1.During a debate sponsored by the Urban Community Councils of Seattle Thursday evening, City Councilmember Sara Nelson casually said she and Councilmember Debora Juarez had laughed at people who showed up at council meetings to oppose the expansion of police surveillance cameras around the city.
“I was talking to Debora Juarez after the vote and we were kind of chuckling at the fact that yeah, there were a lot of people that didn’t like it,” Nelson said. “It was the council members of color that spoke most vehemently in favor of it. And what she said to me in my office afterwards was, yeah, people of color are tired of their kids getting killed, frankly.”
As we reported at the time, every council meeting about police surveillance has included comments from dozens of people vehemently opposed to police surveillance of Seattle residents. Tthe new CCTV surveillance program began, ostensibly, as a “pilot” in July; just two weeks later, long before there was any data to demonstrate the effectiveness (and risks) of the cameras, the council took up legislation to expand the program.
Supporters have dismissed concerns that the Trump administration or red states could subpoena the city for footage to help them pursue and prosecute immigrants or people seeking abortions and gender-affirming care.
Nelson’s opponent, Dionne Foster, responded that she was ” absolutely shocked to hear you say you were chuckling at people who didn’t like” the legislation. “I stand here as a Black woman who does not support this legislation. I’ve heard you repeatedly, at debate after debate, invoke other council members of color.”
“There are other candidates of color who are running for office”—includign both Eddie Lin and Adonis Ducksworth, running for Council District 2— “who have been clear that they would not have supported this proposed expansion. I will also again reiterate, as I have before, that council member Rinck, one of the folks who did oppose it, is also a person of color. So let’s just make sure that we get that out there while we’re talking about the role that race and identity plays in these decisions.”.
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Nelson was also blithe about the privacy implications of widespread police surveillance. “Privacy is is undermined as we circulate through the city all the time,” she said. “We need to embrace technology.”
A recent University of Washington study found that US immigration agents were able to access license plate data maintained by at least 10 police departments in Washington state, despite assurances by surveillance firm Flock Safety that the information was secure.
2. Burien City Manager Adolfo filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission earlier this month over a campaign mailer that quoted a letter signed by dozens of Burien police officers expressing “no confidence” in Bailon and Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling. Schilling is running for state representative against fellow Democrat Edwin Obras, the 33rd Legislative District incumbent. The mailer, aimed at Republican voters, came from a political action committee backing Obras.
The no-confidence letter, which PubliCola covered last year, came after Bailon repeatedly said he wanted to fire then-Burien Police Chief Ted Boe (an employee of the King County Sheriff’s Office, which provides Burien’s police services) because Boe refused to direct officers to prioritize sweeping homeless people from their tents under Burien’s total ban on sleeping outdoors.
In his complaint, filed from his official government email address on October 8, Bailon accused the PAC of violating an unspecified law by “spreading misinformation for the purpose of defaming a non-political and non-public city employee, and attempting to mislead voters by spreading information that is knowingly false. The mailer also attempts to injure the reputation of a non-political and non-public city employee by attempting to prevent him from a right to unabashed social intercourse when communicating with all residents of the City of Burien, and counterparts from neighboring cities as Burien attempts to resolve issues affecting its region as a whole.”
Additionally, Bailon claimed, “Burien Police Department does not exist as an entity and does not have any employees”—suggesting that it was false and libelous to use the term the city itself uses for its police force.
It didn’t take long for the PDC to dismiss Bailon’s complaint. On October 20, the PDC informed Bailon that his complaint lacked merit, since the quotes on the mailer were accurate and there was “no evidence that these statements are being made with malice.”
“Additionally, the statements made appear to be characterizations that are debatable or open to interpretation rather than statements of material fact about any individuals,” PDC Compliance Coordinator Jordan Campbell wrote in the dismissal.
On Friday, several private and nonprofit affordable housing developers joined Mayor Bruce Harrell to criticize his challenger Katie Wilson’s proposal to move unsheltered people into vacant units in “workforce” housing developments, saying it would be a “disaster” to try to mix chronically homeless people in with the general population in these buildings.
