1. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson used unspecified “general but credible threats to safety and security” during the upcoming World Cup games to justify her last-minute decision to turn on more than 20 police surveillance cameras around the stadiums where the games will take place. In a late-afternoon announcement on Friday, Wilson said this information “has persuaded our law enforcement, emergency management, and FIFA security partners that we should be operating at a heightened risk level.”
SPD has staunchly defended the cameras, arguing the footage has already helped police solve crimes. Opponents have argued that the footage is vulnerable to abuse by federal agencies like ICE, vigilantes targeting people who travel to Seattle for reproductive or gender-affirming health care, and police officers themselves.
Wilson’s office told PubliCola won’t keep the cameras on after the World Cup. “Once the games are over and we return to normal safety and security operations, we will turn the cameras off until we make decisions about the original pilot,” a Wilson spokesperson said.
Wilson previously announced that the city would install the cameras, which connect to SPD’s Real Time Crime Center, but not turn them on until her office has had time to evaluate the “pilot” that placed cameras downtown, on Aurora Ave. N., and around 12th and Jackson. The NYU Policing Project just started work on a data and security audit of the police surveillance program.
Earlier this week, Wilson said in an onstage interview that the city already has access to many cameras around the stadium district, including live feeds operated by the Seattle Department of Transportation as well as private cameras operated by businesses, which have historically provided SPD with footage to help them investigate crimes.
2. The city settled a lawsuit filed by four female Seattle police officers who accused former police chief Adrian Diaz of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. The officers—Lauren Truscott, Valarie Carson, Kame Spencer, and Jean Gulpan—will receive a total of $2.6 million, according to a press release from their attorney, Sumeer Singh. Singh now works for Frey Buck, the same firm that once represented Diaz. Last year, PubliCola reported that Buck had ditched Diaz as a client.
“We are happy to see the City of Seattle take accountability for what was a clear lapse in leadership by the previous administration. We hope new leadership will improve working conditions for everyone within the Seattle Police Department, Singh said in a statement.
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3. News of the settlement comes shortly after two LGBTQ+ officers, Anna Fishel and Doug Raguso, filed tort claims against the city, alleging the department discriminated against them and denied them promotions based on their sexual orientation and, in Fishel’s case, her gender.
Fishel, a detective in SPD’s policy unit, said in her complaint that she passed the sergeant’s exam in 2024, rising to number one on the promotion list in 2025, but has been passed over for promotion by five other people since then. During a meeting with Barnes to make the case that she should be promoted as sergeant over her division, Fishel wrote, “I laid out my credentials and experience and my work on the 30×30 initiative,” which established the goal that 30 percent of SPD’s recruit class will be women by 2030.
“I also told him that I am the sole caregiver to my daughter and the only gay female up for Sergeant,” Fishel wrote in her claim. “Despite this, my ranking, and the support of my chain of command, Chief Barnes refused to promote me in place. Instead, he offered me the position of Third Watch Patrol Sergeant,” a position that would have required her to find an overnight caregiver for her child. The position Fishel was seeking went to a straight man, she wrote.
Raguso, a lieutenant, also said he was repeatedly passed over for promotion—including last year, when Barnes removed him as acting captain of Capitol Hill’s East Precinct and reassigned him to the Real Time Crime Center without a promotion. Instead of Raguso, who had worked in the East Precinct for years and was well-liked by many in the city’s historic LGBTQ-friendly neighborhood, Barnes promoted Mike Tietjen and assigned him to head up the precinct.
Barnes’ promotion of Tietjen, which the chief touted on social media, proved controversial: As a lieutenant patrolling the 2020 protest zone around Cal Anderson Park, Tietjen drove onto a sidewalk full of protesters in 2020 and compared them to “cockroaches” as they scattered to avoid his SUV. He was also involved in an incident in which a trans woman accused officers of heckling her and demanding to know what was under her skirt. Barnes eventually removed Tietjen and replaced him with Captain Jim Britt, another straight white man.
An earlier tort claim, by two former command staff members Barnes fired last year, also accused Barnes and members of his team of gender and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. Barnes oversaw a dramatic crackdown on nudity at the nude beach at Denny Blaine Park last year. His chief of staff, Alan Ricketts, reportedly blew off concerns about the optics of arresting people sunbathing at the LGBTQ+-friendly beach, telling one of the former command staff members, “we’re not here for the gays.”
Well, Katie is stupid but you can’t call her dumb. She knows she’d be hated more than Karen Bass in a firestorm if she left those cameras off and a significant security incident occurred during the World Cup. News Flash, the cameras are likely not going to be shut off after the World Cup either. How does the Mayor tell a poor woman beaten in the street that the cameras were shut off to “protect” gender affirming care. That would be political suicide.