Category: Courts

Courts, Crime

Revived Community Court Will be Paired With Punitive New “High-Priority” Track for Repeat Offenders

Seattle Municipal Courthouse

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans just announced the launch of a revamped community court for low-level misdemeanor offenders, fulfilling a key promise in her 2025 campaign against then-city attorney Ann Davison, who shut down the therapeutic court in 2023.

At the time, Davison and her allies argued that community court—an alternative to prosecution that connected defendants to services through the Seattle Municipal Court’s Community Resource Center—was ineffective.  Campaigning against Davison, Evans called the decision to end community court a “disaster” and promised to restore it.

The new Connection Court, which will be presided over for the rest of the year by retiring Municipal Court Judge Willie Gregory, is similar to the old community court in a few respects: It’s an alternative to prosecution on low-level misdemeanor charges such as theft and public drug use, and it connects defendants to services through the Community Resource Center, which Evans said will offer more direct connections and “warm hand-offs”  to service providers than it did before.

At the same time, the court now imposes new requirements on defendants, such as mandatory service participation, that make it a much different program than the community court Davison ended—one that Davison herself might have supported. Evans’ press announcement Thursday included supportive quotes from a dozen local leaders, including interim police chief Andre Sayles and Downtown Seattle Association president Jon Scholes, all but one including some reference to “accountability.” According to Sayles, that means “[we] offer a real path forward to those ready to take it, and we hold accountable those who continue to cause harm.”

For participants, the two biggest changes are a requirement that they commit no additional misdemeanors for 90 days—the length of the court’s jurisdiction over each case— and that they prove they’ve participated in two types of services, such as addiction counseling or job training. People who fail to meet either of these requirements—by not showing up at appointments, for example, or by committing another low-level crime—will be sent to mainstream court, where they’ll face criminal prosecution on the original misdemeanor charge along with any additional charges. Anyone with a serious felony conviction in the last 10 years is automatically ineligible for Connections Court, as is anyone who has committed a rape or murder.

Evans told PubliCola the requirements isn’t prescriptive; if someone commits another minor offense, for instance, the city attorney’s office can say, “‘You know what? Let’s give  this participant an opportunity to have that second case also be in community court,'” Evans said. Most people will still be eligible, at this stage, for other diversion programs, such as LEAD. “This just another layer for people to be able to get connected to what they need, one that was not there yesterday.”

Purpose Dignity Action co-director Lisa Daugaard, the architect of the original LEAD diversion program, said she’s reserving judgment about the revived community court. :e should be diverting cases prior to filing of charges whenever appropriate, but if cases need to be filed, it’s good to have a plan for addressing defendants’ needs, using whatever leverage the charge provides,” Daugaard said. “Everything depends on whether the services offered are actually matched to the person’s situation and needs.”

Critics of the new court, including the lawyers who defend indigent clients on misdemeanor charges, say Evans is reducing its potential  by setting up barriers to entry and establishing new hurdles for participants to trip over as they try to comply with the new conditions.

Katie Hurley, special counsel for criminal policy and practice at King County’s Department of Public Defense, said she’s concerned that the services available at the Court Resource Center don’t meaningfully address the conditions that lead people to commit petty crimes in the first place, particularly homelessness. About 30 percent of people fail to show up for municipal court hearings because they don’t have an address to receive court notices, Hurley said, yet “there’s no connection to housing, which is what many people who are prosecuted for low-level behaviors struggle with.”

“The whole idea behind Connection Court is that it’s supposed to be expansive and allow these lower-level offenses to receive a quicker, more effective response because we know that the current system has failed,” Hurley said. “Unfortunately, it’s going to exclude precisely the type of folks who should be benefiting from a Connection Court response, which is people who’ve been failed by the system previously.”

A second new program Evans announced today would send more people into that system. Her office is calling it the “High-Priority Repeat Offenses (HiPRO) program.

Under this program,  people who commit misdemeanors more than three times in a 90-day span, or more than six times in six months, will be ineligible not just for Connections Court but for any diversion programs, and Evans’ office will seek “aggravated jail sentences” against such repeat offenders.