“Our experiences and independent data have shown that people struggling on the street with behavioral health challenges cannot just be placed in an apartment and succeed,” Harrell said.
“According to the 2024 Point in Time Count, most people living unsheltered in King County have a physical, cognitive or general disability, a third of those surveyed said they live with severe mental illness, and nearly half said they struggle with substance abuse. … Scattering people in buildings across the city where the services to address addiction and mental health health issues do not exist, will be a disaster.”
Currently, thousands of units funded with city dollars, many of them small studios with rents comparable to what’s available in the private market, are sitting vacant. Some developers have argued that these will fill up as construction slows and rents for market-rate studio apartments increase.
Karen Lee, the CEO of Plymouth Housing, described the intensive services provided in Plymouth’s buildings, which are designed to serve chronically homeless people who, by definition, have disabling mental or physical conditions. “For them to rejoin society, it takes care, it takes compassion, it takes knowledge, and it is doable. But [living] in an apartment building for working-class folks that is staffed with a building manager and some cleanliness staff—that is not the environment” for success, Lee said.
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Wilson, contacted this afternoon, said she never proposed putting people who need permanent supportive housing in empty apartments at buildings that lack supportive services—an approach that helped doom the “Partnership for Zero” program to swiftly end visible homelessness downtown, which Harrell supported, last year.
Instead, Wilson said, she wants to create subsidies for “low-acuity” people who don’t require intense, round-the-clock care, freeing up shelter beds by helping people who’ve been stuck in shelter for long periods move on to housing. “Obviously, we need to pay close attention to who we’re placing where, and we don’t want to replicate the kind of problems that have ben happening recently with putting high-acuity homeless folks in buildings that aren’t equipped to handle them and without the supportive services that they need on site,” Wilson said.
“If you look across our shelter system, there are a lot of low-acuity homeless folks who are kind of stuck in the system because we don’t have throughput to affordable units for them. … The success of this plan is going to rely on appropriately placing people” in housing that fits their needs, Wilson continued.
Harrell has repeatedly said that recently homeless people do not belong in the same living environment as the “teachers and baristas” for whom workforce housing is designed. Wilson’s strategy, he said, “will actually create more vacancies as these buildings experience the well-known issues” seen in permanent supportive housing, such as fights, overdoses, and frequent 911 calls. “[It] will be a disaster.”
Wilson disagreed that formerly homeless people can’t thrive in regular affordable housing. “If you have someone who is coming out of homelessness, who doesn’t have serious behavioral health problems, who maybe has a disability, they’ll be a fine neighbor,” Wilson said. “Obviously we need to assess people, but the idea that, categorically, these are different kinds of people [is wrong]. There are teachers and barista who are homeless.”
1. Former Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz is trying to get a third King County Superior Court judge tossed from his lawsuit against the city, claiming that the judge, Nelson Lee, is biased against him. Previously, Diaz petitioned successfully to have Judge Suzanne Parisien removed; a second judge, Cindi Port, later recused herself, sending Diaz’ case to Lee’s courtroom.
Mayor Bruce Harrell removed Diaz from his role as chief last May, after several women accused Diaz of sexual harassment and of fostering a hostile workplace environment for women at SPD. Diaz remained on full pay at the city until seven months later, when Harrell finally fired him after a lengthy investigation. That investigation concluded that Diaz and his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, had lied about having an inappropriate workplace relationship and coordinated to cover their tracks.
Diaz’ lawsuit claims Harrell’s true reason for firing him was because he wouldn’t assent to the mayor’s preferred discipline for Daniel Auderer, the officer who was caught on tape laughing and joking about the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old student, shortly after SPD officer Kevin Dave stuck and killed her in 2023. Interim police chief Sue Rahr fired Auderer in January.
Diaz’ motion to have Lee removed from his case claims Lee is biased against him based on the fact that he is overseeing a case filed against the city (though not against Diaz himself) by SPD officer Lauren Truscott, one of several women who have sued over alleged gender discrimination, sexual and racial harassment, and retaliation at SPD. “Although Chief Diaz is not a named defendant or party in that matter, as this Court is aware, the allegations against him in Truscott are both false and highly prejudicial,” Diaz’ petition says.
