Category: LGBTQ+

Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Wilson

Former City Department Director Admonished by PDC; City IT Director Resigns; LGBTQ Advocates Call for Removal of Civil Rights Director

1. Seattle’s IT director since September 2024, Rob Lloyd, step down on March 27. “Leading IT and our dedicated teams in service to Seattle has been an honor,” Lloyd said in an email to staff. “Thinking more on recent events and transitions, it’s clear that this is the right time. I wanted you to hear this directly from me and as quickly as possible.”

A spokesperson for Mayor Katie Wilson confirmed Lloyd’s resignation but did not respond to questions about whether he had been asked to leave. In an email to IT staff, Wilson did not exactly gush about Lloyd’s tenure.

“We would like to acknowledge and thank Rob for his service and the work he performed during his time with the department,” the mayor wrote. “We appreciate his contributions to our technological operations. I wish him the best.”

Tracye Cantrell, the department’s assistant chief technology officer, will take over as interim director, Wilson told IT staff.

Lloyd, a Bruce Harrell appointee, was a gung-ho AI proponent who advocated for funding a number of new AI programs at the city—including an $800,000 program that will replace permitting functions previously performed by workers at the city’s Department of Construction and Inspections. That program will purportedly “streamline the permitting application process and improve customer services using Artificial Intelligence and data integration.” Lloyd also implemented a public-facing AI chatbot called “SEAMore Voice” and a separate internal generative AI system from Microsoft called NebulaONE.

2. The Friends of Denny Blaine are calling on Mayor Wilson to remove Seattle Office for Civil Rights Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith in response to allegations of anti-LGBTQ bias made by his staff in interviews with PubliCola for a story we published earlier this week. The group of advocates got together after learning that a wealthy homeowner, Stuart Sloan, was working with then-mayor Bruce Harrell to install a children’s playground at the longstanding nude beach, effectively shutting it down.

Several SOCR staffers told PubliCola that Wheeler-Smith and his deputy director, Fahima Mohamed, made insensitive comments and dismissed LGBTQ+ rights in general, including one staffer who said Mohamed laughed in front of staff at a text message Harrell sent Sloan saying “I share your disgust” about the beach. Staffers said Wheeler-Smith, whose previous employer was a Christian nonprofit that does not hire people in same-sex relationships, frequently sidelined LGBTQ+ rights or treated them as insignificant.

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“The Office of Civil Rights is entrusted with enforcing our city’s equity initiatives and safeguarding the rights and dignity of all marginalized communities within Seattle, including LGBTQ+ people,” the group wrote on Instagram. “The statement ‘l share your disgust’ is not neutral language; it perpetuates a long legacy of marginalizing and dehumanizing language targeting LGBTQ+ individuals in public spaces. For SOCR leadership to treat this rhetoric in such an offensive and dismissive manner undermines community trust in the department, and calls into question its legitimacy as a department claiming to hold a commitment to civil rights.”

“This concern is compounded by the broader reporting showing repeated dismissal and minimization of LGBTQ+ civil rights issues within the department,” the post continued. “Seattle’s commitment to LGBTQ+ equality cannot be symbolic. It must exist from the top down, and if the Office of Civil Rights of all offices cannot be trusted to genuinely foster those values and protect the rights of LBGTQ+ people, there can be no trust in any city department, and the sincerity of all commitments to being a welcoming city” to LGBTQ+ individuals must be called into question.”

3. The state Public Disclosure Commission ruled on Tuesday, February 24 that former Seattle Office of Economic Development Markham McIntyre violated election rules when he used an internal City of Seattle Teams chat to solicit contact information from city department heads on behalf of Harrell’s reelection campaign. But they decided not to issue a fine or other penalty beyond a written admonishment. “Staff expect that you will refrain from any use of city equipment, staff or other resources for any effort tied to support or opposition of a candidate or ballot measure,” PDC Executive Director Peter Lavallee wrote.

Lavalee’s ruling reveals that after the Harrell appointee obtained the directors’ personal emails last August, he followed up with an email on September 8. It read: “A little while ago, I asked for your personal information. Part of my intent is to help the campaign. If you are not OK with me sharing your contact information with them, please let me know by tomorrow night. For those you are interested in helping out: we need ideas! Yes, we can do all of the traditional campaign activities (door knocking, phone banking, etc.) but is there something special that we could contribute as City leaders? Now’s the time to get in the game!”

State law prohibits public employees from using their office or any public facilities for campaign purposes. PubliCola reported exclusively on McIntyre’s request for department director’s private contact information in October.

Paul Chapman, who filed the complaint, filed a similar complaint with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission. SEEC director Wayne Barnett dismissed that complaint on Thursday, writing, “Having reviewed the PDC’s letter of February 24, I agree with their conclusion that the evidence collected (and summarized in their February 24 letter) does not warrant further investigation. Mr. McIntyre is no longer a City employee, and Bruce Harrell lost his bid for reelection.”

