“Any further investigation would violate [the detective’s] constitutional rights and open the city to a lawsuit,” an investigator concluded when dismissing Sayles’ complaint.
By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle interim police chief Andre Sayles filed a complaint with the Office of Police Accountability against a veteran detective (and onetime leader of of SPD’s hate crimes unit) over a three-minute speech she gave at a No Hate in WA State rally last November, when Sayles was deputy chief. Sayles accused detective Beth Wareing of failing to follow a lawful order and dishonesty— fireable offenses that could have cost the 29-year police veteran her job, her law enforcement certification, and her ability to testify in court as a police officer.
“In her speech, Det. Wareing made several comments that lacked credible facts related to the potential exposure to sexual assault by adults on youth, especially females and persons who identify as LGBTQ+,” Sayles wrote. “In the attachments, I’ve attached an email along with the video of Det. Wareing speaking.”
The links Sayles provided included two videos by right-wing commentator Brandi Kruse, who attacked Wareing at length on her show on December 11 and December 15, calling her comments “genuinely disgusting.” On the December 11 segment, Kruse said she had contacted SPD about Wareing’s comments and “prayed to God” they would take action against her. Addressing Wareing, Kruse said, “do you really think there is going to be no ramifications for just lying through your teeth as a Seattle police detective?”
Sayles filed his complaint on December 15, the day the second segment ran. The complaint broadly parroted Kruse’s talking points, alleging that Wareing “was insubordinate, violating the guidelines he set out for her, and that she was dishonest in saying inaccurate and untrue things during the press conference,” according to OPA’s summary.
Kruse says she didn’t personally file a complaint against Wareing or talk to Sayles directly. “I made it clear how I felt about her comments on my show,” she said. “A police detective should not be abusing their position to fear monger parents about a topic as serious as sexual abuse. That’s grotesque. I am not surprised there are complaints against her—there should be.”
Investigators who looked into Sayles’ complaint disagreed—and swiftly. On January 8, OPA let the city’s Office of Inspector General, a separate police oversight body, know that they were expediting and dismissing the complaint, finding that Sayles’ claims were unfounded and may have violated Wareing’s right to free speech.
In a memo proposing the dismissal language, OPA noted pointedly that political statements “are protected free speech and political activity” under state law, legal case law, guidance from the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, and SPD’s own police manual. Wareing, the dismissal continued, “was also not insubordinate as she did in fact follow the guidance she was given” when she sought, and received, explicit permission from Sayles to speak at the rally.
“Any further investigation of [Wareing] would violate her constitutional rights and open the city to a lawsuit,” the memo concluded.
For Wareing, who was on sabbatical pursuing a PhD when she spoke at the rally, the complaint was a shocking attempt to curtail her free speech and smear her after a long career as a hostage negotiator, bias crimes expert, and clinical counselor. As the direct result of the complaint, she said, she decided to retire from SPD and pursue a different career.
“Chief Sayles’s complaint was poorly considered, unprofessional, and an attempted violation of my First Amendment rights,” Wareing told PubliCola. “It was a decisive factor in my decision to retire rather than remain at SPD after sabbatical, ending a career that was my passion for 29 years. This conduct should concern every officer at SPD.”
PubliCola has confirmed that Mayor Katie Wilson knew about Sayles’ complaint against Wareing, and its dismissal, before she chose him as interim chief three weeks ago.
Wareing’s comments at the No Hate rally were a personalized version of the basic talking points against the two anti-LGBTQ initiatives, funded by right-wing billionaire Brian Heywood through his group Let’s Go Washington. No Hate In WA State, known last year as Washington Families for Freedom, argues both initiatives would put children at risk.
The first initiative would give parents access to all their child’s school records, including confidential counseling notes, with no exceptions for parents with histories of abuse. The second would require girls to submit to genital inspections to prove they have vaginas as a condition of participating in sports. Although student athletes are required to have physicals to ensure they can play without injury, there is no genital inspection requirement for girls, nor is any student required to show a doctor their penis or vagina so that schools can categorize them into teams by sex.