In addition, Diaz claims that because Lee “expressly admitted to following media coverage about Chief Diaz,” he is admitting bias, since the coverage of Diaz has been “overwhelmingly negative,” “salacious,” and “false.”
As one of several examples, Diaz pointed to PubliCola’s report on his firing, using an inaccurate version of a headline that appeared on the article only briefly, “Mayor Harrell Fired Diaz over ‘False’ Statements Denying ‘Intimate Relationship’ With Top Staffer.” (I shortened the headline in the interest of brevity, but the newsletter version of the post is subheaded, “Harrell said Diaz repeatedly made ‘false statements’ about an ‘intimate relationship’ with a top staffer to members of the media, to SPD’s command staff, and to Harrell himself.”
Diaz’ attorney altered our headline to remove the quotation marks, making it appear as if we were asserting his statements were false, rather than Harrell.
“Setting aside for a moment the false nature of these reports, the mere fact that Judge Lee has followed and commented on such coverage gives rise to a well-founded appearance of bias,” the motion claims.
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2. Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest (PPVNW) filed a complaint against King County Council candidate Peter Kwon, saying he falsely claimed to have their endorsement on a campaign mailing earlier this month.
Kwon, a SeaTac City Councilmember, is running against attorney Steffanie Fain for the South King County seat. The reproductive rights group rescinded their endorsement of Kwon on September 18 after learning he told the King County Republican Party that he supports banning trans girls from girls’ school sports and locker rooms.
This position was inconsistent with what Kwon told PPVNW in a written statement, according to the complaint.
The Republican questionnaire included the question, “What are your thoughts on allowing trans students assigned male at birth to play in girls’ school sports and use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms?” Kwon responded: “I believe students should compete in their respective biological category to preserve fairness and protect opportunities—especially for girls and young women. Competitive sports are often divided by sex for a reason: to ensure a level playing field and prevent physical advantages from undermining fair competition.”
In an email to Kwon rescinding the endorsement on September 18, PPVNW Washington State Director Courtney Normand wrote, “As we discussed on the phone last week and via email, there are inconsistencies between written statements you made to Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates and to other groups regarding your position on trans youth and their right to full inclusion and participation in all parts of school and community life.”
“We hold our endorsed candidates to the highest standards of integrity and any decision to rescind an endorsement is made with careful deliberation and due diligence,” Normand said in a written statement. “We have zero tolerance for the misleading or unauthorized use of our trusted name and respected brand.”
Kwon did not respond to a request for an interview.
Speaking to a friendly audience at the We Heart Seattle-sponsored “Great Debate” at the Washington Athletic Club, Mayor Bruce Harrell was cheerful and expansive as he complained about the healthy department, talked about how “cool” it would be to project an interactive AI version of MLK on a downtown wall, and suggested he’d be open to prohibiting protesters from wearing masks.
An SPD operation that involved a stakeout to catch shoplifters at a Marshall’s discount store in West Seattle cost the city thousands of dollars‚ including pay for the 10 officers involved in the sting, and netted low-priced merchandise like knit beanies, children’s shoes, and two sweatshirts—the highest-value items, at $30 each). Police made five shoplifting arrests.
This week’s special guest on Seattle Nice, Purpose Dignity Action’s Director of Outreach and Special Initiatives Nichole AleThis Week On PubliCola: October 18, 2025xander, spoke with us about the work PDA’s CoLEAD program is doing with drug users at a longtime “hot spot” in the Chinatown International District.
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Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget is unsustainable and relies heavily on fiscal sleight-of-hand to come up with a balanced budget in 2026, a city council staff analysis concluded These tricks include relying on a one-time $141 million fund balance left over from 2025, which won’t be there to balance the budget next year; funding programs that will be necessary long-term with one-time resources, and assuming a $10 million “underspend” every year in the future,.
One of many new spends in the budget is $800,000 to implement unspecified new AI software at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections that, the city believes, will speed up permitting times by pre-checking applications and automating some functions currently provided by city employees.