LGBTQ+, Mayor Wilson, race

Staff Call for Removal of Civil Rights Office Director, Citing “Discrimination, Harassment, Retaliation, and Mismanagement”

By Erica C. Barnett

Three years ago, before the City Council unanimously appointed Derrick Wheeler-Smith as director of the city’s Office for Civil Rights, a few voices of dissent stood out among the many supporters who showed up to urge the council to approve his nomination. SOCR conducts investigations into alleged civil rights violations, enforces fair-housing law, oversees several city commissions, and is in charge of the city’s internal Race and Social Justice Initiative.

Wheeler-Smith is a longtime community advocate, high-school basketball coach, and Rainier Valley resident who headed up King County’s Zero Youth Detention Program and has advocated for treating gun violence as an urgent public health issue. Appointed by then-mayor Bruce Harrell, Wheeler-Smith publicly criticized Harrell’s high-profile initiative to put several neighborhoods under police camera surveillance, signing his name to a memo that laid out the harms cameras can pose to the communities of color that most often find themselves under police surveillance.

But back in 2023, not everyone considered Wheeler-Smith a well-rounded choice to head the civil rights department. The dissenters included members of the city’s LGBTQ Commission, who raised concerns about Wheeler-Smith’s previous employment by a Christian nonprofit with explicitly homophobic workplace policies. They also criticized Wheeler-Smith’s decision, shortly after taking the interim director position at SOCR, to send staff a long quote about morality that was written by a homophobic Kirkland pastor, which Wheeler-Smith misattributed to George Carlin. The quote criticized premarital sex, overweight people, and people who take psychiatric drugs.

“I don’t have any doubt that Derrick is a great leader,” LGBTQ Commission member Andrew Ashiofu said before his confirmation. “I do admire his community leadership and all he’s done, but I’m saying it’s not the time.”

Kristina Sawyckyj, a member of the city’s Disability Commission, testified that Wheeler-Smith had refused to meet with commission members and had been absent from their meetings. “He doesn’t reach out. He doesn’t participate with us. We don’t hear from him at all,” Sawyckyj said in public comment. “He might have some great skills on racial equity, but disability equity, and disability social justice, is also equally important here in Seattle.”

***

Nearly three years later, employees at SOCR say that many of the concerns raised during Wheeler-Smith’s nomination have borne out. On December 1, the union representing SOCR employees, PROTEC17, sent a memo to mayor-elect Katie Wilson’s transition team urging them to remove Wheeler-Smith and his deputy, Fahima Mohamed, from their positions.

“Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights cannot credibly enforce equity and justice in the community when its own leadership engages in discriminatory conduct,” PROTEC17 representative Matt Edgerton wrote.

The memo cited an internal survey of SOCR staff in which a majority of respondents reported witnessing or experiencing workplace misconduct or inappropriate behavior. It also described about 20 of these incidents in detail. PubliCola spoke to a racially and gender-diverse group of ten current and former SOCR employees, including about a quarter of SOCR’s current staff, who corroborated the details in the memo and provided additional insight about their own experiences working at the office.

Staffers alleged that Wheeler-Smith texted misogynistic memes to his employees, ignored repeated requests for gender-neutral restrooms, downplayed the rights of LBGTQ+, Asian, Latino, and disabled people, and argued that SOCR shouldn’t weigh in on the rights of homeless people because homelessness is a temporary status—a sharp departure from previous practice. (Prior to 2017, SOCR was in charge of monitoring encampment sweeps).

The employees also raised concerns about an AI-generated racial bias worksheet that Wheeler-Smith directed them to fill out and submit using the city’s email system, potentially exposing staffers’ private information to people making public records requests.

“SOCR Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith and Deputy Director Fahima Mohamed have created a workplace environment characterized by discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and mismanagement,” the union’s memo concludes. “PROTEC17 respectfully recommends that you remove SOCR Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith and Deputy Director Fahima Mohamed early in your administration.”

SOCR staffers requested anonymity when they spoke with PubliCola in order to share their stories candidly without fear of retaliation.

Neither Wheeler-Smith nor Mohamed responded to a detailed list of questions PubliCola sent in late January or a followup request in February.

SOCR staffers told PubliCola and their union representatives that they were initially reluctant to speak about their concerns, even through relatively private channels, out of fear of retaliation. PROTEC17’s memo documents one incident last year in which a staffer who contacted human resources said both Wheeler-Smith and Mohamed told them “that ‘we keep things in house at SOCR’ and the next time this staff member contacts HR, ‘there won’t be a next time.”’