This harsher treatment will also apply to anyone steals from a store from which they were previously trespassed for shoplifting, a process that can be handled by private security and is based on policies that vary from store to store. Evans’ office will also seek stiffer penalties against anyone charged with car prowling, a misdemeanor, if they were convicted for felony car theft in the previous year.

Although HiPRO sounds awfully similar to former city attorney Davison’s “high utilizers” list, Evans and her criminal division chief, Jenna Robert, said it’s different in this key respect: Evans isn’t compiling a list of people who may commit crimes in the future, they’re putting people in the HiPRO program after they’re charged with a crime that warrants escalation into the program.

In contrast, Davison maintained a rotating list of about 150 people who had at least 12 misdemeanor charges in the past year, and at least one misdemeanor charge in the most recent eight months.

It’s a bit of a distinction without a difference. Keeping a list of repeat offenders sure seems more intrusive than imposing harsher penalties on people once they hit a criminal benchmark, but the result is the same—harsher penalties for people who have committed a certain number of misdemeanors over a certain period.

Hurley, from DPD, called the new program counterproductive. The new two-strikes rule for shoplifting, she said, was “very alarming for us” because it means that anyone who steals from the same store twice will be subject to a higher level of prosecution, regardless of what led them to commit the second theft. Many people who steal small items from stores are homeless or have other underlying conditions, Hurley said—like the woman DPD defended last year who was charged with theft for stealing $5 in candy from a CVS that had previously issued a trespass order against her.

Under the new criteria, that client would have been subject to harsher prosecution and ineligible for Connection Court. (Ultimately, she was deemed incompetent to stand trial and her case was dismissed).

Evans said Connection Court, which just started on Wednesday, isn’t set in stone; the details and eligibility could change as the court evolves. But it’s unclear what Evans believes throwing people in jail (a place with no meaningful services) a few days or weeks longer for low-level crimes will accomplish, beyond temporarily removing some familiar faces from the streets. Evans says she’s creating new opportunities for people to access meaningful services, combined with accountability if they fail to meet their commitments. But a plan that deliberately excludes and disproportionately penalizes repeat offenders may just ensure that the people who most need those services won’t be able to access them.

Courts, legislature

Most Men Prosecuted for Sex Buying Don’t Reoffend, Report Suggests
The county prosecutor says locking up men who attempt to pay for sex would reduce demand, but the defense department says the evidence suggests otherwise.

By Erica C. Barnett

A new report from the King County Department of Public Defense about misdemeanor arrests for “commercial sexual exploitation,” or paying for sex, found that virtually none of the men prosecuted between 2022 and 2025 (typically in SPD stings) has been prosecuted again. DPD has argued that this lack of recidivism proves there’s no need to make the offense a felony. Last year, the King County Prosecutor’s Office pushed for state legislation that would do just that, using lurid stories about sex traffickers, accompanied by unredacted images of beaten women, to argue that sex buyers are complicit in abuse.

Most of the 81 cases DPD reviewed resulted in what’s called a dispositional continuance, in which a person agrees to diversion—typically, a class on the consequences of buying sex (“john school”) and community service. None of those men were caught reoffending, suggesting that misdemeanor prosecution—and perhaps the embarrassment and shame of being caught—was enough to convince them not to reoffend.

“These findings clearly suggest that a misdemeanor offense is sufficient to deter people from engaging in this behavior, even one that uses a diversionary response” like sex buyers’ classes, DPD special counsel for criminal policy and practice Katie Hurley said. “And so, there’s no showing that a higher level, a more serious level offense is needed, and the misdemeanor response appears more than sufficient to deter repeat offending.”

The prosecutor’s office disagrees with this assessment, arguing that sex buying should come with harsher penalties, including jail time, in order to end the demand for sex work. In a recent statement, prosecutor Leesa Manion said prosecuting traffickers and pimps alone “won’t fix this problem” of sex trafficking. “Children, women and others from vulnerable communities continue to be exploited because they are in high demand by buyers. We’re fighting for state legislation to protect and increase resources for trafficking survivors by holding sex buyers accountable for using their money to buy sexual access to vulnerable people.

“Until that changes, we will continue to see the wild west of human trafficking, violence, and misery taking place along Aurora,” Manion said.

There are other possible explanations for the apparent lack of recidivism by men who buy sex, including the possibility that they do offend again but haven’t been caught.

