As Katie Wilson takes office, we reflected on her inauguration—a hopeful event heavily attended by regular people—and her commitment to try to make Seattle a city where people can live full, creative lives, not just balance their budget ledgers.
Wilson continued to build out her team at city hall this week, hiring high-profile staffers including interim public safety and homelessness advisor Lisa Daugaard, who created the LEAD diversion program; public safety director Alison Holcomb, a longtime civil rights lawyer and advocate; and homelessness director Jon Grant, a staffer at LIHI who ran for city council and once led the Tenants Union.
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes told officers last week to begin referring most people caught using or possessing drugs in public to LEAD—a misstatement of a memo from new City Attorney Erika Evans, who told her own staff to consider all drug-related referrals from SPD for LEAD. Barnes later claimed that his memo about the “change” in policy did not reflect any policy change at all—but police union head Mike Solan had already sounded the alarm with right-wing media, which reported that Wilson had halted all arrests for drug offenses.
With Wilson in office for less than a week, Barnes (a Bruce Harrell appointee Wilson chose to retain) announced he had hired two new staffers to replace two top civilian staff he fired last year. Both of the new staffers came directly from Harrell’s office. The two fired staffers, Rebecca Boatright and Brian Maxey, filed a tort claim against the city, alleging retaliation and discrimination.
City Councilmember Rob Saka, who has had trouble retaining staff, just hired Brendan Kolding—a former city council candidate who endorsed Saka’s opponent in 2023. Kolding, a former SPD lieutenant, resigned after an investigation concluded he had harassed a coworker and lied about it to the police chief.
A week of inaugurations wrapped up in city council chambers on Tuesday with the swearing-in of new Seattle City Councilmember Dionne Foster, along with reelected Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, and the selection (which we previewed in a Fizz item in November) of District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth as the new city council president.
Mayor Wilson replaced two more Harrell-appointed leaders this week, removing the directors of the Office of Economic Development and the head of the city’s finance office. For the latter position, she picked Dwight Dively—a longtime city and county budget staffer who was hired away by former county executive Dow Constantine 15 years ago.
After announcing that he won’t seek reelection, Seattle Police Officers Guild endorsed a candidate who sounds like a man after his own heart—Ken Loux, a 10-year SPD officer who says SPD is under siege by the left.
1. Mayor Katie Wilson announced two new department heads on Friday. She’s replacing her predecessor Bruce Harrell’s finance director, Jamie Carnell, with city and county budget veteran Dwight Dively; and she’s replacing Harrell’s Office of Economic Development director, Markham McIntyre, with his deputy, Alicia Teel, on an “acting” basis.
Dively was budget director at the city until 2010, when then-mayor Mike McGinn replaced him with a former King County deputy budget director, Beth Goldberg. (McGinn said Dively had failed to adequately plan for the budget shortfalls of the Great Recession).
Then-King County Executive Dow Constantine snapped Dively up, and he remained in charge of the county’s budget until the election of Girmay Zahilay, who assigned him to help head up the Department of Community and Human Services after ousting Kelly Rider, who was head of DCHS for a little less than two years. Many inside the city bemoaned Dively’s ouster and considered his move a trade in the county’s favor (although Goldberg had her fans!)
McIntyre spent a decade in various executive jobs at the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce (which recently changed its own leadership, hiring former state legislator and state Department of Commerce director Joe Nguyen to replace Rachel Smith). McIntyre brought Teel over from the Chamber, where she worked for more than 15 years. (Editor’s note: This story originally said McIntyre served under Jenny Durkan, which is not the case. We regret the error.)
McIntyre was a Harrell campaign stalwart. PubliCola reported last year that he used an internal City of Seattle Teams chat to ask for city employees’ personal contact information on behalf of the Harrell campaign; those who provided their info received solicitations to support Harrell “in the home stretch.”
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2. The Tanya Woo rumor mill chugged back into operation this week. Unconfirmed, but we’re hearing that the onetime Seattle councilmember (appointed to a citywide seat after losing to Tammy Morales in District 2, Woo ran a second time, losing to Alexis Mercedes Rinck), has reportedly been testing the waters for another campaign—this time aiming her sights at the state.
We heard this week that Woo may run for the state house seat that will be vacated by 37th District representative Chipalo Street, who recently declared his candidacy for the state senate seat being vacated by Rebecca Saldaña, who’s running for King County Council Position 2, occupied until recently by now-King County Executive Girmay Zahilay. (Zahilay’s longtime chief of staff, Rhonda Lewis, is in the position on a temporary basis). Seattle Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa recently announced she is also “considering” a run for Zahilay’s former council seat.
3. After setting right-wing activist hearts aflame by making the baseless claim that Mayor Katie Wilson has ordered cops to stop arresting people for drug crimes, Seattle Police Officers Guild president Mike Solan announced on his “Hold the Line” podcast last month that he won’t seek reelection.
Apparently, Solan has already selected his heir apparent—Ken Loux, a 10-year SPD officer whose talking points suggest SPOG is under siege by powerful enemies, rather than coddled by city officials who just handed the union a 42 percent raise.
“Make no mistake: Seattle’s politics have veered sharply left, unleashing a storm that threatens to dismantle everything we’ve built brick by brick,” Loux says in his campaign video over shaky images of Mayor Wilson and City Councilmembers Dionne Foster and Alexis Mercedes Rinck. “SPOG is staring down its most brutal years yet—a relentless assault on our unity, our resources, and our resolve.”
Solan’s headshot looms above Loux’s image on his website, making the younger man look like the Son of Solan. A Mini-Mike, if you will.
Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks at a press conference last year.
Chief Shon Barnes apparently didn’t consult with LEAD or the city attorney’s office before telling police they should start referring every drug arrest to LEAD.
By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes sent a memo to officers last week directing them to refer most people caught using or possessing drugs in public to LEAD, the pre-booking diversion program that provides case management and other services to people accused of low-level criminal activity.
“Effective immediately, all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use will be diverted from prosecution to the LEAD program,” Barnes told officers in an internal email. “All instances of drug use or possession will be referred to Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD)—a program designed to redirect low-level offenders in King County from the criminal justice system into supportive social services.”
The announcement by Barnes appears to have been a dramatic overreaction to an internal memo from City Attorney Erika Evans directing her prosecutors to refer drug use and possession cases to an internal team to determine if they are eligible for LEAD. This represents a shift from the policy established by Evans’ predecessor, Ann Davison, who allowed people charged with misdemeanor possession or drug use to avoid charges by getting an addiction assessment and not getting arrested again for six months—the opposite of a therapeutic approach.
“The LEAD Liaison Team will assess previous attempts at engagement with the referred individual in consultation with LEAD,” Evans’ memo, which PubliCola received from her office, said. “If the referred individual has failed to demonstrate a sustained level or engagement with the LEAD program or has refused to engage with a LEAD case manager, the LEAD Liaison will assess the most suitable subsequent action in consultation with the Criminal Division Chief.”
Barnes responded to Evans’ memo by sending an email blast to all SPD officers saying that “Effective immediately, all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use will be diverted from prosecution to the LEAD program,” an inaccurate description of Evans’ directive to her staff. Barnes continued:
If an individual fails to comply with the LEAD program, traditional prosecutorial measures will apply. As you know, LEAD is a familiar alternative-to-arrest program that we have been utilizing for some time. This change aligns with Seattle City Ordinance 126896. Please note that this diversion does not apply to individuals who are ineligible for LEAD or to those arrested for selling or delivering controlled substances. User-quantity cases may be diverted; sell-and-deliver cases will not.
My expectation is that officers will continue to charge individuals for drug use or possession when appropriate-for example, when the activity occurs in public view or when probable cause for arrest is established.
The announcement quickly blew up thanks to an inaccurate story by KOMO, which reported—apparently without speaking to LEAD, Wilson’s office, Barnes, or Evans—that Wilson herself had “ordered officers to stop arresting people for open drug use.” (The origin of the accusation: Bombastic police union leader Mike Solan, who recently announced he won’t run for reelection). Right-wing social media accounts ran wild with the fake version of the story, forcing Wilson to issue a statement: “You’ll know when I announce a policy change, because I’ll announce a policy change.”
(Apparently, it didn’t help: Wilson was mobbed by TV cameras after Evans’ inauguration Monday afternoon at City Hall.)
In her statement, Wilson affirmed that her public safety policy includes “enforcement of the possession and public use ordinance in priority situations and ensuring that the LEAD framework and other effective responses to neighborhood hot spots are implemented with an appropriate level of urgency, sufficient resources, and a commitment to results.”
This, in effect, is what the city’s policy toward low-level drug crime was prior to 2023, when Davison and then-mayor Bruce Harrell pushed to change city law to empower SPD to start arresting people for simple drug possession and public use.
Although Barnes insisted that the policy hasn’t changed, he also referred to “this change” in the same email email. Many officers interpreted Barnes’ contradictory memo as a directive to no longer arrest people for drug use and simple possession but instead refer them straight to LEAD.
The police chief didn’t bother seeking information or feedback from the organization that runs LEAD, Purpose Dignity Action, before emailing officers about the change in policy, and he exaggerated the policy change by portraying as a kind of blanket amnesty for misdemeanor drug crime. Even if the PDA wanted to take on “all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use” they couldn’t afford to. LEAD had to stop taking community referrals into the program after the drug law passed in 2023, and a $5 million budget boost last year will only fund another 500 to 600 slots in the program this year.
LEAD co-director Brandi McNeil said that’s “a significant number,” but it’s well “below the total number of people who would qualify and be appropriate candidates for LEAD. We will need to strategize with police, prosecutors, the Mayor, the Council, and County officials (our funders) to focus that capacity on high priority situations and individuals.”
LEAD tries to take on clients who are likely to benefit from their services, as opposed to everyone who has been accused of a particular misdemeanor. “Part of our job is to accurately forecast what capacity we will have, and to work with our partners to decide which, among the pool of people who chronically commit law violations related to behavioral health issues or poverty, should be prioritized for our available slots,” McNeil said.
Barnes also misstated the criteria for LEAD eligibility, saying people arrested for selling or delivering drugs are ineligible for the program; in fact, LEAD began as an effort to benefit this specific group of people, who were cycling through courts and jail without getting any assistance for the underlying issues that were causing them to earn a living through illegal means. LEAD still serves people accused of selling up to 7 grams of drugs, which means almost anyone involved in low-level drug sales is eligible for the program.
Finally, Barnes’ description of the conditions in which “officers will charge” people for public drug use are confusing and ambiguous: “Probable cause” is supposed to exist before officers make any arrest, and it’s unclear what distinction Barnes is making between “public drug use” and drug use that “occurs in public view.”
SPD did not respond to questions sent last week attempting to clarify what Barnes meant by these distinctions. However, they did send out an email to media in response to the right-wing blowback on Monday. “To be clear, nothing has changed when it comes to police continuing to make drug-related arrests in Seattle,” Barnes said in the statement (emphasis in original), adding that police will “continue to make arrests for drug-related charges if they have probable cause.”
Brian Maxey and Rebecca Boatright, two long-serving civilian employees fired by Police Chief Shon Barnes last month
Fired SPD employees allege retaliation by police chief, Harrell pre-election request sent Seattle Channel staffers scrambling, and more news to close out 2025.
Police Chief Shon Barnes took a nearly two-week vacation over the holidays, leaving various deputies in charge while he was off duty. Barnes, whose family lives in Chicago, has previously come under scrutiny for spending many of his weekends out of town.
The Seattle Police Department claims two recent operations targeting a strip club and men who pay for sex successfully targeted human trafficking and sexual exploitation. But they wouldn’t answer questions seeking more detailed information about the two announcements, such as whether the strip club sting led to any actual charges and a request for police reports.
Former Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office said his 2025 budget video was nothing unusual and didn’t cost the city any extra money. But records reveal that the multi-location video was a last-minute request that required Seattle Channel staffers to drop what they were doing and work overtime on a weekend to film and produce a 15-minute film with virtually no notice, just a few weeks before ballots dropped for the 2025 mayoral election.
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In recent years, the police department’s policy toward public disclosure requests has ossified into a kind of tacit refusal via delay. “Grouping,” SPD’s practice of refusing to respond to more than one request from the same person or outlet at a time, is the subject of at least one lawsuit, but SPD also now forces the media and public to file records requests for information that used to be easy to obtain, exacerbating the problem. Mayor Wilson should seek an audit to get to the bottom of SPD’s intrasigence, and make them follow the public records act in practice, not just in theory.
Two top civilian SPD employees who were fired by Police Chief Shon Barnes, Rebecca Boatright and Brian Maxey, have filed tort claims seeking $11 million for what they describe as retaliation. The tort says they advised Barnes against decisions that were widely perceived as anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ, and Boatright also says she was discriminated against because of her gender.
Barnes’ chief of staff reportedly responded to concerns about a crackdown on the longtime nude beach at Denny Blaine Park by saying, “We’re not here for the gays.”
By Erica C. Barnett
Two former civilian Seattle Police Department employees, former general counsel Rebecca Boatright and former chief operating officer Brian Maxey, have filed tort claims against the city, alleging they were “subjected to a widespread course of retaliation and wrongfully terminated” because they opposed decisions made by Barnes and his predecessor, Sue Rahr.
Boatright is also claiming gender discrimination. Maxey is seeking $4.5 million, while Boatright is seeking $6.5 million.
Barnes abruptly fired Boatright and Maxey early in the morning on November 5, less than 12 hours after the first ballots dropped in the mayoral election.
The two were among the longest-serving civilian members of the department, and “the only City employees to navigate the Consent Decree between the United States and the City from start to finish,” according to their claim.
The tort claim, which will lead to a lawsuit if the city declines to settle within 60 days, claims that the department retaliated against Maxey and Boatright for objecting to a number of decisions, including “personnel moves (promotions, demotions, and assignments) that reasonably appeared to be rooted in retaliation or discrimination based upon sexual orientation or gender.”
This is an apparent reference to two hiring decisions. First, Barnes chose to promote Mike Tietjen, a lieutenant who became infamous for his over-the-top misconduct during the 2020 protests on Capitol Hill, to captain of the East Precinct, passing over a gay lieutenant who had been serving as acting captain and was well-liked within the surrounding Capitol Hill community. (Barnes later rescinded his decision and put a different captain in charge at the East Precinct).
In an email to command staff earlier this year, Barnes blamed PubliCola’s reporting for community backlash against his decision to promote Tietjen, as well “a lack of comprehensive input from those involved in employee assignments and internal leaks within our department.”
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. According to people familiar with the conversation, Barnes’ chief of staff, Alex Ricketts, brushed Boatright off when she told Ricketts he and Barnes needed to take the LGBTQ+ community’s concerns seriously, telling her, “We’re not here for the gays.”
Second, Barnes’ Deputy Chief Yvonne Underwood allegedly decided not to promote a gay detective who was serving as acting sergeant over SPD’s policy division, passing her over for the permanent position despite the fact that, like the acting East Precinct Commander who got pushed aside in favor of Tietjen, she was already doing the job. Instead, the woman, a single mom, was assigned to an overnight patrol position, which conflicted with her duties as a parent—a common issue faced by female cops, and one SPD has claimed it wants to solve as part of the “30 by 30” effort to have a recruit class that’s 30 percent women by 2030.
Boatright, Maxey, and executive staff in Harrell’s office also questioned Barnes’ decision to award $50,000 hiring bonuses, created explicitly to recruit trained rank and file officers, to two of his new command staff, and to accept the same bonus himself. Barnes and Deputy chief Yvonne Underwood also took $2,000 recruitment bonuses for hiring the same two executives. PubliCola reported exclusively on the bonuses in a series of stories earlier this year, which led to another search for “leaks” in the department, according to multiple internal sources.
During a conversation about the bonuses that took place in his office, Ricketts reportedly dismissed Boatright’s legal concerns, saying she didn’t know what she was talking about, according to people familiar with the conversation. When Underwood arrived at the office, Ricketts reportedly told the deputy chief, “This girl’s talking foolishness.”
The claim also alleges that in order to justify the highest possible pay classification, Executive 4, for a new position he created for his longtime colleague Lee Hunt, Barnes handed a significant amount of Boatright’s work, along with employees she supervised, to Hunt. “The Chief of Police told Ms. Boatright that the effective demotion was necessary to ‘justify [Hunt’s] Exec 4 classification,'” according to the claim. Boatright had a lower job classification—Executive 3—that tops out in the high $200,000s. Hunt’s salary is $302,000 a year, more than the mayor and most city department heads.
Another issue Boatright and Maxey raise is Barnes’ response to their concerns about an anti-prostitutions initiative in which undercover officers photograph men they believe are paying sex workers on Aurora Ave. N and send the photographs, along with a sternly worded “john letter,” to their homes, with the goal of shaming the men out of paying for sex in the future. (Seattle has had similar programs in the past but found them ineffective). The two expressed concern that the letters could violate people’s state constitutional right to privacy in their own homes and family affairs and lead to potentially violent confrontations with partners.
In the same email that blamed “leaks” and media coverage for the LGBTQ+ backlash against Tietjen’s appointment, Barnes noted “internal resistance” to the new “initiative to combat human trafficking along the Aurora Street [sic] corridor.”
“I want to reiterate that both I and the mayor’s office fully support this program,” Barnes wrote. “Leadership sometimes involves taking risks, and I firmly believe that proactive measures are necessary, even in the face of opposition Those who are not aligned with this mission are encouraged to have an open conversation with me or consider their place within our department.” This email, which quickly circulated outside its intended audience, was widely viewed as a threat: If you disagree with the chief, keep it to yourself or GTFO.
Mayor-elect Katie Wilson, who will take office on Friday, announced earlier this month that she will keep Barnes as police chief.
Maxey and Boatright declined to comment. SPD’s communications office respond to questions by saying, “The department respects the legal process and cannot comment on ongoing legal matters.”
A few of PubliCola’s records requests that have been “grouped” by the Seattle Police Department. SPD’s public disclosure unit will not begin (or resume) responding to any of these requests until they’ve completed the one they’re currently working on. We filed that one, for information about SPD’s use of generative AI, in September; so far, we’ve only gotten only a delay notice in response.
SPD has shown they won’t comply with the state Public Records Act on their own. So make them.
Erica C. Barnett
It’s time for the city to audit the Seattle Police Department’s public disclosure office—and, if they ignore the auditor’s recommendations, for incoming Mayor Katie Wilson to force SPD to follow the law.
The state Public Records Act makes it clear that the government’s obligation to disclose information is no trivial responsibility. “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them,” the PRA says. “The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”
For years, SPD has failed to comply with this bedrock premise. Instead, they’ve evaded disclosure by delaying responses until the records they’ve held back are no longer timely, refusing to work on more than one request at a time, and using the public disclosure process to conceal information that used to be public as a matter of course, including police reports and responses to basic factual questions.
Public disclosure of public information is in everyone’s interest, but for PubliCola and other media outlets, the availability of public records also affects our ability to keep our readers informed. Currently, PubliCola has 10 open records requests with SPD, with the oldest dating back to mid-2023. (We had older unfulfilled requests, but closed them in an effort to triage requests that were still relatively timely).
In all of 2025, SPD provided a single document in response to one of our public disclosure requests—a one-page Excel spreadsheet showing the total compensation for police officers in 2024.
Not only did SPD fail to meaningfully respond to our outstanding requests, they will no longer respond to more than one request at a time from individuals or entities with multiple requests. This practice, known as “grouping,” violates a 2023 agreement between the city and the Seattle Times, which is currently fighting SPD in court to eliminate grouping entirely. It also appears to violate the Public Records Act, which requires agencies to respond to individual requests “promptly,” with specific estimates for the time it will take to respond to each request.
As the Times’ recent motion for summary judgment puts it, “The Grouping Policy denies prompt responses to those disfavored requesters who cannot wait for an old request to slowly emerge from SPD’s backlog before making a new request. … Nothing in the PRA authorizes an agency to choose which requests to process and which ones to leave on a dusty shelf.”
I’ve filed a declaration in support of the Times’ latest lawsuit, describing the ways in which SPD has thwarted PubliCola’s requests for public records and how these actions have affected my ability to keep the public informed about what SPD is up to—from former chief Diaz’ alleged coverup of an unethical affair with a staffer he hired into a specially created position, to the investigation into a police union official who whooped it up over the killing of a pedestrian by a speeding cop. Times reporter Mike Carter’s own declaration shows a similar pattern of selective inaction by SPD—including one request for which he waited 19 months, only to receive the documents unexpectedly because SPD fast-tracked a similar request from a KOMO reporter.
If the Times prevails over SPD, it will directly benefit those in the public and independent press who can’t afford to fight years-long legal battles against the deep-pocketed police department. Meanwhile, though, SPD is still claiming the right to effectively deny records requests by putting them off for years. Earlier this month, the department moved its generic “placeholder date” for PubliCola’s nine inactive “grouped” requests from December 31, 2025 to December 31, 2026. Unless something changes, the remaining unfilled requests will get pushed forward to 2027 at the end of next year.
The single PubliCola records request SPD says it is working on—for information about SPD’s use of generative AI—has already been delayed by three months, until January, and could move again. Until SPD has finished responding to this one request, they will do no work at all on our other nine requests.
Because SPD refuses to process more than one request at a time, I have stopped filing records requests with them. It’s pointless. In effect, their obstructive decisions have succeeded—whether I go through the motions of filing a request or not, SPD will never respond “promptly,” as required by the PRA, or provide the “fullest assistance” the law requires.
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So, in addition to conducting a formal audit, Mayor-elect Wilson should send down legislation to eliminate “grouping,” which has not accomplished its purported goal of weeding out bot requests and those that are excessively burdensome or “extraordinarily broad.” If bots are a problem, separate legislation can address that issue; if a huge number of people are filing harassing or unreasonable requests, the burden should be on SPD to prove this is happening, and to work with the mayor and city council on legislation to address that narrow problem. SPD is currently using city dollars in a legal battle to use “grouping” to conceal public records. It’s long past time (and should not require a lengthy legal battle) to take this tool away from them.
SPD’s lack of compliance with basic public disclosure standards has gotten worse in recent years. But it isn’t new. In 2015, the City Auditor’s Office audited SPD’s public disclosure unit and found serious problems with how the office handles public disclosure requests.
That audit recommended that SPD hire more public disclosure officers, implement a centralized system for managing records requests, and streamline the response process by handling simple requests before more complex ones and prioritizing timely responses. It also recommended some basic best practices—like asking requesters for clarification when necessary and “proactively communicat[ing]” with people who ask for records—something that currently does not happen consistently, if at all.
SPD did not concur with most of the 13 recommendations in the 2015 audit, agreeing explicitly with just two—the recommendation to hire more public disclosure staff, and the one suggesting they set up a new records management system. Over the past 10 years, SPD has added nine new positions to the public disclosure unit to keep up with the increasing pace of requests, up from just five in 2014. That’s a positive step on paper, but it doesn’t actually help if public disclosure officers are steeped in SPD’s current culture of concealment.
Another practice SPD uses to evade public disclosure is expanding the type of records the department refuses to hand over without a public disclosure request.
In the recent past, for instance, SPD put ordinary police reports online as a matter of course—an extension of the department’s earlier practice of printing out copies of police reports and making them available at police precincts. (Yes, you could just walk in to any precinct and grab the day’s police reports!)
Today, police reports are no longer available to the general public through SPD’s website and the reports SPD provides to media (when they choose to do so) consist of heavily redacted and edited “narratives” that omit important information that the public generally has the right to know, such as the names of the officers who respond to calls and write the reports.
Additionally, SPD sometimes refuses to provide police reports, including those cleaned-up narratives, without explanation. Although SPD’s policy manual says explicitly that “Media Representatives May Obtain Copies of Police Reports Through the Public Affairs Unit,” that unit frequently directs PubliCola to file a records request for police reports.
This “file a records request” brushoff applies not just to written reports but to questions of all kinds. If SPD’s communications office—headed, under Police Chief Shon Barnes, by a former corporate PR representative with no prior experience in government—doesn’t want to answer a question, “file a records request” is a polite synonym for “fuck off.” Too far? Not when you consider that even the simplest records requests often take years—if I want to know about a crime that took place downtown last night, the Wilson administration could be halfway over before I find out.
The police, in short, are getting away with refusing to follow the letter and spirit of our state’s strongly worded public disclosure law—a law explicitly designed to ensure that the public has access to information that isn’t mediated and managed by government agencies and their press offices.
SPD has made it very clear that they won’t meet their legal obligation to provide public records unless they’re forced to do so—by legislation, a court order, or a directive from the mayor, who has the ability to fire for reprimand the police chief if his department is failing to comply with expectations.
It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that the Seattle Times will prevail in its current attempt to get SPD to stop grouping records requests, taking away one of the department’s current methods for withholding public documents.
But undoing a culture of obfuscation could require forcing, rather than asking, SPD to meet its obligation to provide records that ultimately belong to us, the public.
An audit laser-focused on these tactics will outline the problem and lay out solutions and a timeline for compliance. Mayor Wilson can then show she’s serious about transparency by requiring SPD to show progress on public disclosure, and holding Chief Barnes directly accountable if his department fails to act. SPD has had plenty of chances (and received plenty of public funding) to fix a broken process. It’s time they face consequences for their inaction.