It was only once SOCR union stewards distributed the staff survey and started scheduling coffee check-ins, several staffers told PubliCola, that they started to realize that they weren’t alone. “The union survey was the first time I’ve seen a properly conducted staff survey,” one current staffer said. “That matters so much when trust has been broken, and through shared experiences coming to light, we were heard. It’s taken a lot to trust the process. Staff organizing made that happen.”

LGBTQ+ Concerns Sidelined

SOCR staffers said it was clear early on that Wheeler-Smith’s personal views on LGBTQ+ civil rights did not align with the longstanding values of the department. One staffer recalled an incident that occurred before Wheeler-Smith’s confirmation, in which the then-interim director asked whether had to go to mandatory LGBTQ flag raising and Pride events, given his “personal objections,” as the memo puts it, and his view that supporting LGBTQ+ rights was a matter of personal choice.

“He draws a pretty clear boundary between what he describes as the community that is most associated with civil rights, and then queer folks, which of course, betrays the history of civil rights in the United States,” one staffer said.

At times, these internal conflicts have led to public controversies. One such incident involved a partnership between SOCR and Wheeler-Smith’s former employer, the nonprofit World Vision, with SOCR on a school supply drive in 2023. World Vision is a conservative Christian charity that does not hire people in same-sex relationships. The partnership prompted some employees to ask Wheeler-Smith during a meeting why the city’s civil rights office was partnering with a group that had explicitly discriminatory employment policies, staffers said.

According to one SOCR staffer who attended the meeting, “Derrick’s hands were both on the table, and he had his head down the whole time while the rest of us were discussing it. [When he] eventually started speaking, he was really defensive, and said, ‘Good people do bad things, and if we vetted everybody out who did something wrong, we wouldn’t have any partners.'”

The following year, SOCR signed a $40,000 contract with Wheeler-Smith’s former supervisor at World Vision, Leonetta Elaiho, to “provide support and strategic planning” for a leadership training fellowship. Elaiho was one of the commenters who urged the council to approve Wheeler-Smith’s appointment in 2023, saying she’d known him and his family for more than 20 years.

Around the same time as the World Vision controversy, several staffers said, Wheeler-Smith sent an email to staff that included a long quote by a controversial Kirkland pastor, Bob Moorehead, about the ills of modern society.

While the quote didn’t include any explicitly anti-queer content, it criticized wives who work outside the home and people who use psychiatric drugs, along with “throwaway morality, one night stands, [and] overweight bodies.”

“It was very slut-shaming, looking down on folks who took medication, fatphobic,” the former SOCR staffer recalled.

“I regularly got misgendered”

The former staffer, who’s nonbinary, said they repeatedly asked for a gender-neutral restroom at SOCR’s office, located in a leased space in the Central Building downtown, only to be dismissed or told “we’ll consider that when we move” to a different building in the future. During their entire time at SOCR, the staffer said, they had to use a public restroom on the ground floor of the building.

The slight felt especially cold, the former staffer said, coming from the only city department with an official mandate to focus on gender justice. Among other anti-discrimination laws, SOCR enforces the city’s gender-neutral restroom law.

“We’re mandated to be in the office and there’s no equitable bathroom access for me,” the former staffer said. “It feels especially bad for SOCR, which had, at the time, the only gender justice position in the city, that has been vacant for five years, with no efforts to fill it.” Current staffers brought up the same story independently, and one recalled that Mohamed, the SOCR deputy, questioned allowing “men” to use the women’s restroom.

“I regularly got misgendered by the department director—by Derrick,” the former staffer recalled. “When I tried to bring that to him and say, ‘This is really hurtful, especially given the position you’re in,’ it felt like it was dismissed in the classic way—’I’m trying, it’s not coming from hate in my heart.’ It felt like one of those apologies where I was supposed to say ‘It’s okay, it’s not a big deal.'”

According to the union memo, deputy director Mohamed also “repeatedly misgendered staff members who identified as gender non-binary by continuing to use incorrect pronouns despite correction.” A current SOCR staffer said Mohamed routinely refused to participate when people identified their pronouns during meetings, despite being asked to do so.

“We have a standard of, you use your names and pronouns so that folks can know how to refer you, and she’ll just not use pronouns, like, 90 percent of the time—just refuses to do it. It’s jarring, because everyone else is doing it,” the staffer said.

In another incident, recounted by several current employees, a DJ hired for an all-staff SOCR training directed the group divide up between men and women (or “boys and girls,” as one staffer remembered it) for a team-building game, leaving those who did not identify as either men or women standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. “It was straight-up division by cisgender women and cisgender women,” one staffer, who refused to participate in the exercise, said.

In 2024, a group of employees organized a two-day gender justice training for department staff. Two staffers told PubliCola that Wheeler-Smith went to the training for a few hours on the first day, then left and did not return. During one of the discussions, two staffers recalled, a staffer raised the issue of transphobia they had witnessed at the office. As the staffer was talking, Mohamed sent them a text message that said “tread lightly,” effectively shutting down the conversation.