Hurley said that if harsher consequences were necessary, more misdemeanor cases would lead to jail time, rather than dismissal. “You’d expect that people would only talk about needing a higher-level response if they were really maximizing the response available within the misdemeanor system, but in fact we see the opposite,” Hurley said .”We see the vast, vast majority of these cases being dismissed with dispositional continuances or for other reasons, and we see the recidivism rate being exceedingly low, and we’re seeing no real jail time imposed for these offenses.”

Although the prosecutor’s office often argues that wealthier white men are most likely to pay for sex in general, most of the men who actually get prosecuted for the offense are men of color, and a hugely disproportionate percentage are Latino, as PubliCola has previously reported. In the cases DPD covered in its report, 44 percent of the men prosecuted for sex buying were Latino (compared to 8 percent of the King County population), and 53 percent required an interpreter because they didn’t speak English.

One possible reason for the racial imbalance is that most of the prosecutions appear to have originated with SPD stings in the Lowe’s parking lot at 125th and Aurora, a place where Latino day laborers congregate. The police department trains female officers to pose as sex workers, then swoops in, using multiple teams of officers to grab and arrest one man at a time.

PubliCola reviewed about 35 of the cases in DPD’s report, and all but one originated in stings at 125th and Aurora. This area is about 20 blocks north of the area where neighborhood residents and business owners have sought help from the city to address gun violence related to sex trafficking.

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“Increasing the penalties and collateral consequences (such as adverse effects on housing, employment, and immigration) for people prosecuted in these cases would only further entrench existing racial and ethnic disparities in Washington’s criminal legal system,” DPD’s report concludes.

“To the extent that the claim that the majority of people who buy sex are wealthy white men, the ‘tool; of prosecuting people through sting operations by SPD on Aurora Avenue North will not reach the supposed majority of potential buyers – further undermining the claim that classifying this behavior as a felony will be an effective deterrent for that population.”

Casey McNerthney, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, said the discussion over how harshly to penalize sex buyers often ignores the perspectives of sex trafficking survivors, ” who we can say without speculation are disproportionately from marginalized communities, including people of color, kids from the foster care system, and people from the LGBTQIA+ community. The KCPAO’s support in the last session was rooted in what we have learned from extensive conversations with sex trafficking survivors and the lasting trauma that they endure.”

SPD stings, however, don’t involve actual sex workers—and do nothing to help victims of sex trafficking, for whom the city and county provide very few direct resources compared to their huge investments in policing and prosecutions.

We discussed the debate over sex work prosecutions, along with my recent reporting on another staff departure from Mayor Katie Wilson’s office, on the Seattle Nice podcast this week.

City Council, Courts

Aide to Councilmember Saka Sought Restraining Order Against Constituent

Photo of Councilmember Rob Saka in council chambers

Saka called Police Chief Shon Barnes to ask what to do about a resident who contacted his office repeatedly about a potential park in his backyard.

By Erica C. Barnett

A former chief of staff for City Councilmember Rob Saka, Elaine Ko, attempted to get a restraining order against Saka constituent Bruce Steinberg, after Steinberg called and emailed Ko and others at Saka’s office relentlessly over a conservation easement in his neighborhood.

King County Superior Court Judge Lisa Paglisotti denied Ko’s request last November, saying she believed Steinberg did not know he was calling Ko’s personal number and that his emails and calls about the easement may have been annoying but did not constitute personal harassment.

During her testimony, Ko revealed that Saka called Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes directly on her behalf. According to Ko, Barnes told Saka that “yes, that was over the line when you start getting phone calls on the personal line” and said Ko should contact Southwest Precinct commander Krista Bair, who advised her to call 911 and file a police report about Steinberg’s calls and emails.

Saka, along with a representative of the City Attorney’s Office, was present in court during the hearing in November. He responded to our questions with a statement that did not address our questions about his call to Barnes.

Saka’s predecessor, Lisa Herbold, had to pay a $500 fine after she texted then-police chief Carmen Best with concerns about a trailer that someone had parked near her house in 2020, at the height of protests outside councilmembers’ homes. (Herbold, who believed the trailer was placed there as a stunt, acknowledged violating a rule against using her public position for private benefit). No complaint has been filed about Saka’s phone call, according to Ethics and Elections director Wayne Barnett.