Wareing had written authorization from SPD, including direct permission from Sayles, to speak at the event in her own personal capacity, as long as she didn’t say she was representing or worked for SPD, which she did not. In her remarks, Wareing said the two initiatives “serve to stigmatize LGBTQ+ children and put them at greater risk of harassment, assault, abuse at home, homelessness, and death by suicide.”
The anti-trans initiative, Wareing said, “would increase the risk of sexual abuse for girls participating in sports” and “is not something I would put my child through.”
The second initiative, eliminating students’ ability to speak privately with school counselors and staff about sensitive topics, such as gender, abortion, and sexuality, would make abused children especially vulnerable, Wareing continued, “I recall many times teachers and school counselors have been a primary support person for a child at risk, and my heart would be broken for them if they were forced by an unjust law to report a child’s private information, even if it puts a child at risk of injury.”
In an interview with OPA investigators, Sayles admitted that he did not read either of the initiatives he accused his own detective of lying about before filing his complaint, according to OPA’s investigation file.
PubliCola sent Wilson’s office a list of detailed questions on Wednesday, including why she did not consider Sayles’ unfounded complaint against Wareing disqualifying, what Sayles told Wilson when she asked about the complaint, and whether Wilson believed Wareing’s comments were inappropriate
A staffer responded, “We have discussed the investigation with Interim Chief Sayles. He will continue being an inclusive leader, protecting all Seattle residents, workers, and visitors, especially those furthest from social justice, including the trans community. Seattle is a place where everyone should feel safe.”
In response to detailed questions, SPD provided a similar statement, emphasizing that “the employee [Wareing] was cleared of all wrongdoing.” The spokesperson did not mention the finding that Sayles may have violated Wareing’s right to free speech and opened the city up to a lawsuit.
“Since his arrival, Chief Sayles has been a part of the SPD LGBTQ+ committee and remains focused on creating a safe city for all who live, visit, and work in Seattle. He has committed to building community connections to help develop a sense of welcomeness that fosters this safety,” an SPD spokesperson said.
Under Barnes, SPD made a series of unforced errors that alienated many in the city’s LGBTQ community and led to multiple discrimination lawsuits (including one that quotes Barnes’ chief of staff, Alex Ricketts, as saying, “We’re not here for the gays.” SPD has also struggled to hire women under Barnes and is unlikely, at the current rate, to come close to its adopted goal of having a 30 percent female recruit class in the next three years. Wareing, who worked on the 30 x 30 initiative, just became one more female SPD officer on her way out the door.
What Happened at the Bite of Seattle on Sunday, July 26, 2026, at 6:01 p.m.
It was seconds after 6 p.m. on a warm Sunday night at the Bite at Seattle Center, the city’s gathering place, when dozens of bullets were fired into the crowd. Three people were killed, four others injured.
Despite all the attention on the after-the-incident communications failures, and there were many, it is abundantly clear that police officers on the Center grounds sprang into action, along with their colleagues from across the city and firefighters who rushed to the scene.
Police officers and the city’s 911 communications center first learned of the gunfire from a lieutenant at the Center. He broadcast a radio alert that shots were being fired. A citywide “help the officer” broadcast followed, alerting dozens of officers from Northgate to Capitol Hill to downtown to Rainier Valley to West Seattle that a mass-casualty shooting event was happening.
Calls to the 911 communications center surged seconds later, rising from 16 in the 15 minutes before 6 p.m. to 95 between 6 and 6:15 p.m., a sixfold increase. Call volume remained elevated for about 30 minutes. The chart below shows call volumes at the 911 center around the time of the shootings.
Source: City of Seattle CARE Department 911 call counts for Sunday, July 26, 2026, between 5 p.m. and 6:45 p.m.
Listening to the police radio traffic from this incident is both alarming and reassuring. Officers acted bravely and quickly, at one point requesting a tourniquet for a small child’s arm. They administered CPR to a victim. Within minutes of the gunfire, officers arrested a 15-year-old youth armed with a gun; he has since been charged with First Degree Assault, though it’s not believed his gun fired any of the fatal shots.
Officers gathered witness accounts and reported possible suspect descriptions to their dispatchers. They escorted people away from the crime scene, and they searched nearby buildings in case a suspect had entered as they were fleeing.