Other staffers said Wheeler-Smith and Mohamed reacted inappropriately to high-profile incidents that impacted the LGBTQ community, such as former mayor Harrell’s efforts to shut down the longtime queer nude beach at Denny Blaine Park. According to one staffer, Mohamed laughed openly, in front of multiple SOCR staffers, when she saw that Harrell sent a text message to wealthy homeowner Stuart Sloan saying “I share your disgust” with queer people who use the beach. At the time, Sloan and Harrell were collaborating to build a playground that would have forced the nude beach to close.

“It was very clear that we couldn’t say anything because we could be retaliated against, even though it was deeply uncomfortable to have the second in command at the Office for Civil Rights laughing about, you know, disparaging comment in connection to queer folks in the city,” the staffer said.

The same staffer recalled that Wheeler-Smith criticized Harrell’s public statements supporting a counter-protest against the right-wing, anti-trans “Mayday USA” event in Cal Anderson Park. “He said, ‘Christians have religious freedom,”’ the staffer recalled. “Christians are not a embattled minority group in this country, and for anyone to frame the Cal Anderson protest as if it was this symmetrical conflict just reveals how little he understands power.”

LGBTQ Commission Co-Chair Ashley Ford recalled that after the Cal Anderson protest, Wheeler-Smith “tried to prevent us as a commission from contacting the mayor’s office or council,” sending an email to commissioners titled “Coordination on External Communications” that chided commission members for speaking out against the police escalation.

“I request that for future communications, particularly with the Mayor’s Office and other city departments, that you include me in advance. This will assure that we present a unified message,” Wheeler-Smith wrote.

According to the PROTEC17 memo to Wilson, Wheeler-Smith also “directed [the] removal of LGBTQ imagery from a general office publication, questioning its connection to civil rights and Black history” and “shared a podcast titled ‘Can You Be LGBTQ and Christian’ with staff”; the memo alleges that Wheeler-Smith talked about his own Christian beliefs and asked employees about their personal religious views at the office.

“Grotesquely inappropriate”

Staffers who spoke to PubliCola also accused Wheeler-Smith of making inappropriate remarks about Black women and about sex.

Several employees also said Wheeler-Smith sent misogynistic messages to male staff, including a series of tweets by Kanye West about women “selling pussy” and a meme of Kamala Harris with bruises on her knees that read “CONGRATS to Kamala on her new promotion! I don’t know how you do it!”

“The clear message of this meme was that Kamala Harris, an accomplished woman of color, exchanged sexual favors for career mobility,” PROTEC17’s memo notes.

“I’ve come to know that he he has some deeply held sexist, and I will say almost disdain for, Black women,” one employee who received the messages said. “Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I was socialized like every other American male, but I wouldn’t be in this work if I still held those beliefs.”

Distributing the image, the memo continued, “perpetuated harmful stereotype about women trading sex for advancement, [had] racist undertones targeting woman of color, created hostile environment for women and people of color, [and was] grotesquely inappropriate for civil rights office director.”

At an after-hours event at a mandatory staff retreat, for example, multiple staffers said Wheeler-Smith the following toast: “Life has its ups and downs. I hope all of yours are in the bedroom.” At other mandatory events, staffers recalled, Wheeler-Smith brought up sex unprompted—like an all-staff lunch where he told a strange story about being propositioned after accidentally ending up at a swingers’ resort. Both these incidents are included in the union’s memo.

“Can We Talk About Xenophobia?”

Many of the staffers who shared stories with PROTEC17 and spoke to PubliCola said they appreciated Wheeler-Smith’s focus on anti-Blackness in Seattle, an issue that Seattle’s white leaders and residents have frequently dismissed, ignored, or addressed with performative statements rather than meaningful action. But staffers also said that Wheeler-Smith’s focus on anti-Black discrimination and bias has sometimes come at the expense of other marginalized people who face hate and discrimination—including people with disabilities, Asian Americans, Latinos, and people experiencing homelessness.

During the COVID pandemic, for instance, staffers said Wheeler-Smith was unreceptive when they tried to talk about directing resources toward addressing anti-Asian xenophobia and hate crimes. “One of our staff members said, ‘Can we talk about the xenophobia and show support for our Asian community?'” one staffer recalled. “And he was like, ‘Who cares about that?'”

That staffer said Wheeler-Smith walked out of a staff tour of the Wing Luke Museum designed to educate SOCR employees about Asian American history and anti-Asian discrimination in America. Partway through the tour, the staffer said, Wheeler-Smith excused himself and did not return. When staffers started asking where he was, the staffer recalled, they were told,  “‘Oh, Derrick left. He went home.’ He doesn’t care enough to be there to even support us, his own staff members, and stay for the whole event.”