Steinberg told PubliCola he was just trying to get Saka to pay attention to a project located in a wetland in his neighborhood, which straddles the line between Seattle and unincorporated King County. A local church sold King County a conservation easement for about five acres it owns adjacent to Seola Pond, a wetland and county wastewater facility in Roxbury Heights, which the county plans to develop into a neighborhood greenspace.  Steinberg and some of his neighbors worry the project will cause flooding and traffic problems and result in more homeless people living near his house and, he said, eating area ducks.  (I asked him if he was serious about the ducks and he said yes.)

The land is not on City property; emails show that King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks sent Steinberg a detailed explanation of the work that has been happening on the property.

In addition to the emails he sent to Saka’s office, Ko noted in court that Steinberg called her 66 times after she hung up on him and blocked his number. (Ko said she confirmed the additional calls by requesting records from her phone company).  “I was quite upset. I felt harassed. I felt bothered by it all, and I did hang up. There was no point in continuing that call,” she said, according to a recording of the hearing.

In his response, Steinberg presented evidence that showed Ko initially called him from her personal number to set up a walking tour of the area in September, which is how he said he got her number. Ko acknowledged that she may have called Steinberg from her number and agreed that he didn’t threaten or attack her directly. But, she argued, he was so rude and insistent that his behavior constituted harassment. “[The emails] were very harassing, negative, rude, disrespectful emails, and that is the truth,” Ko said in court.

In his statement, Saka said the calls to Ko’s phone and the emails to his office “went far beyond the robust engagement we typically receive from some passionate constituents. This was a unique situation involving targeted harassment, bullying, and intimidation that crossed onto personal devices and deeply impacted an employee’s sense of personal safety and mental health.”

Steinberg he believed all along that he was calling Ko’s work cell phone. “If [she] had come back and said, ‘Bruce, this is my personal line,’ I would have stopped immediately,” Steinberg told PubliCola in an interview. “I’m crazy, but I’m not rude in that way.”

PubliCola reviewed dozens of the emails we received in response to a records request. None are threatening or obscene, although several insult Ko and two men who used to work for Saka by calling them bad at their jobs.  And many are pushy, bordering on manic.

In an email last August, for instance, Steinberg wrote, “I have started calling EVERY phone member of the council members incessantly and will continue to until we get the meeting we are requesting. I work from home and have ALLLL day to call and leave messages and fill up your inbox. This is not a threat or hate or anything else you guys want to spin but I will bury your voice mails on EVERY single phone line I can find until Rob puts his boy pants on and reaches out to the people who pay his salary.”

Steinberg acknowledged calling and emailing city officials and staff, including Ko, incessantly about the easement. (In one of the emails PubliCola obtained, he claimed to have contacted Saka’s office “no less than 1,000 times.”)

“I understand where people might not like my style,” Steinberg said, but he’s spent years bugging elected officials and city and county staffers about flooding and other issues in his neighborhood and hasn’t been satisfied with the results. “Sometimes, to get attention, you have to act like a four-year-old.”

He also copped to openly mocking Ko during the walking tour, “sort of mimicking her and pushing her buttons,” which led to a confrontation between the two and ultimately Ko’s departure from the tour, which itself became another point of contention. But he said he never harassed, stalked, or threatened her personally or spoke to her about anything other than city business—something Ko acknowledged in court.

Saka told PubliCola that Ko’s case was “ultimately dismissed purely on a technicality, not based on the sheer volume and scope of the harassing messages at issue.”

In fact, Judge Paglisotti said Steinberg’s actions were exactly the kind of behavior public servants should expect when their job involves responding to constituents. “It is reasonable to expect that this type of pestering, if you will, or persistence, comes with the territory,” Paglisotti said. “The persistence and the advocacy that the respondent was engaged in was not just to you specifically. It was to the whole [Saka] office.”

Ko, who is in her 70s, retired earlier this year. Saka suggested her decision was related to Steinberg’s pestering. After the hearing, he told us in his statement, “my employee made the difficult decision to retire after many decades of selfless service to our city and community.” In an email to staff published by the West Seattle Blog in February, Ko did not connect the two events, saying her plan had always been to work for Saka’s office for two years andretire. When contacted by phone, Ko declined to comment for this story.