Mothers who lost their sons to gun violence told PubliCola they felt ignored and disrespected by Mayor Bruce Harrell, who they accused of exploiting their tragedies for political points. Several described a healing circle where Harrell turned out to be a special guest, but left early after a verbal clash with one of the women, telling the group “I didn’t even want to come here.”
Harrell’s proposed budget for the police department includes more than $3 million in annual costs for (yet another) recruiting firm that has created (yet another) series of high-octane, macho ads; meanwhile, it fails to fund a staffer to advance recruitment of women, on the grounds that SPD doesn’t have enough money.
Meanwhile, Harrell’s budget uses the JumpStart payroll tax—originally earmarked for affordable housing, Green New Deal programs, and equitable development—for policing at next year’s World Cup games and the expansion of CCTV surveillance cameras into the Stadium District.
A new mailer from the pro-Harrell PAC headed up by his deputy mayor, Tim Burgess, sent out a condescending, misleading mailer featuring his opponent Katie Wilson’s resume as of 2015, when it went back to 2006 and included jobs at a bakery and as resident manager of an apartment building. The flip side featured Harrell’s resume, which revealed that he hasn’t applied for a job since 1990 at the latest.
1. Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future, the business-backed political action committee headed by Harrell’s deputy mayor Tim Burgess, sent out a condescending and misleading mailer featuring a résumé that his opponent, labor leader Katie Wilson, submitted as part of an application for a city transit board more than a decade ago.
The document, which includes Wilson’s former home address as well as the address and partially visible phone number of a long-ago employer, purports to show that Wilson has no experience. Ten years ago, Wilson included jobs going back to when she was 24 years old, including a stint at Julia’s Bakery in Wallingford.
At the time she submitted the résumé to the city, Wilson had just started her role as general secretary ot the Transit Riders Union, an organization founded in 2011 to fight for better transit. Since then, as the head of TRU, Wilson led three successful campaigns for higher minimum wages, helped craft the JumpStart payroll tax as a leader of the city’s progressive revenue task force, fought for free transit passes for youth, and led campaigns for stronger renter protections in Seattle and several other cities.
You wouldn’t know that from the misleading mailer from the Burgess-led PAC, though, which doubles down on Harrell’s strategy of pretending his opponent is an ineffective know-nothing. If one were eliminate the last 10 years from Harrell’s resume, his own most recent experience would include “two-term city council member (2007-2014)” and “failed candidate for mayor” (2013).
2. The Seattle Police Department’s budget for this year includes funding for a $3.3 million, two-year advertising contract with the firm Epic Productions of Phoenix, LLC aimed at recruiting new officers through online ads through the end of 2026.
This is just the latest of several recruiting contracts the city has funded amid annual deficits in the hundreds of millions of dollars. As of this year, the city is hiring police at an unprecedented rate, according to a city council central staff analysis, a fact that almost certainly has more to do with new six-figure starting salaries than macho Youtube videos about “what gives us a rush.”
Interestingly, SPD’s budget counts those videos as part of its “30 by 30” effort to recruit more women, perhaps because there are women in the videos. The “30 by 30” initiative is a commitment by police departments to boost recruitment classes to 30 percent women by 2030 and to retain women through initiatives focused on improving police culture and meeting women’s specific needs. So far this year, SPD’s recruitment class has been less than 9 percent female.
While SPD was able to find $3 million for the Epic ads, they have not hired anyone for a position created in 2024 to oversee its 30 by 30 efforts, despite the fact that the city assumed funding for this position last year for both 2025 and 2026 would come from “salary savings that would accrue from vacant, funded civilian positions within the department.” According to a central staff memo, SPD chose instead to use this money for “civilian salary savings.”
“In response to the pessimistic revenue forecast in April, as well as threats of federal funding cuts, the Executive took immediate action to proactively prepare for significant negative impacts to the City budget. Additionally, given the unexpected increase in officer hiring, the department has had to take on an increase in expenses and has had to use the remaining civilian salary savings to balance the GF budget.”
