By Erica C. Barnett
Continuing with the era of good feelings on Seattle Nice, we had some mostly cordial disagreements this week on the issues of public safety, graffiti, and the firing of former police chief Adrian Diaz, although it’s hard to say we fully agreed on any of it (would it be Seattle Nice if we did?)
We started with this week’s biggest news—Mayor Bruce Harrell’s decision to finally fire former police chief Adrian Diaz, nearly seven months after formally removing him from his position and replacing him with interim chief Sue Rahr. (Harrell’s selection of Madison, Wisconsin chief Shon Barnes as permanent police chief, announced this morning, hadn’t happened yet when we recorded on Thursday).
Diaz was accused of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and several SPD policy violations stemming from a long-rumored affair with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins. After his removal as chief, Diaz went on a right-wing talk show to announce he was gay, calling the allegations against him “absurd.” He’s been receiving a salary of more than $350,000 since May.
Sandeep gave Harrell his flowers for firing Diaz after months of diligent investigation; I said the situation was more complicated than that, noting that former Office of Police Accountability director Gino Betts was shown the door after some on his staff complained that Betts had slow-walked the OPA’s own investigation into Diaz, slowing down the process and potentially keeping Diaz on the payroll longer than necessary.
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We also discussed the murder of a Metro bus driver in the University District earlier this week. Like many local elected officials, Sandeep said the tragedy demonstrated the need for more police, security guards, and fare enforcement officers on buses and at transit stops to prevent future violent crime.
I argued that the murder—the first such killing in more than 26 years—would not have been prevented by flooding the transit system with officers, nor does it demonstrate that “transit is dangerous.” (Murders and assaults, obviously, do contribute to a perception of danger, as the killing of a bus driver on the Aurora Bridge did in 1998. After that tragedy, elected officials and the drivers’ union also said buses were unsafe and called for more police.)
Even if flooding the system with police was an effective strategy for preventing crime, it would be financially impossible for King County to put an officer on each of the hundreds of buses that are running at any given time in order to prevent assaults on bus drivers, or retrofit all its buses with inaccessible driver compartments, as some are already suggesting. Such assaults, though terrible, are fairly rare: According to the Seattle Times, there have been 15 reported assaults on bus drivers in the first 11 months of 2024, down from 31 in 2023.
Finally, we talked about the graffiti arrests I reported on earlier today. If you think the tone of my story is too relentlessly neutral, and you’re wondering how I REALLY feel about government officials defining what is “art,” listen to this segment and find out.
“Murders and assaults, obviously, do contribute to a perception of danger” Yes, obviously is the correct word here. Why wouldn’t they contribute to that?
Also, I find it interesting that you and other like-minded journalists in town are very pro-Union until those unions (the bus drivers union in this case) start calling for increased security measures because they go against your views of “overexaggerated” crime. Perhaps we should trust and listen to bus drivers who are on the front lines dealing with disorder every day, but that’s just me.