Courts, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, Media, Transit

This Week on PubliCola: May 9, 2026
Sound Transit’s four Seattle representatives: Katie Wilson, Dan Strauss, Girmay Zahilay, and Teresa Mosqueda.

Cops burn through sick time, county official accused of stalking must wear GPS monitor, Sound Transit announces “affordable” ST3 alternative, and much more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, May 4

Audit: Retiring SPD Officers Routinely Burn Through Months of Sick Time, Costing City Millions Each Year

An audit by the city’s Office of Inspector General shows that retiring Seattle police officers routinely hoard sick leave and use it all at the end of their careers, allowing them to accumulate full pay for those days (which would otherwise “pay out” at 25 percent of an officer’s salary) without providing evidence that they’re actually sick. The pervasive practice costs the city millions of dollars a year.

Tuesday, May 5

County Council Launches Action to Address Homelessness Authority’s Financial Issues

The King County Council is asking King County Executive Girmay Zahilay to conduct an assessment of the the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s forthcoming “corrective action” plan responding the issues identified in a recent forensic audit, and produce a report on “whether the county should continue, amend, or terminate its participation” in the interlocal agreement that created KCRHA.

After “Cavalier” Social Media Posts, Judge Says County Assessor Accused of Stalking Must Wear GPS Monitor After All

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson tried to convince a judge that PubliCola’s coverage of stalking allegations against him, which he characterized as unfounded opinions on a “personal blog,” was to blame for the negative reaction to his social media posts gloating that he had convinced a judge that he couldn’t wear an ankle monitor. The judge didn’t buy it, and said he’d have to wear a GPS monitor after all.

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No Wonder the Pundit Class Can’t Stand Her: We Discuss the Mayor’s “Gaffes,” Shelter Buffer Zones, and the KCRHA’s Financial Plight

On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we debated whether Mayor Katie Wilson is, as many pundits have recently argued, a “gaffe”-prone buffoon, or if she’s just saying things they don’t agree with. We also discussed a proposal (later withdrawn) to require shelter-free “buffer zones” around parks, child cares, and schools, and we talked about the fallout last week from a forensic audit of the regional homelessness authority.

Wednesday, May 6

Council Committee Approves Larger New Shelters Amid Cloud of Mayor-Council Conflict

A growing rift between the City Council and Mayor Wilson exploded (almost) into the open this week, after Wilson staffers made what many councilmembers and staff described as an inappropriate request to pull the mayor’s legislation to allow larger shelters because she was unhappy with some council amendments. At a meeting the afternoon before the vote, Wilson’s staff reportedly seemed to think they could tell the council, a separate branch of government, what to do.

Thursday, May 7

The Gaffe Faff: Wilson isn’t Misspeaking. She’s Delivering.

In his latest Maybe Metropolis column, Josh Feit takes a swing at pundits who are aghast that Mayor Wilson is openly supporting lefty priorities like taxing the rich and painting bus lanes. These things only seem like “gaffes,” Josh writes, to people in denial that Seattle willingly elected a socialist who ran on the exact progressive agenda she’s now espousing.

Friday, May 8

The C Is for Crank: The News About Sound Transit Is Grim. Why Are Most Seattle Politicians Pretending It Isn’t?

In my column, I wonder why elected officials from Seattle are playing nice about the latest Sound Transit 3 plan, which defers stations in Seattle (including Graham Street in the Rainier Valley, first promised in 1999) and cuts the entire Ballard line, at least until savings and “new revenue” (i.e. bonds regional taxpayers will still be paying back in the 22nd century) can be found.

Courts

After “Cavalier” Social Media Posts, Judge Says County Assessor Accused of Stalking Must Wear GPS Monitor After All
These social media posts that made a judge question whether the King County Assessor, who’s accused of stalking his ex, is taking his situation seriously. Wilson argued that the court should ignore his posts because they appeared on PubliCola, which he called a “personal blog” consisting of the “unverified…opinions” of “someone named Erica Barnett.”

Wilson tried to blame PubliCola for turning the court and public against him, calling us a “personal blog” whose coverage the judge should ignore. She didn’t buy it, saying his own actions were to blame.