Police Chief Shon Barnes was in Dallas, in the Central Time Zone, attending a Black Law Enforcement Association conference. Just after 8 p.m., he received the same alerts his officers in Seattle were getting.
The table below shows the most significant events as they happened that Sunday night, as recorded in dispatch logs.
The Fire Department’s radio traffic also confirms that our city’s firefighters responded quickly, stabilized the injured, and transported them to the hospital.
It’s clear from that radio traffic that our police officers and firefighters did their jobs on July 26. They rushed toward the danger. They helped the wounded. They quickly arrested one person armed with a gun. And they protected the many hundreds of others who were escorted away from the scene. The dispatch log below shows how fast the response escalated, from the first radio call to a unified command with Seattle Fire.
Time Recorded in Computer
Aided Dispatch
System
Action/Remarks of Primary Dispatcherin CAD
6:01 p.m. On Scene Field Commander Reports “Shots
Fired Center Grounds”
6:01 p.m. Citywide “Help the Officer” Alert at Seattle
Center
6:01 p.m. Patrol Units Begin to Logto the Event on Vehicle
Computers
6:01 p.m.
Radio Traffic Limited to Emergency Only
6:05 p.m.
PD Command Staff and Dispatch Superviso
Group 1 Alerts Transmitted
6:10 p.m.
Ranking Duty Captain Notified
6:17 p.m. Gun Violence Reduction Unit Requests Contact
with Homicide Sergeant
6:21 p.m.
Crime Scene Investigation Unit and Homicide
Detective Connected
6:22 p.m. blic Information Officer Connected to C
ene Field Commande
6:24 p.m.
SPD Media Unit 2 Responding
6:24 p.m. Group 1 Task Force Activation Alert Sent to
Mobilize Additional Officers
6:26 p.m.
Homicide Detectives Responding to Scene
6:34 p.m.
Car 1 (Chief Barnes) Briefed
6:41 p.m.
SPD Media Unit Provided Seattle Center PIO
Contact Details
6:51 p.m.
SPD SWAT Requested by Field Commander
6:52 p.m.
SWAT Commander Notified
7:00 p.m.
SPD SWAT Full Team Alert Sent
7:55 p.m. attle Fire Requested to Stage Net
1AX/Science Center in Case Breachi
Explosives Trigger Fire Alarms
8:07 p.m. SPD SWAT Request Unified Command with
Seattle Fire
8:08 p.m.
Seattle Fire Agrees to Unified Command
Source: City of Seattle CARE Department, SPD Computer-Aided Dispatch log for Sunday, July 26, 2026.
I’m sharing all this because most of the media’s attention has been focused on why it took so long for the police to brief the public on what had happened; their normal practice is to do this as soon as possible after a major event like this, almost always within an hour or so. This is especially crucial because mass shootings create significant fear, particularly when they are random and intended to harm as many people as possible. But the police knew fairly quickly that this shooting was most likely a targeted event aimed at specific individuals. The public should have been told this immediately, and they should have been told that Seattle Center was closed and everyone needed to leave the grounds.
I don’t want the hullabaloo surrounding the communication breakdowns to overshadow the work of our officers or firefighters in what was a horrific, tragic event for everyone involved and for our city. They did exactly what they are trained to do. I’m grateful for their professionalism.
And that’s why it is so important to answer as quickly as possible the questions swirling around this July 26 mass shooting. The people of Seattle deserve true answers, and so do our police officers and firefighters who did their jobs so exceptionally well that night.
Why didn’t the police hold their typical infield media briefing? What caused this deviation from normal practice? Who made the decision to forego the briefing?
Why did it take nearly five hours for police commanders and our elected leaders to hold a media briefing? What factors caused this excessive delay? Who made the decision to wait so long?
And what role did any of our elected leaders, or their staff members, play in these decisions?
I have written extensively about policing over the years, and you can read some of these posts here. Or read all of my blog at http://www.timburgess.com.
Tim Burgess served on the Seattle City Council (2008-2017) and became the city’s 55th mayor for 71 days after the previous mayor resigned (2017). He served as deputy mayor for public safety and economic development in Mayor Bruce Harrell’s administration (2022-2025).
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Thank you, “Andy.” Take a pager and we’ll buzz you when your table is ready.
