A new poll sponsored by groups like Tree Action Seattle and Seattle Residents for Responsible Growth tested out messages opposing the city’s comprehensive plan update (currently tied up in litigation), which would allow modest density increases in areas directly adjacent to existing frequent transit stops and small commercial areas.
Less than a day before we published our story about interim Police Chief Andre Sayles’ complaint against a detective who spoke at a pro-LGBTQ event, Mayor Katie Wilson assured the city’s LGBTQ Commission that the complaint was less significant than it turned out to be, angering some commissioners.
Former legislative candidate Ron Davis just won’t let the Stranger’s decision to endorse a different candidate go. In a 3,300-word email, he told campaign supporters he has a plan to neutralize the power of the paper’s endorsements, which he called corrupt and oligarchical.
In this week’s edition of his column, Josh says Katie Wilson has a Jimmy Carter problem—unlike NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, she hasn’t dazzled the media with her charisma (and yes, the fact that he’s a he and she’s a she is a factor). Plus, some plaudits for a rare win for affordable homeownership in Seattle.
A report from the King County ombuds office concluded that King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson misused county resources to negotiate a lease for a vacation home, violate a domestic-violence protection order, attempt to get the sheriff to visit his ex’s home, and set up campaign meetings to do damage control amid negative media coverage of the allegations against him. Wilson has been ordered to pay a $20,000 fine for the violations.
Pallet, a nine-year-old company that produced utilitarian individual shelter units, went out of business suddenly this week. The company partnered on the city’s latest modular shelter in Interbay, and was expected to be a key player in Mayor Katie Wilson’s ongoing shelter expansion push.
In response to a communications breakdown after a shooting at Seattle Center in late July, Mayor Wilson announced changes she says will improve public access to information during future public safety emergencies. In the future, the city plans to release information within an hour of an incident whenever possible, and push information out on Alert Seattle, an opt-in app. Additionally, no more than three members of SPD’s executive staff can be out of town at a time—during the shooting, the police chief and both of his deputy chiefs were in other cities.
Hundreds of pages of Teams and text messages released by the mayor’s office on Friday reveal that almost all of the delay in disseminating information about the Bite of Seattle shooting resulted because SPD failed to update the public after an initial, alarming X post immediately after the shooting. Mayor Wilson’s office was indecisive about whether to send her to the scene of the shooting (ultimately doing so under media pressure), but her absence, and a brief wait for other elected officials to arrive, did not significantly contribute to the delay, and messages show her team repeatedly and unsuccessfully urging SPD to let the public know what was going on.
The messages also reveal that Mayor Wilson was indecisive about going to the scene of the shooting while advisors gave conflicting recommendations and TV reporters speculated about why she wasn’t there.
By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Katie Wilson’s office released hundreds of pages of internal Teams messages and texts between her staffers, herself, and Seattle Police Department officials from the night of the July 26 mass shooting at the Bite of Seattle and in the days following the shooting. (Full documents available here.)
The messages, which do not include communications between SPD officials except where the mayor’s office was included, show two things. First, that the mayor’s office dithered and debated whether Wilson herself should go to the scene of the shooting for three hours before she finally went to Seattle Center, partly in response to TV reporters criticizing her for not being there.
And second, that the primary reason for the delay in information, as well as almost all of the delay in holding a press conference that night, was that SPD delayed the release of information repeatedly, withholding any new information information from the public and press until the press conference finally took place around 11pm.
SPD, the messages show, knew critical details about the shooting, including the fact that it was not a random mass shooting or terrorist event within an hour of the shooting—that is, before 7:30pm—but did not put any of that information out broadly until after 1:00 in the morning on July 27.
The messages include texts from mayoral communications staffer Jonah Spangenthal-Lee to SPD Chief Operating Officer Sarah Smith asking her why SPD had not provided any information since a tweet warning the public of a shooting with “multiple shooting victims” at Seattle Center at 6:29pm. “Sarah, where is SPD”s statement?” Spangenthal-Lee wrote at 8:36. “It’s been two hours since you guys have posted anything? Even some tweets at this point…”
A few minutes later, Spangenthal-Lee told other mayoral staffers in an internal Teams chat, “It’s fucking embarrassing that SPD has waited HOURS to put anything out. … I’m just saying this is a massive fucking disaster and hit to public trust.”
