1. The city’s Office of the Inspector General just completed an audit into the city’s disciplinary system for police officers accused of misconduct, which found that in a majority of cases, officers who are disciplined receive punishments “at the minimum of recommended ranges, and sometimes below,” largely because former police chief Adrian Diaz gave more weight to mitigating factors, such as an officer’s length of services, than aggravating ones.

An audit in 2021 reached similar conclusions, indicating that under Diaz, SPD did not address the the concerns OIG raised about previous police chiefs’ disciplinary decisions three years ago.

The audit, released Monday, got lost in yesterday’s news about an OIG investigation into Diaz that resulted in Mayor Bruce Harrell firing the former chief, who has been on SPD’s payroll since his demotion in May, for dishonesty, lack of professionalism, and other violations related to an alleged affair between Diaz and his former chief of staff.

As in the 2021 audit, the OIG concluded that the police chief often decided to impose the lowest possible discipline after meeting with an accused employee in a Loudermill hearing—an opportunity for employees to tell their side of the story.

A “pattern of lower discipline highlights the imbalance between officers who are entitled to speak with the Chief before a disciplinary determination, and complainants who do not have a similar avenue to provide their perspective” to the police chief, the audit notes. This, in turn, can lead the arbitrators who consider officers’ disciplinary appeals to lean more and more into the lower end of the disciplinary range, lowering penalties for misconduct over time, according to the audit.

The audit also found that there is still a massive backlog of 106 officer appeals awaiting arbitration, with most of those (82) still unresolved since the 2021 audit. Almost three-quarters of these appeals involve cases where an officer received a verbal or written reprimand or no discipline at all, but still appealed the decision.

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2. The Seattle City Attorney’s Office confirmed that the city will continue to defend former police chief Adrian Diaz in the claims several women have filed against him for sexual harassment and gender discrimination. A spokesman for City Attorney Ann Davison’s office said the city will continue to defend Diaz because the lawsuits “involve actions allegedly taken (or not taken) by [Diaz] in the course and scope of his employment as the Chief of Police.”

Diaz filed a $10 million tort claim against the city in October, claiming Mayor Bruce Harrell and other city officials discriminated against for his sexual orientation after he told a local right-wing talk show host that he was gay.

On Tuesday, the city’s Office of Inspector General released its report on an investigation that concluded Diaz had an inappropriate relationship with a employee, Jamie Tompkins, failed to disclose his relationship with her, lied about it, and behaved unprofessionally.

The investigation does not weigh in directly on whether Diaz was lying in that interview, but does note that Diaz brought up being gay “as a basis for why an intimate or romantic relationship with” Tompkins. “Based on a preponderance of the evidence provided,” the investigator wrote, “I find that Mr. Diaz and [Tompkins] had an intimate or romantic relationship.”

It’s unclear how much defending Diaz in the lawsuits against him (and any future lawsuits about his alleged behavior as chief) will cost the city. The amount the city spends on civil lawsuits against the city, including outside lawyers and settlements, has been rising steadily every year. As a result, the city has begun adding $10 million or more to its existing judgment and claims fund every year to deal with “extraordinary” or “increasingly expensive” claims; in the budget that just passed, the city added $10 million to pay for “extraordinary, high-cost cases” that involved “higher-than-anticipated expenses.”