By Erica C. Barnett

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson will have to wear a GPS ankle monitor to ensure that he stays at least 1,000 feet away from his ex-fiancée Lee Keller, who has accused him of stalking her, a Seattle Municipal Court judge ruled on Tuesday. A different judge had decided Wilson did not need to wear a previously ordered monitor, after Wilson said he had a medical condition, lymphedema, that requires him to soak both legs every day. The company that provides King County’s ankle monitors, Sentinel, confirmed that their units can’t be submerged in water.

Wilson was arrested and jailed last year when he showed up repeatedly at Keller’s house while she had a protection order against him; he’s currently facing charges related to that arrest. Previously, according to Keller, Wilson contacted the employer of a man she had dated to falsely accuse him of sexually assaulting her; took photos of her without her knowledge and sent them to her; showed up at her home uninvited and refused to leave; and harassed her with incessant calls and text messages.

The King County Council, Seattle Women’s Commission, and Seattle Times editorial board have all called for Wilson to step down. In court on Monday, John Polito, Wilson’s attorney, said the criticism was tantamount to “calling for his head on a stake” and had biased the public unfairly against him.

In fact, Wilson would have been allowed to continue without the ankle monitor if not for own actions. Hours after learning he would not have to wear an ankle monitor after all, Wilson posted a selfie on Instagram and Facebook showing sitting in a tub, grinning, with the caption,  “What a great day to just soak in the tub and let your cares float away.” Three days later, he did it again, posting, “Great to soak my legs after after (sic) a very productive and successful week” above a photo of him in the tub, mid-laugh.

PubliCola broke the story about Wilson’s defiant posts. Our article made its way to Judge Catherine MacDowell through an internal news distribution service, and she ordered Wilson to show up to court in person to address what she called “cavalier and public” posts that indicate “he does not seem to be taking this seriously.”

In a brief filed Monday, Polito argued that PubliCola is a mere “personal blog” by “someone named Erica Barnett” that should be disregarded because it is merely the “Ms. Barnett’s personal opinions unedited and unverified.”

In court, Polito argued that Wilson was being treated unfairly because of all the negative coverage and public criticism by elected officials and the press. (He also suggested that the word “stalking” was defamatory.) “If his name was John Smith, this would not be happening,” Polito said. He then claimed that Keller’s recent presence at a fundraiser for King County Executive Girmay Zahilay was a sign that her case against Wilson was politically motivated.

Turning to one of the oldest tropes in the victim-blaming book, Polito argued that Keller can’t really be afraid of Wilson, because she got back together with him in the past. (The brief Polito filed Monday includes many photos of the two together, complete with editorial comments from Polito like “the joy on their faces speaks volumes far more than words.”)

“This [court] is the place free all of that nonsense, all of the ‘hashtag, I Believe Her.’ But just because women weren’t believed doesn’t mean we automatically believe them,” Polito said. “It’s not, ‘hashtag, I Believe Her,’ it’s ‘hashtag, He Didn’t Do This.'”

MacDowell said all those arguments were irrelevant to the question before her—should Wilson have to wear an ankle monitor to ensure he stays away from Keller, or should she take him at his word that he’ll never contact her again?

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“Yes, in a case where he wasn’t an elected official, if a defendant had posted something on social media, it’s likely it wouldn’t have come to the court’s attention on its own,” she said. But since Wilson is fully aware that he’s an elected official and public figure, and posted the images anyway,  “it calls into question the seriousness of the issues that he represented to the court”—that is, whether Wilson’s medical condition really requires him to soak both his legs every single night.

MacDowell gave Wilson until next month to sort out the ankle monitor issue, which will also give him and his lawyer an opportunity to determine if a wrist monitor would work instead. If he ends up with an ankle monitor and still needs to soak his legs regularly, MacDowell suggested, he’s free to come to Sentinel’s office as often as he wants to have them switch the monitor from one leg to the other.

In a statement, Keller said, “I am grateful the court agreed that John Wilson must wear a GPS device to ensure he does not come near me and has no contact with me. He has shown he will not obey court orders and I am concerned for my safety without court assurances. The GPS monitoring device will provide me with that confidence that he must stay away.”