Thanks for this piece. I am concerned by what seems like possible cooperation/coordination between certain city officials (incl CMs) with some of these right-wing provocateur-style journalists.
Council should be ashamed
Also what happened to the SPD detectives that arrested the wrong Asian man for arson? As far as I heard there was no punishment handed out for the SPD arrest a man whose first and last name where swapped with the suspect (ie the man the SPD arrested had the first name that was the suspect’s last name). Really looks horrible that the new chief choose this “no hate” to punish when chief Barnes let so much illegal behavior by the SPD go unpunished
I don’t know if it is disqualifying for interim chief, but it may be problematic in considering him for the permanent chief.
We still don’t know the extent of Barnes’ involvement in Sayles pushing the complaint against Wareing. We might find that Barnes directed Sayles to do it, which would tend to absolve Sayles since he obviously could not go against Barnes.
Eh, “I was under orders” is generally not considered a valid defense when you did something illegal.
The police is run just like the military, as most of the officers are vets. Barnes brought Sayles all the way from Wisconsin so it is unlikely that he is going to go against someone who got him to Seattle even if he disagreed with him. Only Katie knows what Sayles ‘really’ thinks about the Wareing complaint, and obviously she was satisfied that it was non-issue at least for the interim role.
I personally would have canned ANYONE in SPD leadership connected to the prior mayor back in November so you don’t have the prospect of conflicting loyalties and undermining what the new mayor is trying to do as a favor to the old mayor or to councilmembers connected to the old mayor. But I am not the mayor, Katie is. As she said, her window into SPD is unique, in that she knows who supports her agenda within SPD and who doesn’t.
He didn’t read the initiatives before filing? What else about his job has he not read and what personalities has he chosen to do his thinking? What else can he not be bothered with?
I couldn’t care less about Sayles.
But those two initiatives are a no-brainer. I expect them both to pass easily.
Well, they are certainly a no-brainer at least.
But did publicola read the initiatives? Because every student regardless of sex in Seattle Public schools must get a sports physical each year. Sports physicals also apply for rec leagues. Plus it’s normal for everyone to have a physical each year from baby age to death as part of regular medical care. Every person doctor knows what sex they are and whether they are undergoing any gender change treatment. So it is a stretch to say that this law, all of a sudden, exposes kids to sexual assault by doctors.
Then what is the need for the initiative? And why single out girls?
Any word from CM Hollingsworth on this? CM Hollingsworth ran on being a Queer Voice in Council, she should be able to comment on this and other Queer issues
Will there be a podium and cameras with all my friends in the background and broadcast time?
Joy will be there with bells on.
CM Hollingsworth only spoke on Queer issues the first year of her term, then she went quiet
Why, since the investigation revealed that Sayles was himself dishonest in making his report, is he not now FIRED or at least under OPA investigation for that dishonesty?
Could it be that “dishonesty” is not, in fact, a disqualifying condition for SPD?
Does SPD have any honest cops? Does any department?
If dishonesty is a fireable offense, does that mean having an entry on the Brady List is grounds for termination?
Jesus fucking Christ. The SPD literally are on OPA record they intend to arrest anyone at Denny Blaine for LEGAL ACTIVITY and this is what our new police chief prioritizes? Fire them all and start over
The union says they just need more sensitivity training. Or they will sue.
It’s the SPD way.
What would happen if 100 straight people went to spend the day at denny blaine park on the beach side? Would they feel welcomed?
How is this relevant? Of course they will be welcomed as long as they don’t harass people? You might be surprised to know straight people do go already
My point is that the SPD literally said they intend to arrest people for legal activity. Legal activity that the city attorney and a judge has confirmed is LEGAL Activity
Can you agree that Police arresting people for LEGAL activity is problematic?
Mayor Harrell has left a legacy of city employees that do not care about the Queer community, fire them all
You’re a fucking idiot. Get a life and go help community members in need instead of being an asshole edge lord.
Get a fucking life you pathetic edge lord
Sure, as a straight white guy id feel fine going to Denny Blaine. I simply wouldn’t be a weirdo about it or do it for some kind of cheap political stunt
Are they going to be masturbating or otherwise harassing people?