By Erica C. Barnett
We covered a lot of ground on this week’s Seattle Nice, from Republican City Attorney Ann Davison’s election-year decision to sign on to a lawsuit against the Trump Administration (unlike other leaders, she described Seattle’s sanctuary city status as an “issue of local control,” not immigrant rights), to Washington Progress Alliance director Dionne Foster’s bid to unseat Seattle City Council president Sara Nelson.
In addition to those hot topics, we talked about a story from KUOW about a late-night dispute over parking in which now-Mayor Bruce Harrell was arrested for flashing a gun at someone at a casino in Iowa in 1996. Harrell’s office told KUOW that he was only carrying the gun because he had gotten death threats over his proposed appointment to a housing board (public housing advocates wanted a public-housing resident, rather than an affluent attorney who had just moved to town, to fill the spot); he also claimed he was a victim of racial profiling by the casino security officer who detained him after the incident as well as the officer who arrested him.
KUOW’s latest story includes a first-person account from one of the people Harrell confronted in the parking lot—Rose Sanchez, who was eight months pregnant at the time. Sanchez told KUOW she came to the casino with her mother and husband, who had just gotten off the late shift at a nearby meatpacking plant. Sanchez said Harrell drove up alongside her family as they were walking through the parking lot, pointed his gun at them, and told them they had taken his parking space; in response, she said, the family reported the incident to casino security.
Harrell’s story appears to have changed multiple times. Initially, according to KUOW, he denied even having a gun; later, an officer who was apparently called by casino security (and whom he accused, along with the security guard, of racial profiling) found the gun in his Jeep. At the time, Harrell told reporters he thought “the Hispanic group” was going to attack him, and that he had the gun in the first place because of “unpleasant calls” about his appointment to the housing board that he later described as death threats. He also claimed that he and the people he confronted had “amicably settled the dispute, entering the establishment together,” which Sanchez said never happened.
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One thing that didn’t change about Harrell’s story, though, is that he clearly considers himself the victim, and even told KUOW, through a spokesman, that their reporting “forced him to relive his trauma” from racial profiling. According to KUOW, Harrell did not provide any specifics about how he was racially profiled; a casino employee recalled being surprised that the Sanchez family said Harrell had brandished a gun at them, because he was “dressed like an attorney,” KUOW reported.
So what can we learn from this story now? As Sandeep pointed out on the podcast, this incident is now almost 30 years old, so one could make the case that it’s no longer relevant—it’s literally old news. On the other hand, Harrell was close to 40 at the time, and most people’s early-middle-age foibles probably don’t involve flashing or pointing guns at strangers.
The more critical point, to me, is how Harrell has handled the the fact that the story has reemerged, with new details that weren’t reported at the time.
Rather than owning up, saying he made a mistake, and explaining what he learned from the incident or how he made amends, Harrell doubled down on his victim status. In a statement to KUOW, Harrell called the threats he said he received an “introduction to the hostilities the mayor would receive as a public servant, and reminiscent of the treatment and bigotry he has received throughout his life as a biracial person by people of all races and backgrounds who see him as different.”
It’s unlikely this incident alone will impact his reelection chances (although, as Sandeep noted, there could be more unflattering stories on the way), but it isn’t flattering to Harrell that his first instinct, when confronted with evidence he behaved rashly and inappropriately as a 38-year-old attorney, is to cast blame on everyone but himself.
This is decidedly NOT — or shouldn’t be — a 29 year old story about a mayor and a gun.
It IS a story about Harrell’s lifelong willingness to be a toady for powerful moneyed interests and flagrantly lying and gas lighting when it serves his interests (and the interests he serves).
To the horror of Omaha’s Black community a right wing racist Republican mayor appointed Harrell to the housing authority in 1996. He was seen by the Black community as a toady and carpetbagger (someone who only moved to Omaha a year prior and lived in a well off neighborhood, not in the housing projects he was nominated to manage).
There were no death threats, just the proper and righteous anger of the Black community. The “death threats” were claimed only after he was arrested and embarrassed.
After a night of drinking he got into a testosterone fuelled dispute over a parking space and then felt compelled to lie about it then, as he does now. He threatened a family that was identified by police as Hispanic, as the police also identified Harrell at the time of his arrest.
Harrell’s claim concerning “racism in the Midwest” is insulting: in 1996 the Black population of Omaha was, proportionally, 1/3 greater than Seattle’s, with a famous and powerful Black advocate for the community — who strenuously opposed Harrell’s nomination — on the city council.
The police report at the time reveals that Harrell directly denied having a gun despite three witnesses that saw it and correctly described it. Harrell never claimed prior to being released from jail that he had the gun for protection from death threats, that is, he never claimed this when the police found the gun he claimed not to have. The nonsensical story about death threats only appears after he is released from jail and withdraws from the housing board position.
Listen to Stanley Clark from Omaha who, in an October 9, 1996 letter to the editor for the Omaha World-Herald, shows that classic Midwestern common sense when he asks:
“In response to the editorial concerning alleged attempts to frighten a prospective nominee out of accepting an appointment on the Omaha Housing Authority board: If someone were making death threats against you, would you go out spend the evening at the bar or stay home? Would you not call the police to at least make a report? Would you carry an unloaded gun for protection? Would you go home after the bar closed or continue into the morning at a casino?”
We are supposed to believe that after receiving “5 death threats” that afternoon Harrell, with a visiting friend from Seattle, then goes out to dinner, later goes drinking at a bar, and then goes at midnight to a casino, while leaving his defenseless wife and baby at home unprotected!?!? Damn, at least he could of left them the gun! Remember: this is 1996 when everybody had a landline with their address published in the widely available White Pages.
This is fundamentally a story about the consistency of Harrell’s toadyism for moneyed interests, his fragile ego, his bullying, and his willingness to flagrantly lie knowing that he has escaped accountability for decades. Let’s not encourage him to continue on this path.
Bruce Harrell has been running interference for his criminal underworld friends from his childhood his whole political.careermas a city council and top.cop.mauir hiring unconstitional police chiefs