SPD will also get nearly a million dollars from the JumpStart payroll tax to pay for live CCTV camera surveillance in the Stadium District, part of a permanent police surveillance program, and for unspecified equipment and security costs for the six FIFA World Cup games happening here next year. JumpStart was passed explicitly to pay for equitable development projects, affordable housing, and other programs to benefit low-income people and underserved communities. Last year, the council voted to remove all restrictions on the fund, allowing the city to use it as an all-purpose slush fund for any budget purpose.
Mayor Bruce Harrell speaks at the honorary designation of a portion of East Union Street as D’Vonne Pickett., Jr. Way in 2023. Image via Seattle Channel
By Erica C. Barnett
D’Vonne Pickett, the owner of The Postman mailing and shipping store and in the Central District, was just 31 when he was shot and killed outside his store three years ago. His public memorial service, at Climate Pledge Arena, drew thousands of mourners. Among them was Mayor Bruce Harrell, who broke down as he described learning from his son that Pickett had been killed.
“Whathappenedto D’Vonne— thishappenedtimeandtimeagainwhenIwaslittleboyinthe CD, goingto T.T. Minor, Meany, andGarfield,” Harrell said, naming his elementary, middle and high schools. “We have to do everything humanly possible to save our own community, because no one’s going to do it for us,” Harrell said. “We have to hold up the family. You don’t say, ‘What can I do?’ Do it.”
Three years after Pickett was kiled, his mother, Nicky Chappell, is planning an “angelversary” celebration of his life that will double as a fundraiser; his grave, at Lakeview Cemetery, still lacks a headstone. Despite Harrell’s comments about her family at the memorial, Chappell says the mayor didn’t acknowledge or speak to her at the event, and hasn’t reached out to her in the years since.
Over the past several weeks, PubliCola has spoken to the mothers of young men killed by gun violence who told us Harrell ignored their pleas for help during his years in office, reaching out to some of them only once he was running for reelection. We also spoke with Black business owners and advocates who are supporting Wilson because they’ve met with her and believe she’s willing to make a place for them at the table. Some wouldn’t go on the record, citing a fear of retribution if Harrell gets reelected. Others talked at length about their disappointment with a mayor they thought would stand up for their communities.
“Every time he starts talking, he talks about his roots, or ‘I grew up in the CD,’ ‘my family’ this and ‘my family’ that. That’s what he did at my son’s service and I didn’t like that,” Chappell said. “We’re not going to talk about you growing up in the CD or whatever schools you went to. My son’s service wasn’t for you to come here and talk about what you talk about on the news all the time.”
After the service, Chappell said, she reached out to the mayor’s office on social media and eventually secured a meeting, where she told him she was disappointed and hurt that he hadn’t reached out or offered help. “As the mother in a high-profile case, I think he should have done better with me. as as a mother. … We would have never talked if I hadn’t reached out to him about how he did me at my son’s service.”
“If he’s going to involve himself in situations like this, or these traumatic incidents, don’t come half-ass,” Chappell said.
Harrell is in a tough reelection battle against a challenger, Katie Wilson, who disagrees with him strongly on many major policies, from the decision to place surveillance cameras in neighborhoods around the city, including the Central District, to his support for putting police officers in schools— starting with his alma mater, Garfield High School.
In debates, Harrell has frequently tried to shut Wilson down by talking about his personal history as someone who grew up Black and biracial in the Central District; unlike Wilson, a white woman who grew up in upstate New York, “my parents weren’t college professors,” Harrell said at a recent forum.
“Race,” my colleague Marcus Harrison Green wrote in a powerful recent piece for the South Seattle Emerald, “has shadowed this race from the start.” Harrell has certainly used it, suggesting (falsely) that his white opponent “darkened” his skin on an Instagram post. (In fact, the post that gave Harrell’s skin an orange tint was created by a progressive group run primarily by people of color whose Black director called the claim “untrue and offensive.”)
At a press event to announce a housing reparations proposal, Harrell lashed out at critics, saying the people he sees on the streets are “people I grew up with. How dare they write that under this administration—which has, by the way, the most diverse set of leaders on the executive floor in our city’s history—how dare anyone question the compassion of this administration toward people who are underrepresented?”
Several mothers who lost their children to gun violence said they initially had high hopes for Harrell, but have spent the past four years trying in vain to get Harrell to listen to them and other women who struggle with grief, job loss, threats, and the financial burden of caring for grandchildren long after losing a child.
“What mothers go through in crisis is not a one-time opportunity—it’s ongoing, especially with gun violence,” said Donnitta Sinclair, whose son, Horace Lorenzo Anderson, was shot in the CHOP protest zone in 2020 and died at Harborview. Volunteer medics took Anderson to the hospital in a pickup truck as a Seattle Fire Department medic unit idled nearby.
Earlier this year, Sinclair and a group of about 20 other mothers who lost children to gun violence met for a healing circle that was coordinated by the nonprofit group RISE. About halfway through the event, they learned that a special guest would be arriving soon: Mayor Bruce Harrell. Several people who were present told PubliCola what happened next.
As a video of their children played in the background, Harrell walked in with his security and asked, “‘Do you guys want me to talk freely and keep it real?’ recalled Lonnisha Landry, whose son, 16-year-old Xavier Landry, was shot and killed in Auburn lsat July; Landry is currently petitioning the state to do advanced DNA testing on casings left at the scene of the murder, hoping they will help identify his killer. “We said, ‘Keep it real.’ And he was like, ‘Cut the cameras.'”
According to four accounts, a videographer who was filming the event turned off his camera and everyone put their phones away.
“He was just writing, kind of not paying attention—okay, that’s one thing,” Landry continued. “But then when he does get to talking, he wants to basically say, ‘I’m not one of you guys, I haven’t lost a child, but I am one of you guys because I grew up in the community. I went to Garfield and I knew Donnitta’s family and I remember when one of her uncles stole my father’s coat.’ And we were like, ‘What?'”
Sinclair confirmed that Harrell made the crack about the supposed coat incident, which would have occurred before she was born. It wasn’t the first time, she said. Harrell also mentioned it when they spoke shortly before his first election in 2021. At the time, Sinclair recalled, “I told him, ‘Mr. Harrell, I lost my son. I’m not really interested in no coat.”
After some heated back and forth with Sinclair, several people who were present recalled, Harrell slammed his hand on the table, told the women “I didn’t even want to come here,” and started walking toward the door. (Chappell, who was present, said she understood why he was mad: He and Sinclair don’t get along. On the other hand: Sinclair is a mother who lost her son; Harrell is, well, the mayor.) Landry said she asked Harrell to at least stay and talk to a woman who had been trying to meet with him for more than a year. “We’re kind of pleading and wanting him to hear us. It was cold.”
Keshia McGee, whose son, James Richardson (the hip-hop artist Tanaa Money) was shot and killed in 2019, said Harrell’s words about not wanting to be there “haunt me to this day. We finally got a chance to speak to him about our kids … and he told us he didn’t even want to come to our healing circle,” she said.
“The way he treated us was like we were little ants and he was the giant.”
It wasn’t the first time McGee had felt used by Harrell and people associated with the mayor. In 2023, Harrell held a “One Seattle Day of Remembrance for Gun Violence Victims” event but didn’t reach out to her to participate in the event itself. Instead, she said, she got an invitation to attend, which is how she found out the event would feature a slide show that included her son. (In fact, Richardson’s image was on the very first slide.)
“I said, ‘how dare you guys reach out to me to come to this event? You had my information all this time and you’ve never reached out to me before to ask me about my baby,” McGee said. By the time of the weekend retreat, “we were feeling like, ‘You’re on TV talking about our kids but never spent the time to talk to us, the mothers that carried these kids.'”
At the retreat, Harrell started speaking again, but was soon interrupted by a phone call from his daughter, which he took while still standing in front of the group. After hanging up, Sinclair recalled, “He’s grinning, laughing, saying ‘I’m glad she didn’t want no money.'” (Others who were there recounted the same story, although not everyone was offended he took the call). “I said, ‘I’m glad she’s okay and you could answer her,” Sinclair recalled. “We don’t get to answer our kids’ calls ever again.’ He said, ‘You don’t know what the hell she needed.'”
