earlier this year, Diaz threatened to sue PubliCola for libel after we reported on his interview with Rantz and mentioned KUOW’s reporting on his rumored affair, without using Tompkins’ name.

“The rumor you mention is false and we’re sure you’re aware of evidence showing it,” Diaz’ lawyers wrote, citing Diaz’ own denials and a story in the Stranger that said an SPD employee, Durand Dace, had “confesse[d] to inventing” the story himself. “Despite all that evidence, and in contravention of your journalistic obligations,⁵ you elected to inject the false rumor into your post,” Diaz’ lawyers wrote. “We’re confident that’s enough to convince a jury, not just that the rumor’s false, but that you spread it knowing of its probable falsity.”  (The citation linked to a journalism textbook.)

Dace was fired for his role in spreading the rumor; he has since told KUOW he was merely repeating a story that was circulating in the department. According to the investigation, at least two people with information about the alleged affair were reluctant to come forward because they feared retaliation; after all, Diaz’ driver told investigators, the chief had fired Dace “despite the fact that many other people in SPD speculated about a potential relationship between Mr. Diaz and” Tompkins.

Harrell’s letter says Diaz repeatedly made “false statements” to members of the media, to SPD’s command staff, and to Harrell himself.

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Diaz filed notice of a $10 million claim against the city in October, saying he faced anti-gay discrimination after he went on Rantz’ show to announce he was gay. According to the City Attorney’s Office, he has not filed a lawsuit.

In his statements to the investigator, Diaz also said the rumors about Tompkins were sexist and designed to create a hostile work environment for her.

In his letter, Harrell said he was had not made the decision to fire Diaz, whom he has called “a friend,” lightly. “It is based on a comprehensive investigation that provided factual findings that suggest Diaz acted inconsistently with Seattle Police Department (“SPD”) policies,” Harrell wrote

OIG’s investigation concluded that Diaz had described his relationship to two witnesses—a lieutenant and a member of his security team—and that “while having an intimate or romantic relationship with [Tompkins], Diaz appointed [Tompkins] to a position that did not exist at the time and had not formally existed for quite some time.”

The investigation also found that Diaz “deviated from normal procedure” by asking his own security guard do Tompkins’ background check, rather than going through SPD’s backgrounding unit. A lieutenant who said he advised Diaz against this told investigators that “Diaz may have been trying to keep the information about Diaz’s romantic or intimate relationship within a “tight circle,'” according to Harrell’s letter.

Diaz created a new position, Chief of Staff, for Tompkins. According to the investigation report, SPD never advertised or posted the job, and it’s unclear if there was ever a written job description for the position, which overlapped with the job of the person who was then SPD’s strategic communications director, Amy Clancy.

An SPD official told the investigator that Diaz “never fully articulated the scope of what she was going to do. The staffer said “it really came down to [ ] managing a newsroom and [she’s] the anchor, and [she’s] the point person and there’s a lot of people that have to support [her]. It was unclear to me still whether that was a direct management position that she had back in the Fox newsroom, but that seemed to satisfy him, that she was responsible for producing content on a deadline with many people.”