Staffers told PubliCola it has been equally difficult to get Wheeler-Smith engaged on the issue of federal immigration enforcement, arguably the most pressing emergent civil rights issue facing blue cities across the country. SOCR’s website includes links to resource guides produced by the city’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. And the department recently posted a “Statement on ICE Actions and the Importance of Solidarity” from Wheeler-Smith that touches on a grab bag of civil rights issues, including book bans and Medicaid cuts. Continue reading “Staff Call for Removal of Civil Rights Office Director, Citing “Discrimination, Harassment, Retaliation, and Mismanagement”” →

City Council, Courts, homelessness, housing, LGBTQ+, Police

This Week on PubliCola: February 14, 2026

 

Nine stories you may have missed this week.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, February 9

Bill Targeting Sex Buyers Would No Longer Result in Immediate Felony Charges

State legislation that would have made it a first-strike felony, rather than a misdemeanor, to pay another person for sex has been amended; under a version that passed narrowly out of committee, buying sex would be a gross misdemeanor and sex workers would get access to services in lieu of jail. Proponents of the original, harsher bill said the new version fails to crack down enough on the “demand” side of sex work, and suggested that lenient prostitution laws allowed traffickers to go unpunished.

Tuesday, February 10

Sex Worker Advocates Demand Action from the City After Prosecutors’ Dehumanizing Presentation

The changes to the state law we covered Monday came partly in response to a lurid presentation by local prosecutors at a city council meeting, which included photos of identifiable, brutalized women and graphic details of assaults. Advocates for sex workers, also appalled by the presentation, issued a list of demands for the city, including a separate panel on non-carceral, humane approaches to abuse and trafficking and the inclusion of people with direct experience in policy discussions about sex work.

ACLU Drops Lawsuit After City Attorney Evans Drops Blanket Affidavit Against Judge

City Attorney Erika Evans and the ACLU of Washington announced that the ACLU is dropping its lawsuit against the city over a policy instituted by Evans’ Republican predecessor, Ann Davison, that disqualified Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi from hearing criminal cases for almost two years.

City Council Gets New Central Staff Director

City hall veteran Ben Noble, who’s currently in his second stint as director of the city council’s policy-oriented central staff, is retiring in March after more than two decades at the city. His replacement, Lish Whitson, is another city old-timer who has worked on four comprehensive plan updates, including the upzone of Seattle’s former single-family enclaves last year.

Family of Jaahnavi Kandula, Pedestrian Killed by SPD Officer in 2023, Reaches $29,011,000 Settlement with City

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office settled for $29,011,000 with the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, the 23-year-old student who was struck and killed in a South Lake Union crosswalk by a Seattle Police Department officer traveling 74 miles an hour in 2023. The $11,000 is a pointed reference to a comment made by Daniel Auderer, then the vice president of the police union, that the city could just “write a check” for that amount because that’s all Kandula’s short life was worth.

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CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

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Wednesday, February 11

Tax For Social Housing Brought In Twice the Original Estimate, Mirroring Early JumpStart Results

Funding for Seattle’s new social housing developer, which the City Council approved in a 7-0 vote yesterday, is coming in significantly higher than anticipated: In its first year, the developer will receive an estimated $115 million to acquire existing apartment buildings and develop new ones. The revenues mirror early returns from the JumpStart payroll tax, which is also a tax on large companies that pay high wages.

Thursday, February 12

Review Finds Multiple Police Failures Preceded Violent Response to Counterprotests During Anti-LGBTQ Event in May

The city’s Office of the Inspector General released a report today finding that the Seattle Police Department’s actions during the anti-trans “Don’t Mess With Our Kids” rally, held by an extremist group called Mayday USA, showed a bias against counter-protesters who showed up to demonstrate against the right-wing event. After chatting amiably with security for the anti-trans group, officers began referring to protesters as “transtifa.”

Friday, February 13

New Councilmember Dionne Foster Tells Seattle Nice: Police Cameras “Should Be Turned Off and Come Down.”

On this week’s episode of the Seattle Nice podcast, David, Sandeep, and I interviewed new City Councilmember Dionne Foster. Our conversation touched on encampment removals, police surveillance cameras, the upcoming library levy, and the

Homelessness Authority Rescinds Tiny House Village Grant, Gives Money to Salvation Army Instead

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has rescinded a $3 million grant it gave the Low Income Housing Institute to build 60 new low-barrier tiny houses outside King County’s youth detention center, claiming LIHI delayed the process by failing to secure a site in time. The money, which LIHI secured in last year’s city of Seattle budget, will now go to the Salvation Army to convert 35 of its existing transitional housing units into shelter.