Responding to the text, Smith wrote,”The team is actively handling the situation on the ground and with the media on scene. Still very chaotic right now. We will have more information out soon. A few minutes later, Wilson’s interim communications director, Dawn Schellenberg, wrote that another SPD staffer was “working on getting something on Twitter”—the only social media site SPD uses. Moments later, Smith corrected her, saying SPD would have no further updates until “after 9.”
Wilson’s own statement on the shooting went out at 8:46. It did not include information SPD was still withholding, including the critical information that the shooting appeared to be between groups of people who knew each other and that there was no need for he general public to be afraid.
At 9:26, Smith sent an update: Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis, who was filling in because Barnes and both his deputy chiefs were out of town, would be doing media interviews at 10pm; SPD would put up a Blotter post “right afterwards.” Ultimately, the press conference was delayed until almost 11pm, with both Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Governor Bob Ferguson, who had driven into town from Olympia, in attendance.
None of the messages include an order from the mayor’s office to withhold information from the public so that “dignitaries” could arrive at Seattle Center, as one of SPD’s communications staff told TV reporters who have repeatedly suggested that this was the reason SPD did not release information to the public all night.
While SPD was withholding information and failing to communicate with the press, a chaotic debate was going on within the mayor’s office about whether she should go to the scene of the shooting. The discussion began shortly before 6:30, when Wilson said she was available “as needed” and her interim communications director, Dawn Schellenberg, said Spangenthal-Lee had said she should go to Seattle Center. The mayor’s public safety advisor, Alison Holcomb, advised against this “until we know more.”
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At 7:26, Wilson texted, “It would be good to get clarity soon whether we’re planning a public conference tonight v. tomorrow morning, so we can communicate that to other elected officials. (Just talked with Ferguson and Jayapal. Ferguson is in Olympia but can head this way shortly.)”
Holcomb replied, saying to wait until after a conference call for elected officials that was being organized by SPD. That conference call didn’t take place until around 9pm, possibly because Barnes wanted to get briefed on the situation from Dallas before participating in a call with elected officials. (A release of similar internal Teams chats and text messages from SPD would shed light on what Barnes and other SPD officials were doing between approximately 7:30 and 9:45.)
By around 9:40, it was still unclear whether the mayor would go to Seattle Center. At almost 9:30pm, Spangenthal-Lee wrote, “I reaaaaaaally think the mayor should go down there,” but Holcomb disagreed, writing, “Harborview, where victim’s families are, makes more sense, and I’m not sure that makes sense.”
“Media aren’t looking for an in-depth conversation about gang violence, they’re. looking for sound bites,” Holcomb continued. “Good time for the Mayor to be letting first responders do their jobs and not be armchair quarterbacking.”
Around the. same time, Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt, who had been on the scene for two hours, told Wilson, “I just talked to [Assistant Police Chief] Davis. His recommendation is no.” In other words, shortly before 9:40, SPD was still saying the mayor should not come to Seattle Center.
But after KOMO reporter Chris Daniels called the mayor, and another KOMO reporter said on air that they would expect the mayor to be there if she was in town, Wilson wrote, “We should consider whether I should come down to talk to KOMO, if that expectation has been created. I’m sure they would love to spin an ‘absent mayor’ story.” (Daniels has been among the mayor’s harshest critics, and a chief ringleader of the narrative that the mayor was solely to blame for the lack of information about the shooting.) “I’m inclined to have you come down,” Surratt responded.
Wilson was on the scene less than a half hour after that text, shortly after 10pm. The press conference happened shortly before 11.There was a brief delay for Ferguson and Jayapal to arrive from other parts of Seattle, but it was, at most, around 30 minutes—at the end of a long night in which SPD had still put out no information beyond its initial, alarming post on X saying that multiple people had been shot.
SPD’s first post on the evening’s events went up early the following morning, at 1:08 am.
Wilson and interim Police Chief Andre Sayles announced some changes to how police and the mayor’s office will communicate with each other and with the public earlier this week. The city’s Office of the Inspector General is supposed to release a report about the communications breakdown sometime this fall.
