Category: Mayor Harrell

Drugs, King County, Mayor Harrell

What’s Behind the Recent Decline in Overdose Deaths in Seattle?
D. Williams, a LEAD program participant, in his tiny home in North Seattle.

While Seattle’s outgoing mayor and city attorney credit drug arrests and prosecutions, public health evidence suggests other causes.

By Andrew Engelson

Fatal overdoses have declined for two years in a row in Seattle—a sliver of hope in the ongoing opioid epidemic. Mayor Bruce Harrell has claimed greater enforcement of the city’s drug laws has saved lives. Others, including health experts at King County, argue that evidence-based public health approaches should get the credit.

According to Public Health Seattle & King County, the number of fatal drug overdoses in King County has declined 31 percent since hitting a peak in 2023. So far in 2025, the county has confirmed 796 fatal overdoses, including 564 that involved fentanyl—a slight dip since this time in 2024, following a decline of about 22 percent between 2023 and 2024.

Harrell’s office credited a 42 percent increase in felony drug dealing arrests by the Seattle Police Department, along with new programs that have increased access to treatment and buprenorphine, for lowering the number of overdoses. 

“Our comprehensive approach to the fentanyl crisis is showing real results, helping keep our neighborhoods safe,” Harrell said in a statement. “We are aggressively targeting and arresting the drug traffickers and dealers who bring these deadly poisons into our city, and I am grateful for our strong partnership with King County prosecutors in holding offenders accountable.”

But Brad Finegood, who leads the public health department’s opioid and overdose response, said the drop in fatal overdoses in King County is likely due to a multi-pronged public health effort across the county that includes increased access to injectable buprenorphine, a drug that helps suppress cravings for more dangerous opioids like fentanyl, and a massive campaign to distribute the overdose reversal drug naloxone. 

While the decrease is encouraging, Finegood said the numbers are “still at an unacceptable number, and they could go back up real easily.”.

Data as of November 25, 2025.

It’s been two years since the city of Seattle passed a law making it a misdemeanor to possess illegal drugs or use them in public (previously, possession was a felony that the King County Prosecutor’s Office generally declined to prosecute). SPD has used the law to refer about 800 people arrested for minor drug offenses into the LEAD diversion program, which offers people accused of low-level offenses a way to avoid charges and access services. About 500 of those referrals 500 came about as the result of an arrest; the other 300 were “social contact” referrals, in which police officers refer someone to the program without an arrest. 

Meanwhile, outgoing City Attorney Ann Davison’s office prosecuted 215 people under the new drug law between October 2023 and January 2025. Last month, the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD) published a report critical of the law, finding that of the 215 people prosecuted using the law since October 2023, only six completed treatment or received a substance use assessment. 

Drug policy in Seattle will likely look much different in the next four years under progressive mayor-elect Katie Wilson, who campaigned on a public health-focused approach to the fentanyl crisis, and under former prosecutor Erika Evans, who will be replacing Davison, a Republican, as city attorney. Evans says she wants to significiantly reduce the number of people prosecuted for drug use and possession and to “bring back a reimagined community court”—a therapeutic court Davison dismantled in 2023.

Evans called the fact that just six people prosecuted under the drug use law went through treatment or evaluation a “huge failure.” 

“As the next city attorney, [I’m] going to be working to expand our partnership with LEAD to make sure folks that are dealing with substance use disorder are getting connected with services and treatment,” she said.

D. Williams is just one of many people who turned his life around thanks to LEAD.

Williams, who asked PubliCola to use only use his first initial and last name, lives in a cozy 10 foot-by-10 foot shelter at Catholic Community Services’ Junction Point tiny house village in north Seattle. After serving jail time for convictions on possession charges and violating a no-contact order, Williams was in a bad state. 

“It was all bad: homeless, addiction,” Williams said. “Lack of self-worth. A lot of hatred.”

After five people close to him died in close succession, Williams decided he needed to make a change.

In the summer of 2024, Williams asked an officer for a social contact referral to LEAD. He was connected with Casey Pham, a case manager at Evergreen Treatment Service’s REACH program, and started treatment. But like many drug users, Williams only stayed for a few days before leaving the program and going back to using. “I was really sick, real bad,” Williams says of his experience of withdrawal. “But I kept pushing. I kept being persistent.”

Williams said that each time he relapsed, he regretted it. “Every time I did it again, it was with that much more hatred inside of me, and that’s a heavy burden to carry.”

Another time when he sought treatment, William was told he’d need to wait 14 days for an opening. He told the organization, “I don’t know if I’ll even be here. I can’t wait that long.”

Despite the barriers, Williams eventually completed treatment, and though his path to recovery still has its ups and downs, he has a roof over his head and is attending computer science classes at North Seattle College.  “I feel much better. I can lift my head up now,” he said. “I don’t have to walk around with that shame on my back.”

But the fact that the city attorney’s office still prosecuted 215 people was a waste of resources, DPD contends.

Katie Hurley, special counsel for criminal practice and policy at DPD, said many of the people who end up getting prosecuted for drug misdemeanors were arrested for possessing “incredibly small” amounts of drugs. 

In April, according to Seattle Municipal Court records, SPD arrested a man at 12th Ave. S and S Jackson St.—a longtime hot spot for drug activity—and was charged him with possession based on traces of drugs, tin foil, and a straw. The police report did not mention any attempts at diversion. 

Also in April, a man who had previously been found incompetent to stand trial on an unrelated charge was arrested for smoking an unidentified substance. Despite his previous evaluation, Davison’s office charged the man, and two weeks later he was found incompetent to stand trial. He received no referral to LEAD or services.

Last September, another man was arrested at 12th and Jackson for allegedly smoking an illegal substance. He was booked into jail and charged, but later the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.

“It’s an obscene use of resources,” Hurley said. “It’s very dehumanizing that we’re going to lock a person like this up, considering the amount of resources it takes.”  

Tim Robinson, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, pointed to the city attorney’s new Drug Prosecution Alternative (DPA) program that debuted in August, which offers people a chance to avoid prosecution if they get evaluated for substance use disorder. So far, 34 out of 70 people who received offers to participate in the program have chosen to do so, Robinson said.

DPA participants must agree to a “stay out of drug area” (SODA) order, which banishes a person accused of breaking the city’s drug laws from specific areas; violating a SODA order is a separate misdemeanor.

Evans, the incoming city attorney, said that Davison’s drug prosecution alternative is “pretty ridiculous” because it requires people who are using fentanyl to get an evaluation to see if they have a drug problem. “If they get charged with smoking fentanyl, all that’s required is for them to agree to a SODA order placed on them, and then having to get an assessment that tells them whether or not they have a fentanyl addiction. That is wasting our public dollars.”

The city attorney’s office disagrees, claiming the approach has improved public safety. “Drug overdoses in Seattle have declined since the law was enacted and the areas hit hardest by open-air drug markets have seen some meaningful improvement,” Robinson said. “There is more work to be done, but Seattle is safer today than it was four years ago as measured by crime statistics and public opinion polls.”

Items SPD recovered from a felony drug bust (photo via Seattle Police Department).

In September, SPD’s blog featured a flurry of posts about drug seizures and arrests, with accompanying photos of baggies of drugs, cash, and confiscated guns—part of the surge of felony arrests that Harrell said contributed to the recent reduction in overdose deaths.

But a closer look at the cases reveals that many of these arrests were for small-time deals by people who are likely drug users themselves. 

A post on September 29 celebrated SPD arresting a 34-year old man found with a “handgun, $203 cash, and 0.9 grams of Fentanyl.”

A post on September 24 described the arrest of a man on First Hill who had a gun and about 147 grams of cocaine, meth, fentanyl and heroin (about the weight of a deck of cards) who was booked into jail on gun and narcotics violations.

Another September post officers nabbing a suspect and confiscating a whopping $62 in cash, 4 grams of meth, and a set of brass knuckles. 

SPD did not respond to requests for comment on the increase in drug distribution arrests.  

Evidence suggests that disrupting the illicit drug supply can actually lead to an increased risk of overdose, as drug users switch to lesser-known dealers who may be selling a more toxic supply.

Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina whose work on harm reduction earned him a 2025 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, said attributing the decline in overdoses to arrests “seems really naive.”

“There’s no reliable evidence that drug seizures of this magnitude lead to declines in overdose,” Dasgupta said. A peer-reviewed study of trends in drug arrests and overdose rates in Indianapolis, published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2023, found that on average, one week after a police drug seizure, the number of fatal overdoses doubled within a 500 meter radius of the arrest.

“I think the way to interpret these data [about overdoses in Seattle] more scientifically is that overdoses are dropping despite the felony arrests,” said Dasgupta, who was involved in the Indianapolis study. “It’s not the other way around.”

Lisa Daugaard, the co-director of Purpose Dignity Action and creator of the LEAD program (for which she, too, received a genius grant) said it’s ineffective to focus on small-time drug dealers, pointing to research by Dasgupta and other scientists.

“Disrupting harmful dynamics has an obvious superficial appeal, but in a time of ultra-toxic illicit drug supply, many interventions that seem appealing actually are counterproductive,” Daugaard said.

Dasgupta, who worked with harm reduction experts in Seattle while conducting his research, says the decline in Seattle’s fatal overdose rate is likely the result of four trends that are happening across the country. First, he says, illicit drug manufacturers are making the drug supply less toxic by improving quality. “This is a market correction, independent of any law enforcement action,” Dasgupta said.

Second, Gen Z is less inclined to use opioids than its predecessors. “We have a million and a half kids who lost parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents to an overdose in the United States,” Dasgupta said. “That experience of going to those funerals, I guarantee you, is way more likely to change their behaviors and attitudes towards opioids than any educational campaign.”

Third, Dasgupta said, drug users have learned not to use alone, and when they have the resources available, to get their drugs tested for potency.

And fourth, Dasgupta credits “all the community-based interventions that are going on. Clinic-based interventions have greatly expanded availability of addiction treatment as well as naloxone, especially having that be accessible with as little red tape as possible.”

The county public health department is on pace to double the amount of naloxone it distributes through community-based organizations in 2025 over last year, with 30,000 doses distributed in the first half of this year. The department has also trained more than 2,700 people in how to administer naloxone since 2024. In addition, the agency has installed vending machines with free naloxone at five sites across the county.

Finegood says community groups have reported back to Public Health that naloxone from those vending machines have reversed at least 800 overdoses, and 85 percent of drug users told county researchers that they now keep naloxone around when they use. 

Making treatment and medications available to those who want to quit using or reduce their drug use has also been a priority, Finegood said. “We’re continuing to work on lowering those barriers so people can provide access.” 

A fleet of methadone vans run by the county are helping bring treatment closer to where people typically use drugs. 

And in August, the Downtown Emergency Service Center opened the Opioid Recovery & Care Access (ORCA) center, which provides 24/7 care to people recovering from overdoses.

Public Health, Finegood said, has also made an injectable version of  buprenorphine much more accessible by setting up a hotline where users can easily and immediately get a prescription when they’re ready. Finegood also praised the city’s first-in-the-nation pilot buprenorphine program, in which Seattle Fire Department paramedics can administer the drug after overdose to anyone who requests it. 

Kristin Hanson, a spokeswoman for the Seattle Fire Department, said first responders have administered 160 doses of buprenorphine since the program began in 2024.

Finegood says continuing to focus on making access to treatment easier has been a key pillar in Public Health’s efforts to stop the deaths. “We need to continue to do what we know is working, and what evidence shows is working: which is lowering barriers to care,” he said. “Because people want care, people want help. We should be giving people access to care when they’re in a place where they’re willing to receive it, and giving them what they want.” 

Elections, homelessness, Mayor Harrell

Homelessness Authority Makes Potentially Controversial Hire, Harrell’s $5,000-a-Week Consultant Speaks Out

1. After laying off 13 people and holding 15 vacant positions open as part of a cost-cutting effort last month, King County Regional Homelessness Authority director Kelly Kinnison added five new positions, including three new executives— erasing some of the savings the KCRHA achieved by axing its deputy director, chief financial officer, associate strategy director, general counsel, and research and data director, among others.

As PubliCola reported last month, the layoffs included every person who filed complaints against Kinnison earlier this year, claiming she displayed racial bias after she attempted to create new positions for two white men, allegedly passing over potential Black internal candidates for those roles. At the time, Kinnison backed off on the hires while the authority conducted an investigation. The investigation ended when the KCRHA board voted to place “a letter reminding [Kinnison] of the organization’s policy on retaliation” in her file and hire an executive coach, who ended up advising Kinnison on which jobs to cut.

This week, Kinnison hired one of the men whose proposed employment by KCRHA led to the investigation in the first place. William Towey, the director of Lake City Partners, will start next week as associate director of strategy—the same title Xochitl Maykovich, one of the staffers who complained about Kinnison, held before she quit in August. Lake City Partners provides shelter and services in North Seattle.

We’ve reached out to KCRHA about Towey’s new role at the agency, as well as whether Kinnison plans to hire the other man she considered earlier this year, who currently runs a nonprofit focused on youth and young adult homelessness.

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2. Abdul Yusuf, the founder of the Eastside for Hire taxi company and an ardent supporter of Mayor Bruce Harrell, didn’t respond when we reached out to ask him what kind of “outreach and engagement” he did for the campaign, which paid him $5,000 a week for undefined services (for comparison, that’s what Harrell’s chief consultant, Christian Sinderman, made from the campaign every month).

Yusuf has been downright voluble on Facebook, however, posting after the election that he, along with Seattle Office of Refugee Affairs director Hamdi Mohamed and Breakfast Group founder Nate Miles, had been able “to organize nearly 500 volunteers in support of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s campaign,” including “over 280 taxi drivers, more than 100 African daycare owners, 28 gas station owners, and many other small-business and community leaders.”

Seattle’s East African community, like most, was divided over the mayor’s race and some who supported Wilson over Harrell reported feeling pressure to support Harrell or refrain from supporting Wilson publicly. In his post, Yusuf accuses “some ome within our broader community” of trying “to play both sides — showing public support while quietly working for the opposition. That kind of double-dealing hurts more than open disagreement, but it also teaches us that true partnership is proven by consistency, not convenience.

In addition to her job at the city, Mohamed is a Seattle Port Commissioner. Miles’ organization, the Breakfast Group, is a mentorship program for young Black men; he jumped up during the We Heart Seattle/Discovery Institute-sponsored “Great Debate” earlier this year to deliver an impromptu pro-Harrell speech while Harrell answered friendly questions from the moderator, who was also a supporter.

Elections, Mayor Harrell

Mayor Katie Wilson? It’s Sure Looking That Way!

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson edged above 50 percent of the vote on Tuesday, in the final sizeable batch of ballots King County Elections expects to count. The 6,200 new ballots represent almost all of the 6,400 ballots that were still outstanding as of Monday, and Wilson received just over 60 percent of that batch, boosting her lead over Harrell to 1,346 votes, or 0.49 percent.

Those numbers are still within the margins that trigger an automatic machine recount, which is required when two candidates are less than 2,000 votes and less than half a percentage point apart.

This mayor’s race is the closest in modern history; you’d have to go back to 1906, when William Hickman Moore defeated Jonathan Riplinger by 15 votes, to find a closer race. That election isn’t really comparable, though; among other differences, women couldn’t vote, and the total number of votes was less than 17,000.

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“We want to wait until every vote has been counted, but we believe that we’ve won this race,” campaign manager Alex Gallo-Brown said. “We’re just inside the mandatory recount threshold, but as we continue to cure ballots with our huge turnout of volunteers, we’re hopeful that we can put the campaign behind us soon and focus on governing the city.” Campaigns “cure” ballots by reaching out to voters whose ballots have been challenged and making sure their signatures count.

“While not the direction we were hoping for, this remains a very close race, and we want to ensure every vote is counted,” a spokesperson for the Harrell campaign said. “We are grateful to our volunteers, who continue to reach out to voters, and will see how the final ballots are tallied.”
(Footnote: Today’s count showed fewer write-in ballots than yesterday’s. A spokesperson for King County Elections said this was because some people wrote one of the two candidates in instead of filling in the circle. “Our team actually reviews every write-in vote and if an actual candidate is written-in (on the line), that counts for the candidate’s total,” the spokesperson said. “A lot of that work happened today as part of regular quality control so that’s why you saw the write-ins go down and the candidate totals go up.”

 

Elections, Mayor Harrell

Katie Wilson Leads Incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell by 91 Votes

 

I mean…

 

By Erica C. Barnett

In the latest batch of ballots counted by King County’s elections office, labor organizer Katie Wilson pulled ahead of incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell by 91 votes—a little over 55.6 percent of the 38,000 votes counted on Monday, with about 6,400 ballots outstanding.

While supporters cheered Wilson on social media as the latest results trended in her favor, she hasn’t won the election yet. If the margin between two candidates is less than one half of one percent, and less than 2,000 votes (which it currently is), that triggers a hand recount of all the ballots. If it’s outside either of those margins, the ballots still have to go through a machine recount, a process that can take days.

Recounts don’t generally change the outcome of elections, but it isn’t impossible: In 2004, Democrat Christine Gregoire became governor after a hand recount added about 400 votes to her total, bringing her 129 votes ahead of Republican Dino Rossi. That margin represented a much smaller percentage of the 2.9 million votes cast statewide than Wilson’s current 91-vote margin over Harrell, out of about 280,000 votes cast in Seattle.

Closer to home, in 2015, the City Council District 1 results were so close they triggered a recount, but the recount didn’t end up changing a single vote in the race between Shannon Braddock and Lisa Herbold, who won.

Both campaigns are currently working to “cure” the ballots of supporters whose ballots have been challenged, which often happens when someone’s signature doesn’t match the one King County has on file or they forget to sign their ballot. Currently, there are about 1,700 ballots that have been challenged, according to King County Elections, which leaves a lot of potential votes on the table.

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Although the late ballots have come in about 55 percent in Wilson’s favor, the last few batches of ballots to be counted can be hard to predict. (A spokesperson for King County Elections said they’re definitely from ballot boxes on Election Night, but there’s no way to know where in the city they were from.) In addition, King County generally holds some ballots they weren’t able to tabulate during the regular machine count and adds them to the tally at the end; these ballots don’t mirror late ballots, which generally trend toward progressive candidates, because they’re from the entire voting period, which starts weeks before the election.

Still, Wilson supporters have cause to be optimistic; to paraphrases Bruce Harrell on election night, they’d rather be where they are than where he is. “We’re elated to see the results of the recent drop!” Wilson’s campaign manager said after the results came out. “Our volunteers will be working to make sure that every single ballot is counted over the next few days. We believe that those cured ballots will be critical.”

“We are grateful to our volunteers who are working to ensure that every vote is counted,” the Harrell campaign said in a statement. “This is important work, and essential in a close race.

Voters whose ballots are being challenged (check here if you don’t know) have until November 24 to fix any issues and have their vote counted. According to the King County Elections spokesperson, “the bulk of [the ballots] left should be in tomorrow,” so we’ll know more by around 4:00 tomorrow. Tuesday afternoon around 4pm.

Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police, Trump

This Week on PubliCola: November 8, 2025


Monday, November 3

When Washington DC Looks Away, King County Must Make Sure Our Neighbors Can Eat

In a guest post, King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay (who just won his election and will be the next county executive) laid out things the county can do right away to ensure that people losing federal assistance can get access to healthy food.

Seattle Nice: Closing Arguments in the Mayoral Election, and a $5,000-a-Week “Outreach” Consultant

On our final episode of the podcast before Tuesday’s election, we discussed the two mayoral candidates’ closing arguments to voters. We also talked about PubliCola’s article this week about Harrell’s payment of $25,000 to the head of an Eastside taxi company who was at the center of a previous Harrell election controversy.

Tuesday, November 4

As Mayor, Harrell Paid for Luxury Upgrades on City Trips, Including a $12,000 Flight and $1,000-a-Night Hotels

Mayor Bruce Harrell attacked his opponent, labor organizer and renter Katie Wilson, as an out-of-touch elite because her parents helped her pay her $2,000-a-month childcare bill while she campaigned. But records from the city show that he paid for luxury upgrades to travel with his wife on city-sponsored trips, splashing out for lie-down beds on international flights and top-of-the-line hotels while others made do with midrange accommodations paid for by the city.

Uncertain Outcome in Mayor’s Race While Progressive Council, City Attorney Candidates Celebrate Wins

Election night began a week of waiting on returns in the mayor’s race, which won’t be decided until next week at the earliest. Both Harrell and Wilson found reason for hope in the initial results, which went strongly for Harrell but generally represented mailed ballots that trend more conservative. City Attorney Ann Davison and citywide City Councilmember Sara Nelson are out, and Eddie Lin will replace appointee Mark Solomon in District 2 (Southeast Seattle).

Wednesday, November 5

Police Chief Shon Barnes Fires Two of SPD’s Top Civilian Staff

Less than 12 hours after the first election results came in, Harrell’s police chief, Shon Barnes, fired two longtime civilian staff, general council Becca Boatright and chief operating officer Brian Maxey, a shakeup that eliminates two people with institutional knowledge and could represent a tightening of the ranks around Barnes, whose small inner circle has no prior history in Seattle.

Thursday, November 6

With Half the Ballots Still Uncounted, This Mayoral Election is an Open Contest

On Wednesday, ballots continued to roll in more slowly than usual, leaving the outcome of the mayor’s race uncertain as a second count moved the numbers just a hair in Harrell’s direction.

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Amid Federal Cuts and State Austerity, The City Must Step Up and Pass a Budget that Puts People First

In a guest post, City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck made the case for adopting a city budget that focuses on those who will be most impacted by federal funding cuts, including victims of gender-based violence, tenants at risk of losing their homes, and the service providers who keep the city’s social safety net going.

Friday, November 7

Latest Ballots Trend Toward Wilson

The batch of ballots released on Friday narrowed the gap between Wilson and Harrell to just 4,300 votes, representing a strong upward surge for the challenger among people who voted later. Wilson needed roughly 55 percent of the outstanding vote to pull off a victory, and that’s still the overall math going into next week, with around 44,000 ballots uncounted.

Barnes Moves Controversial Cop Out of East Precinct

A month after announcing he would reassign Mike Tietjen, the recently promoted captain who became infamous in 2020 after driving his SUV onto a sidewalk filled with protesters and likening them to “cockroaches,” Barnes finally took action, moving Tietjen and assigning Captain Jim Britt, who recently took over at SPD’s Real Time Crime Center, to the role.

Harrell Says Shaming Sex Buyers Works

The mayor said he fully supports a new SPD campaign to shame men who pay for sex by sending letters to their homes letting them know they’ve been busted. The mayor’s office says these stings reduce demand, citing claims from a Christian fundamentalist group that opposes same-sex marriage, porn, and sex shops, in addition to sex work.

 

Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police

Friday Fizz: Latest Ballots Trend Toward Wilson, Barnes Moves Controversial Cop Out of East Precinct, Harrell Says Shaming Sex Buyers Works

1. Some quick math on the latest ballot drop from King County Elections, which included another 56,118 votes in the Seattle mayor’s race:

Katie Wilson narrowed the gap with Mayor Bruce Harrell, who’s now leading 50.74 to 48.86 percent, to 4,300 votes, compared to around 10,000 in the previous (Thursday) count.

In this batch, Wilson increased her showing from 51 percent to almost 55 percent of the vote—exactly the percentage she needed of all outstanding ballots as of Thursday. That means that if she can maintain or gain on that percentage in the final rounds of ballot counting, she can win.

Historically, late ballots tend to be very progressive. (They also tend to be in by now, but the count has been delayed slightly this year because two-thirds of King County voters used ballot drop boxes rather than the mail, heeding warnings that the US Postal Service would not guarantee that ballots received on Election Day would be postmarked on time for them to count.)

At the same time, there are a still a few reasons for caution. First, Harrell and the business-backed PAC working on his behalf hit Wilson hard on experience in the final days of the campaign, which appears to have dampened some of Wilson’s support. (She ended the primary above 50 percent with several more people in the race).

Second, late ballots can be somewhat unpredictable. If the ballot boxes that remain uncounted are from more conservative areas, like Magnolia, they’ll move the final tally in Harrell’s direction regardless of the truism that late voters pick progressive candidates.

Bottom line: It’s still anybody’s guess, so try not to think about it until Monday, when the county will announce the next big batch of results.

2. Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes announced yesterday that he’s reassigning Michael Tietjen, the recently promoted captain who became commander of Capitol Hill’s East Precinct in September, and appointing Captain Jim Britt as head of that precinct.

Barnes, previously the police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, reportedly reprimanded SPD staff for not letting him know promoting Tietjen and putting him in the heart of Capitol Hill might cause a backlash. (PubliCola broke the news about Tietjen’s appointment last month). Tietjen has been at the center of several high-profile controversies, going back to 2007, when he and a partner were accused of planting drugs on a man in a wheelchair.

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In 2020, Tietjen was suspended after driving his SUV onto a sidewalk filled with people and mocking them as “cockroaches,” as well as a separate incident in which he threw a protester against a bus stop, injuring them. He also failed to report officers’ alleged harassment of a trans woman during the same period, according to an Office of Police Accountability investigation.

SPD did not respond to detailed questions about Tietjen’s reassignment PubliCola asked on Tuesday. Instead, they announced Britt’s assignment on SPD’s website on Thursday, describing Tietjen’s “recent assignment” in passive voice and saying Barnes took action as soon as he learned about Tietjen’s history. In reality, Barnes announced plans to reassign Tietjen in an internal announcement, also reported exclusively by PubliCola, that blamed our story and “internal leaks” for creating “a crisis of confidence among our LGBTQIA+ community members.” Then he left Tietjen in charge for a month.

Tietjen is reportedly moving to the department’s Internet Crimes Against Children/High-Risk Victims unit.

If the new commander of the East Precinct’s name  name sounds familiar, that’s because Captain Britt has been

of the city’s Real Time Crime Center, a facility at SPD headquarters where police monitor the new CCTV cameras the city is installing in neighborhoods across Seattle. Britt has been the face of the RTCC, so his reassignment after just a few months leaves a void.

Barnes also announced that East Precinct patrol officer Haden Barton will be SPD’s new LGBTQ+ liaison, a position that has gone unfilled for months after the reassignment of the previous liaison, Doran Koreio.

3. If Tietjen is now in charge of the high-risk victims unit, he’ll be overseeing a program SPD announced last week in which detectives stake out and photograph the cars of men paying for sex on Aurora Ave. N, trace their license plates, and send “Dear John” letters to their homes. The idea is that shaming men and provoking fights with their partners will reduce demand for sex work.

Despite the centuries-long history of shaming as a demand reduction strategy, there’s little to no evidence that it works as a deterrent or decreases the demand for sex work (though there is evidence that it pushes some street-based sex workers to move online). Advocates who work against sex trafficking have argued that “john shaming” harms sex workers and destabilizes the families of the men who end up on “john lists” or receive letters from police at home, with little to no impact on sex trafficking, usually the ostensible purpose of such campaigns.

Deputy city attorney Scott Lindsay, a former public safety advisor to ex-mayor Ed Murray, has been trying to get SPD to adopt the “Dear John” program for years, but was rebuffed by previous police chiefs. (Lindsay’s boss, Republican city attorney Ann Davison, just lost her bid for reeelection).

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office told PubliCola he supports the program. “’John Letter’” programs have been adopted in roughly 100 cities across the United States, including San Francisco last year, and are endorsed by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation as a best practice in addressing commercial sexual exploitation,” a spokesperson for the mayor said. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a national Christian fundamentalist group previously known as Morality in Media, campaigns against pornography, sex work, comprehensive sex education, sex shops, same-sex marriage, among other right-wing crusades.