LGBTQ+, Police

Review Finds Multiple Police Failures Preceded Violent Response to Counterprotests During Anti-LGBTQ Event in May
Police form a barricade at a right-wing rally at City Hall held shortly after the “Mayday USA” event.

Police didn’t engage with community before the anti-LGBTQ event, weren’t familiar with Capitol Hill and its history, and referred to protesters as “transtifa,” the report found.

By Erica C. Barnett

The city’s Office of the Inspector General released a report today finding that the Seattle Police Department’s actions during the anti-trans “Don’t Mess With Our Kids” rally, held by an extremist group called Mayday USA last May, showed a bias against counter-protesters who showed up to demonstrate against the right-wing event. The report also found that officers didn’t understand why it was a provocation to hold an anti-LGBTQ event in Cal Anderson Park, at the heart of Seattle’s historic LGBTQ neighborhood.

Instead, the report found, police assumed that the rally organizers represented no real threat, while assuming that “‘black bloc’ and ‘antifa’ are established, hierarchical organizations intent on inciting disorder and criminal activity,” which—despite President Trump’s decision to ID “Antifa” as a “terrorist organization”—they’re not. Former mayor Bruce Harrell bolstered these assumptions after the rally, claiming any violence was caused by “anarchists” who “infiltrated the counterdemonstration to incite violence,” the report notes.

This “anticipatory defensiveness” contributed to officers’ decisions to overreact to protesters while seeing the far-right group as a mere “church group” holding a prayer event.

At the same time, the report continues, police on the scene served as de facto security for the anti-trans religious group. Cops on the scene “frequently spoke with the MayDay USA security liaison, sharing MayDay USA intelligence with SPD leadership on-scene.”

“After hearing the MayDay USA security liaison refer to counterdemonstrators as ‘transtifa,’ POET officers adopted the term which spread to other SPD personnel,” the panel, which included six community members and six representatives from SPD, found.

During the event, police deployed pepper spray and other “less lethal” weapons against demonstrators, throwing many to the ground and arresting 23 people. Police used bike rack-style barricades to prevent protesters from entering the rally area and arrested people for pushing against or knocking over the barricades, which were connected together and placed on a hill, where they were prone to tipping over.

The report was the result of a police accountability process called a Sentinel Event Review that follows major  incidents, such as police shootings and protest responses that lead to injuries and arrests. A panel that included representatives from the police department, an LGBTQ organization that organized counter-programming, and impacted community members along with OIG Director Lisa Judge held three lengthy meetingsto discuss their experiences in confidence.

However, the report notes that the process was cut short after one panelist leaked details about one of the confidential meetings, preventing the panel from holding its final meeting.

According to multiple sources, Gabriel Dias, a medic who was injured by police at the protest, told Divest SPD about an incident in which SPD arrested people for releasing some of the May Day group’s balloons into the air and trying to tamper with their bubble machine.

Immediately before those arrests, Lieutenant Matthew Didier was caught on body camera telling his team they were “going in with guns blazing” and were “here to fuck people up now.”

“After three successful panel sessions, one panelist violated the agreement not to disclose specific details of the panel discussions,” the report says. “The trust necessary to continue open deliberation was broken, so the SER was discontinued prior to a final meeting to develop consensus contributing factors and recommendations.”

The violation apparently upset SPD so much that one of the police participants suggested SPD would no longer participate in sentinel event reviews, which would effectively end this kind of review.

A spokesperson for SPD said the department plans to participate in future sentinel reviews.

“We take all the recommendations from the OIG seriously, including those from its Feb. 12 report about SPD’s role at the MayDay USA event in Cal Anderson Park,” the department said in a statement. “The Department has already implemented several changes recommended in this report. One example is rebuilding community legitimacy and trust through our dialogues at the Our City, Our Safety meetings being scheduled throughout the city.”

Dias denied leaking to Divest SPD. After their report came out, they were one of many people who quoted or played the video of Didier’s incendiary comments at City Council meetings.

Although SPD has a history of ignoring SER recommendations (the new report includes many recommendations that, it observes in footnotes, SPD agreed to in the past but failed to implement), the process is one of the only opportunities for people impacted by police actions to tell SPD directly how they were affected and how police could do a better job in the future.

In one instance, according to the report, a lieutenant “apologized for the statements made and acknowledged that, in hindsight, they would have used different language.” This appears to be a reference to Didier, who was on the panel.

“The panelist noted officers did not fully understand the cultural importance of the park and the rally and were unnecessarily focused on identifying ‘bad actors.’ The panelist stated the panel discussions improved their understanding of the impact of this Event on community and the importance of community perceptions and context for future crowd management operations.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report reveals a deep disconnect between SPD (whose officers typically live outside Seattle) and the communities those officers are supposed to serve. Instead of engaging with community groups, SPD looked on social media to gather intelligence on “antifa.” At the same time, police “did not seek additional intelligence about the MayDay USA group,” the extremist organization whose rally prompted counterprotests in the first place.