“If you were at a white meeting, you would have blocked [your phone],” Sinclair said, “but you’re here at a meeting of women of color, so you don’t.”
McGee, too, found it insulting that Harrell took his daughter’s call. “It didn’t matter why you picked up the phone. … When he was in that [televised] debate, up on the podium while millions of people were watching, I bet he had his phone off.”
Harrell’s appearance “shook up the whole room,” McGee said. They all came to heal together, “and we all left very hurt and upset and mad. Why the hell did he even come? This was supposed to be healing and then that man showed up.”
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PublCola sent Harrell’s campaign a list of 10 questions for this story. The campaign responded with the following statement: “Mayor Harrell is a champion for survivors of gun violence, and communities impacted by firearm tragedy. He is the first Mayor to hire an executive-level gun violence prevention coordinator (herself a survivor), and has the sole endorsement of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. Under Bruce’s leadership, Seattle has seen a reduction in shots fired, thousands of guns have been removed from our streets, and we are investing in proven community violence intervention and youth engagement programs. Bruce meets regularly with families and victims of gun violence, respects the need for privacy and intensity of grief often expressed in these meetings, and out of respect for all involved will not comment on specific meetings or interactions.”
Many of the women who lost children to gun violence said they want the city to fund opportunities for them to meet and support each other, from healing circles like the one Harrell attended, to a community center with services such as child care, support groups, and direct connections to emergency resources.
“I’m tired of calling 211 for help,” Chappell said. “There’s so much funding going into [programs] for gun violence—they just passed a policy the other day for more funds to help this problem—but how are you helping families? How about helping moms get into a position where they’re able to do some healing?”
Most of the women PubliCola spoke to said they’re supporting Wilson. So does Chiif Ahmed Mumin, director of the Seattle Rideshare Drivers Association. He believes that, unlike Harrell, she’ll aid in identifying the culprit in the 2022 shooting of Uber driver Mohamed Kediye by helping his organization retrieve camera footage of the shooting, which took place in downtown Seattle.
Kediye, a father of six, was “someone people really loved and respected, and he really leaves a void in the community,” Mumin said.
Mumin also said Harrell has failed to create the rider safety task force they proposed two years ago to come up with solutions to help keep drivers safe, such as cameras in cars and a quick way to contact law enforcement if they find themselves in danger. He believes that Wilson, unlike Harrell, will listen to rideshare drivers who’ve asked to be included in conversations about transportation safety.
During a campaign forum in South Seattle last month, Mumin asked Harrell what he was doing to solve Kediye’s murder. Harrell responded by accusing Wilson of wanting to defund the police and suggesting that if he’s reelected, there will be enough police and detectives to solve the crime. “It has not been solved, and that’s exactly why I support having police officers, Harrell said.”That’s exactly why I’m not defunding the police department, because we need the resources to give that family justice.”
Mumin wasn’t convinced. “It seemed like the mayor was actually diverting the question to the police department, when to the best of our knowledge, the mayor is the head of the police department,” HE said. “He’s the one who names the chief of police, and he could have taken much more of a leadership role in making sure that this crime is solved.”
After the campaign forum, Mumin said, someone from Harrell’s campaign reached out to ask him, “Why did I ask that question in public?’ And my response was very clear—this crime has taken so long to solve. We will continue to ask every time we get an opportunity to ask the mayor this question.”
“I was talking to Debora Juarez after the vote and we were kind of chuckling at the fact that yeah, there were a lot of people that didn’t like it,” Nelson said. “It was the council members of color that spoke most vehemently in favor of it. And what she said to me in my office afterwards was, yeah, people of color are tired of their kids getting killed, frankly.”
Mayor Bruce Harrell 
The document, which includes Wilson’s former home address as well as the address and partially visible phone number of a long-ago employer, purports to show that Wilson has no experience. Ten years ago, Wilson included jobs going back to when she was 24 years old, including a stint at Julia’s Bakery in Wallingford.