Editor’s note: This story originally reported that Chris Daniels was on the scene at Seattle Center; he was not. We regret the error.
Mayor Katie Wilson, with interim police chief Andre Sayles on the left
Wilson rolled out the changes before a report that is supposed to explain how communications broke down after the Bite of Seattle shooting.
By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Katie Wilson and the Seattle Police Department rolled out a new communications plan for emergencies this week that includes a few updates to the old communications plan, which broke down in still-unspecified ways during a shooting at the Bite of Seattle festival in July that left three people dead. SPD arrested a 15-year-old on the night of the shooting, but still has not found “persons of interest” who may have also been involved.
Former SPD chief Shon Barnes and both of his deputy chiefs were out of town during the shooting. Barnes’ absence was one of several factors that may have contributed to a five-hour delay before SPD and Wilson held a press conference the night of the shooting. Barnes resigned under pressure—walking away with a severance package worth at least $740,000—after his over-the-top reaction to a reporter who asked about his frequent absences turned into a national story.
The new rules, which Wilson announced earlier this week, would include clearer lines of communication between SPD and the mayor’s staff, which appear to have broken down during the chaos after the shooting. A new SPD policy, which the department says is still being drafted, would allow no more than three members of SPD’s “executive staff” to be out of town at the same time; it’s unclear if this will include all command staff or just the chief and his deputies and assistants.
In the future, Alert Seattle, an opt-in system that pings people’s phones during emergencies, will alert residents when any “significant incident” happens, although the parameters that term will include are still undefined. During major incidents like active shooter events, the city may use the system to push wireless alerts to every cell phone within a certain radius—warning them to leave the area, for instance. And there will now be an “expectation of providing information to the media within one hour of a significant incident, when it’s safe and possible to do so,” according to the announcement.
Wilson has deflected questions about what caused the five-hour delay, saying that information will be revealed in a review by the Office of Inspector General, which her office requested, later this fall.
In an interview, Wilson said she decided to announce new communications policies prior to the publication of the OIG review “because it’s very important that the public has confidence that we’re prepared for Bumbershoot this weekend and all the big events coming up. … What this is about is saying there were gaps. We did not measure up to the standard that we have set for ourselves in terms of communications with the public. And we are fixing that moving forward.”
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Wilson’s communications office has seen significant turnover throughout her eight-month administration, including the firing of a multimedia specialist last week. Currently, Wilson has a temporary press secretary and temporary communications director, along with multiple consultants working on communications.
Asked whether the lack of a permanent comms team was a factor in the communications issues that arose after the shooting, Wilson said, “No, I don’t think so. We have excellent interim leadership in our comms department. And I’m not just saying that because my interim comms director,” Dawn Schellenberg, “is sitting here,” she joked.
It’s unclear how much the changes will impact how quickly the public receives direct information about major incidents, and how often. The new rules say Alert Seattle subscribers will get push notices about “significant incidents,” an SPD term of art that includes everything from robberies to reports of shots fired to assaults to “any other event a sergeant believes is significant.” Notifying the public every time one of these incidents occurs could contribute to fear—or apathy. Wilson said her office would get back to me on the new threshold for alerts. “We’re not going to spam people,” she said.
Wilson said her office will also direct people to X, SPD’s platform of choice for putting out timely information, “when appropriate,” and confirmed that her office hasn’t asked SPD to put out information on additional platforms, such as Instagram, Reddit, and Bluesky. Most people in Seattle are not on X, the controversial, Elon Musk-owned platform that has become a haven for right-wing disinformation and hate speech.
Most of the mainstream media in Seattle have focused their coverage of the communications breakdown on Wilson’s responsibility, almost to the exclusion of SPD—the organization that actually conducts media briefings after shootings and other major events.
Asked about the media’s singular focus on her role, Wilson said, “I’m not going to sit here and complain about the media.”
“What’s unfortunate,” Wilson continued, “is that so much of the media narrative has focused on communications, in a way that has gotten away from gun violence and the victims and really just what we can do moving forward as a city to make sure our public spaces are safe.”
While the mayor has declined to comment on SPD’s role in the communications breakdown or discuss how much the former chief’s absence from the city contributed to the information bottleneck, Barnes has been making the media rounds to give his own version of events.
Earlier this week, for instance, he told KOMO’s Chris Daniels that his absence from the city during the shooting wasn’t an issue, because he had access to Teams and a copy of the Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist on his phone. (As I reported, Barnes had planned to be out of the city until mid-August.) “What I did, virtually, if you will, is what I would have done if I was here on the ground here in in Seattle,” Barnes told Daniels.
1. A recent messaging poll by a group calling itself the “Green Neighborhoods Coalition” tested talking points against Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to finally get moving on the the Seattle Comprehensive Plan, which has been mired in appeals for more than a year. Activists who oppose the plan claim that allowing modest new apartment buildings in and around Seattle’s suburban-style single-family enclaves will “deforest” Seattle, result in the deaths of orcas and salmon, and lead to untold environmental devastation.
The comprehensive plan, which has been pushed back repeatedly since early 2023, epitomizes the concept of “endless delay”—or the “Seattle Process,” if you prefer.
The poll, conducted by Fulcrum Strategy Group (the same pollster behind recent Chamber and Challenge Seattle polls), describes Mayor Katie Wilson’s “taller, denser, faster” approach to the comprehensive plan neutrally, as a series of zoning changes designed “to more quickly address Seattle’s affordable housing crisis by supporting faster development of apartments and condos across Seattle with a particular focus on greater density transit corridors.”
Then, it tests detailed negative messages among people who say they support “a more deliberate approach” to development, including the argument that building more housing will destroy “parks, trees, and greenways”; that the approach “shortchanges climate resiliency” by “ignoring” climate change and “long-term environmental resiliency”; and that (finally) moving forward on the comp plan is a way of “cutting corners, taking shortcuts, excluding community voices, and trying to rush a decision.”
Andrew Thibault, the co-founder of Fulcrum, said the Green Neighborhoods Coalition’s messaging was not “NIMBY/anti-density.”
Editor’s note: This post originally said that the Seattle Parks Foundation was “the group behind” the Green Neighborhoods Coalition. They are the Green Neighborhoods Coalition’s fiscal sponsor, not a direct funder. We regret the error.
2. Less than a day before we published our story about interim Police Chief Andre Sayles’ complaint against a detective who spoke at a pro-LGBTQ event, Mayor Katie Wilson was at a meeting of the city’s LGBTQ Commission, doing a bit of preemptive damage control. At the time of the Thursday night meeting, Wilson’s office still had not responded to our questions for the story we published the following morning.
According to three commission members, and as reported by Seattle Gay News, Wilson and a staffer told the commission our story was basically toothless—specifically, that Sayles had only asserted that the detective, Beth Wareing, represented herself as an SPD detective in violation of orders not to do so. Wilson explained the issue as a “procedural” problem rather than a serious overstep by Sayles, one commissioner said, and let the commission know the case had been dismissed.
Not only did Wareing not mention her affiliation with SPD at the No Hate in WA State press conference, this was not the most incendiary allegation Sayles made against her. He also alleged that she lied about what two anti-LGBTQ initiatives would do, which would be a violation of SPD’s policy against dishonesty and a fireable offense that could have ended Wareing’s career. (She retired rather than continuing at SPD after a sabbatical as the direct result of Sayles’ unfounded complaint). According to OPA, Sayles’ claims against Wareing risked violating her right to free speech.
Jessa Davis, the co-chair of the LGBTQ Commission, said she was most concerned that Sayles seems to have taken right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse at her word that Wareing lied about what the initiatives would do. Kruse, Davis said, is a “political activist who has publicly advocated in support of these ballot initiatives that the detective was speaking against.” In fact, she’s being investigated by the state Public Disclosure Commission for her advocacy work on behalf of the initiative sponsor Let’s Go Washington, which the PDC calls an in-kind contribution.
“We’ve seen SPD officers engage in political expression before, including statements that many people in Seattle and in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community find deeply troubling,” Davis said, pointing to the double standard that allows SPD officers to express right-wing viewpoints freely. “If we’re going to protect the officers’ rights to political expression, then the rules have to be applied consistently.”
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Wilson’s office said they didn’t have complete information about Sayles’ allegations when they spoke to the LGBTQ+ Commission, and that they were trying to be “transparent and provide them with information” before PubliCola’s story went up. “It was meant to be a high-level heads up, not an attempt to minimize the story or explain it away,” a spokesperson said. “In part, the briefing was for Mayor Wilson to express her expectation that Chief Sayles would be an inclusive leader.”
According to the spokesperson, Wilson had only read the closed case summary about the complaint, which did not include most of the information we reported, when she addressed our story at the meeting.
“The Mayor had only received very high-level information about the case,” and was “actively working with OPA to obtain additional documentation. We believed it was important for us to share with the community the limited information we had received.”
Some commission members, however, left the meeting feeling reassured that Sayles had done nothing serious, and that PubliCola’s story was about a minor incident that fizzled—rather than a serious complaint that led a 30-year detective to leave the department in frustration and disgust.
3. Ron Davis, the former 46th District legislative candidate who ran as an urbanist alternative to state Rep. Gerry Pollet, sent out yet another 3,300-word manifesto to his supporters last week, this one all about the Stranger and its failure to endorse him. In Davis’ mind, this decision was not based on the paper’s actual assessment of him and his candidacy, because that process would have obviously led them to endorse Davis over Will Dreher, the other candidate in the race.
Instead, Davis’ theory is that the “oligarchs” who bought the Stranger (and got rid of three staffers Davis preferred to the current staff) 1) forced the editorial board to endorse Dreher after voting for Davis and 2) maybe (?) told the union that represents Stranger workers to write a statement saying that the board really did prefer Dreher, not Davis, which Davis argues is impossible without interference by publisher Brady Walkinshaw, who knows Dreher. (He also knows Davis, by the way, and endorsed him personally for city council in 2023.)
Assuring readers that he “consulted heavily with two STEM PhDs” in his analysis, Davis spins out a theory in which the Stranger’s endorsement is “always decisive” for lefty candidates, across “hundreds” of past elections, and that there is a knowable, specific “Stranger bump” that applies to all of those candidates, and which Davis should have rightly received.
The whole tendentious essay is almost a textbook definition of correlation-causation confusion, all leading up to Davis’ argument that the new, crowdsourced “Lefty Cheat Sheet” can be a viable alternative to the Stranger’s endorsements, whose “buyout and behavior” have “dismayed and betrayed” its readers.
Candidates are often pissed that they don’t get endorsements. Davis is the first one I can recall who has turnsd a grudge against the Stranger into a proto-crusade against the paper’s endorsements in general. The truth, as Josh argued last week, is almost certainly much more banal—the Stranger met Davis, and they weren’t impressed by him. That should lead to self-reflection, not a multi-volume conspiracy theory.
4. We discussed a counter-complaint against Sayles, KCRHA’s handling of recent layoffs, and Davis’ post-election meltdown on last week’s episode of Seattle Nice—give it a listen if you haven’t already!
The investigation comes after the Office of Police Accountability said any “further investigation” of Sayles’ complaint against a detective who spoke at a pro-LGBTQ press conference could violate her constitutional rights and open the city to a lawsuit.
By Erica C. Barnett
The city’s Office of Police Accountability is investigating a complaint filed against interim Police Chief Andre Sayles alleging that he retaliated against a detective who spoke at a pro-LGBTQ rally with SPD’s permission last year. The complaint, filed last month, also accuses Sayles of violating SPD’s policy on professionalism.
As PublCola reported exclusively last week, Sayles filed a potentially career-ending OPA complaint against longtime SPD detective Beth Wareing after she spoke at a press conference held by No Hate in WA State. The group is opposing two initiatives that would take away students’ ability to speak in confidence to school counselors and require girls to submit to genital exams to prove they have vaginas before participating in school sports.
Wareing had written permission to speak at the rally as long as she didn’t mention she worked at SPD or purport to represent the views of the department, and she followed those guidelines in her remarks, which lasted roughly three minutes and were available online shortly after the rally.
It’s not uncommon for police to speak publicly on political issues; former police guild president Mike Solan spouted off every week on his incendiary podcast. What is unusual is for police to express left-leaning views. Wareing’s comments got the attention of right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse, who promptly told SPD Wareing had misrepresented the initiatives when she spoke. At least partly on the basis of Kruse’s claims, Sayles filed his complaint against Wareing, accusing her of disobeying a direct order and being “dishonest in saying inaccurate and untrue things at the press conference.”
OPA, which is housed in the police department, quickly dismissed the complaint, noting that any further investigation would clearly violate Wareing’s right to free speech and open SPD up to a lawsuit. The complaint against Sayles was opened after the investigation into Wareing concluded.
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According to a notice that went to select city officials, including the mayor, city attorney, and Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth and Bob Kettle last week, the complaint against Sayles “alleges potential violations of department policy relating to retaliation and professionalism by the Interim Chief of Police.”
Since 2022, when the city codified the first formal process for complaints against the police chief, city law has treated complaints against the chief of police differently than complaints against all other officers. Anyone, including OPA itself, can file a complaint against the chief. Once that happens, OPA decides whether to consider the case and whether to dismiss it as a “contact log” or conduct a full investigation into whether the chief has violated an SPD policy or a law.
Police chief investigations are rare. At the end of 2025, for example, the Office of Inspector General, an independent police accountability office that certifies OPA cases as timely, thorough, and objective, reported two open police chief investigations and 29 cases that were closed without an investigation.
OPA would not comment on the complaint against Sayles, other than to confirm that it exists. But the existence of an investigation itself indicates that the city’s police accountability system is taking the complaint against Sayles seriously. OPA’s findings (and recommended discipline, if any), along with OIG’s review of those findings, will include the agency’s assessment of whether Sayles violated Wareing’s First Amendment rights or retaliated against her for exercising them.
Valerie Carson, one of four female police officers who split a $2.6 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and discrimination by former SPD chief Adrian Diaz, former assistant chief Dan Nelson, and current Lieutenant John O’Neil, has filed a new complaint against O’Neil with the city’s Office of Police Accountability.
PubliCola covered a previous retaliation complaint Carson filed against O’Neil, who accused her of refusing to follow orders after she declined to do a TV interview and went on mental-health leave. In an interview for his complaint, O’Neil said Carson was “combative,” “angry,” and “hostile,” and claimed that her only “mental health condition” was being too emotional about a recent breakup.
Carson’s new complaint accuses O’Neil of making unprofessional, dishonest, and retaliatory comments about Carson and her co-litigants, Lauren Truscott, Kame Spencer, and Jean Gulpan during a recent staff meet-and-greet event.
Carson worked for O’Neil when he was a sergeant heading up SPD’s communications office. He has since moved on and up, and is now a lieutenant overseeing SPD’s traffic investigation unit, crime scene investigations, and SPD’s evidence unit—high-profile positions that coincided with a pay increase of nearly $50,000 between 2025 and 2026.
O’Neil filed a counter-claim against the four female officers, who included two women of color, accusing them of being racist and retaliating against him; he ended up with a settlement of $200,000.
In her complaint, Carson says that during a getting-to-know-you meeting with his new staff in June, O’Neil badmouthed all four of his accusers—Carson, Lauren Truscott, Kame Spencer, and Jean Gulpan—and told his staff that “he is the most innocent man that has ever been investigated and that his accusers … are liars.” Carson’s allegations were based on accounts from two officers who were at the event.
By making derogatory statements about the four women, Carson wrote, O’Neil was “telling our peers we can’t be trusted”—and that as a high-ranking official at SPD, he was doing so on SPD’s behalf. Spencer, Carson, and Gulpan remain at SPD, while Truscott left.
“This was not a situation in which he was free to express his own personal opinions —he was speaking as a representative of the department and as a supervisor and manager of our peers,” Carson wrote. “These are people we work with at events and crime scenes, people we coordinate with for casework, and in my case, people I see in my building. His words foment a hostile work environment.”
“Plus, in slandering us and delegitimizing the accountability and legal processes we went through, O’Neil’s actions would dissuade a reasonable employee from raising their own concerns about possible violations,” Carson wrote.
A spokesperson for SPD declined to respond to our questions, saying they were a matter for OPA to address. O’Neil did not respond to a request for comment, and Carson declined to speak to PubliCola on the record.