“[T]he strong visible presence of SPD was itself escalatory for counterdemonstrators, who felt targeted based on their identities and felt SPD was there to protect an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group in a park with historical significance for the LGBTQ+ community,” the report concludes. As an example, SPD was already coordinating with May Day organizers to press charges against counter-protesters even before the balloon incident, which culminated in arrests that violated SPD’s own crowd management policy.

“Crucial to the assessment of SPD crowd management operations for this Event is a broader understanding of the cultural context of the location and event,” the report found. “This context includes the historic over-policing of LGBTQ+ spaces, the history of Capitol Hill as a sanctuary neighborhood for LGBTQ+ communities in Seattle, as well as the current federal posture and climate of anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation.”

At the time of the protests, SPD had no LGBTQ liaison.

Three months after being sworn in as police chief, SPD Chief Shon Barnes promoted Mike Tietjen to head up Capitol Hill’s East Precinct, bypassing the acting commander, a gay lieutenant named Doug Raguso who had served in the precinct for years.

Tietjen became notorious for his actions during the CHOP protests against police violence in 2020, when he drove his SUV onto a sidewalk filled with people, laughing later about how they looked like “cockroaches” as they scattered. He received a temporary suspension and was moved to the North Precinct as punishment for that incident and several others, including the alleged harassment of a trans woman by police driving through the protest area. After PubliCola reported on Tietjen’s promotion, Barnes rescinded it and (eventually) appointed Captain Jim Britt to the position.

Barnes had previously come under fire for overseeing a dramatic crackdown on the historic LGBTQ+ nude beach at Denny Blaine Park,  in which officers showed up prepared to arrest or trespass anyone who wasn’t wearing clothes.

As we reported earlier this year, Barnes’ chief of staff, Alex Ricketts, reportedly brushed off SPD’s general counsel when she advised Ricketts to Barnes to take the concerns of Seattle’s LGBTQ+ community seriously, telling her, “We’re not here for the gays.”

At a meeting of SPD’s LGBTQ Advisory Council earlier this week, Barnes reportedly blamed the Parks Department for permitting the May Day rally at Cal Anderson Park and not informing SPD about the rally until 10 days before the event. According to multiple people who were present, Barnes also claimed the Community Police Commission, an independent police accountability office at the city, had appointed people to the Sentinel Event Review panel, which a CPC staffer had to step in and correct.

In fact, according to CPC Director Eci Emeh, the CPC never got a chance to weigh in on the report or participate on the review panel, beyond forwarding the names of people who expressed an interest in serving on the panel to OIG. Contrary to reporting elsewhere, “we were not in the room,” Emeh said.

“I would have liked to see the CPC play a bigger role,” Emeh continued. “I would have liked to see the CPC be directly involved in the SER panel process—not necessarily the selection, but even being able to attend the SER panel and hear the exchanges that happened between community members and police officers.”

Courts, Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Harrell

Ex-Police Chief Diaz Seeks to Toss a Third Judge from His Case, County Council Candidate Claims Planned Parenthood Endorsement After Losing it Over Anti-Trans Views

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.

LGBTQ+, Police, Uncategorized

SPD Chief Puts Cop Who Called 2020 Protesters “Cockroaches” In Charge of East Precinct
SPD’s East Precinct in 2020

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct, located at 12th Ave. and East Pine St. in the heart of Capitol Hill, came under new leadership in September, when SPD Chief Shon Barnes quietly removed the precinct’s gay acting commander, Doug Raguso, and placed a newly promoted captain, Mike Tietjen, in charge.

If Tietjen’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he was at the center of two high-profile incidents during protests against police violence in 2020.  In the first, then-sergeant Tietjen was suspended without pay for shoving a man forcefully into a bus stop, causing him to hit his head. In the second, he was moved to a different precinct after driving an unmarked vehicle onto a sidewalk full of protesters, later comparing them to “cockroaches” because of the way they scattered in the path of his SUV.

In 2007, Tietjen and his partner were accused of choking a man in a wheelchair and planting drugs in his hoodie; although then-SPD chief Gil Kerlikowske exonerated both officers in a press release, they were subsequently reassigned to Harbor Patrol. Two years earlier, according to KUOW, Tietjen was accused of ” punching and choking a man” he was arresting “to the point of unconsciousness.”

In an internal email announcing eight promotions, including Tietjen, Barnes wrote that everyone he was promoting had shown “the ability to rise to challenges, embrace innovation, and guide others with clarity and purpose. … The leaders we celebrate today represent our commitment to building an organization that is resilient, forward-thinking, and deeply connected to the community we serve.”