Courts, Density, homelessness, labor, Mayor Wilson, Police, Transportation

This Week on PubliCola: April 25, 2026
KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison

A forensic audit finds widespread problems at the homelessness agency, county workers rally against in-office mandates, and a ton of other stories you may have missed this week.

Monday, April 20

SPD Gives Medal to Officer Who Chased Man Into Traffic, Leaving Carful of Kids Behind

The Seattle Police Department put out a video congratulating officer Albert Khandzhayan for apprehending a man who had kidnapped his wife’s three children by breaking the window of her car, dragging her out, and driving off with the kids inside. The video includes disturbing audio from the woman’s panicked 911 call; when we contacted SPD, they expressed “regret” for posting the audio without asking the victim’s permission.

Update: After we posted about the video, SPD removed it from Youtube and their website, replacing it with a note said in part: “Recognizing the potential harm this post may have caused, we have removed the video originally posted here.”

County Assessor, Charged With Stalking, Posts Taunting Pics as Council Again Demands His Resignation

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson posted multiple photos of himself in a tub, shirtless, on Instagram and Facebook Stories, with captions flaunting the fact that a judge ruled he did not have to wear a previously ordered ankle monitor because of a medical condition he claimed requires him to soak both legs every day. His next hearing is May 5, when PubliCola hears he may be asked to address the flippant posts.

Tuesday, April 21

Will Dialing Back Fees on Housing Fix Seattle’s Construction Crash?

On our first of two Seattle Nice episodes this week, we interviewed land use and housing consultant Natalie Quick and the city’s former chief operating officer Marco Lowe about why developers are asking holiday from Mandatory Housing Affordability fees, which pay for affordable housing but are bringing in less money as housing development slows.

Union Members, King County Employees Protest Three-Day Office Mandate

Members of the PROTEC17 union, including King County employees, protested King County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s three-day-a-week return to office (RTO) mandate, which county employees have called punitive, expensive, and counterproductive. Many of the county’s far-flung workers have never been to physical offices, so “return to office” is a misnomer.

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Wednesday, April 22

Seattle Times Fails to Credit PubliCola for Reporting on County Assessor’s Social Media Posts

The Seattle Times failed to credit PubliCola’s original reporting on County Assessor Wilson’s disappearing social media posts, instead representing the find as their original reporting. This is not in keeping with bare-minimum standards for crediting other news sources when doing followup coverage of a story another media outlet broke.

Forensic Audit Finds Homelessness Agency Lacked Basic Accounting Standards, Lost at Least $13 Million

A devastating forensic audit found multiple serious issues with the way the regional homelessness authority ran its finances, including casual accounting practices, commingling of restricted funds, consistent negative balances, and millions of dollars in overspending and money that the agency was unable to account for. The audit led local officials to issue statements calling for accountability and, in some cases, the immediate dissolution of the agency.

Thursday, April 23

Fulfilling a Campaign Promise, Wilson Announces Denny Way Bus Lanes Coming This Year

Mayor Katie Wilson announced a two-phase plan to add a dedicated bus lane along the most congested part of Denny Way, between Lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, and create a new pathway to the South I-5 on-ramp. The two-phase plan will fulfill a campaign promise to address chronic delays on the bus route known derisively as the “L8.”

Alarming Audit, Missing Millions: Is the End Nigh for KCRHA?

In our second podcast this week, we discussed the implications of the KCRHA audit for the future of the long-embattled agency. The audit, I argued, is most concerning for what it reveals about the agency’s lax financial controls and casual accounting practices, which included allowing the same person to oversee expenditures from approval to validation that the expense was appropriate and calculated and logged correctly.

Friday, April 24

KCRHA Board Will Meet Today to Discuss Disastrous Forensic Audit

I previewed the KCRHA board meeting to discuss the audit, including the agency’s own preemptive efforts to suggest things were well under control.

Also this week: On Friday, I covered the KCRHA board meeting in detail, including CEO Kelly Kinnison’s insistence that the audit didn’t find fraud and that no money went “missing.” In a presentation, the auditor corrected those claims and added texture to some of the dry details in the audit, including the KCRHA’s extensive use of a private temp staffing agency that charged large commissions and the widespread use of credit cards without clear authorization or line-item receipts.

Coming up: On Monday, I’ll be on City Cast Seattle discussing the audit findings and what they mean for the future of the agency. Tune in!