Raguso, a 22-year SPD veteran, was a fixture at the East Precinct who previously served as SPD’s LGBTQ liaison. SPD declined to say why he did was not promoted to captain. A department spokesperson said, “We promote our captains based on input from Command leadership, their Civil Service test scores, and other feedback.”

In 2021, Tietjen was disciplined for a 2020 incident in which four officers, including him, pulled up on a trans woman who was walking along the sidewalk and allegedly harassed her by asking her if she “had a dick under” her skirt.

Tietjen has an adult child who belongs to the LGBTQ+ community, from whom he is estranged. PubliCola is not providing any further details about Tietjen’s child in order to protect their privacy.

Raguso is now overseeing operations at SPD’s Real Time Crime Center—a recently expanded downtown facility where officers and civilian SPD staff monitor live surveillance footage from around the city. PubliCola was unable to interview him.

The SPD spokesperson acknowledged that Tietjen “had been the subject of complaints five years ago,” but said he had completed “an opportunity for training and growth” and “has successfully delivered results to the community” since then. “In his current role, he is building positive relationships in the community, in line with Chief Barnes’ promise to police forward and continuously improve our organization,” the spokesperson said.

Andrew Ashiofu, a member of the city’s LGBTQ commission who spoke to PubliCola on his own behalf, said Tietjen’s appointment “sends a deeply troubling message” to people living in “one of Seattle’s most LGBTQIA+-dense neighborhoods. His presence in this role is not just inappropriate, it’s dangerous. It sets a precedent that undermines trust and signals to marginalized communities that their safety and dignity are negotiable.”

“As a Black gay man living within this precinct, I do not feel safe,” Ashiofu continued. “How can we trust the police to protect us when those in charge are the very people we need protection from?”

Joel Merkel, the co-chair of the Community Police Commission, said that “promoting someone who’s had these type of disciplinary actions” against them raised concerns about the new police chief’s  “knowledge and insight into SPD’s history history and dynamics … particularly as we’re trying to change the culture of SPD. With the consent decree going away, it sends a concerning message.” SPD had been under a federal consent decree since 2012, and was seeking to have it lifted when President Trump announced he was unilaterally dismissing all Justice Department consent decrees over local police departments, including Seattle’s.

City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, who represents Capitol Hill and the rest of District 3, did not respond to a request for comment.

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The complaints against Tietjen in 2020 were serious and highly publicized. All occurred on Capitol Hill within a short distance of the East Precinct headquarters.

In the first incident, for which he was suspended without pay, Tietjen violently shoved a man who had been trying to help another demonstrator who was blinded by pepper spray, pushing him and slamming his head into a bus stop.

Although Tietjen claimed he had simply tried to get the man to “spin around” and rejoin the crowd of people SPD was pushing out of the area,  video from his body-worn camera later revealed that he had “forcefully pushed” the man “down and towards the bus stop” as he was trying to assist a demonstrator who had taken shelter there, according to the Office of Police Accountability’s investigation into the July 25, 2020 incident.

“Moreover, but for the fact that the Complainant was wearing a helmet, he could have suffered very serious injuries based on the manner in which [Tietjen] pushed him, his momentum in falling to the ground, and his striking the bus stop with his head,” the report said.

In the second incident, on August 12, 2020, Tietjen was driving an unmarked SUV when he  accelerated suddenly and drove onto a crowded sidewalk at 11th and Pine, forcing people to scatter to avoid being hit. When someone confronted him, according to the OPA report, he compared the people he almost hit to scattering “cockroaches.” A widely posted video shows him saying he still works for SPD “because they pay me like 200 grand a year to babysit you people.” Tietjen was suspended without pay and received a “disciplinary transfer” to the North Precinct for that incident.

In the third incident, Tietjen was in an SUV with three other officers that pulled up to talk to a trans woman who was walking on the sidewalk during a protest. According to the OPA investigation, one of the officers took her picture with his phone and asked if she “had a dick under” her skirt. “She said that she told the officer to ‘come take a look’ and he replied that he would ‘need a microscope’ to do so,” the report says..

Later, the woman told OPA investigators, “the unmarked SUV again drove by her and an officer again yelled out to the Complainant to ‘show them what’s under my skirt.’ She started yelling at them, but they drove off while still saying things to her.” The OPA report says Tietjen acknowledged taking the woman’s picture and hearing someone in the car say something about a microscope, but denied most of the other details. The officers said they stopped the woman because they suspected her of “throwing rocks at” the East Precinct building.

Tietjen got a written reprimand for failing to document or report the interaction with the woman, and for failing to “counsel” another officer who shouted transphobic comments about why that was unacceptable behavior.

Five years later, Barnes promoted Tietjen to captain and put him in charge of public safety in city’s historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood.