Category: public safety

Mayor Wilson, Police, public safety

Report: Police Contract Severely Limits CARE Team’s Ability to Do Their Jobs
Flow chart demonstrating how a CARE dispatch proceeds when a 911 operator directs the team to respond to a call directly.

By Erica C. Barnett

A new report from the city’s Office of Inspector General confirms what Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) Department Chief Amy Barden has been saying for more than a year: The new contract between the city and the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which was put on a fast track last year after Katie Wilson beat incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell, drastically limits the ability of the CARE team of civilian first responders to respond to crisis calls, which is the entire the reason they exist.

Although many other US cities now have crisis response teams who have replaced police for calls that don’t require armed officers or where police may make the situation worse), Seattle has increasingly lagged behind. When Harrell announced the new contract, he emphasized the fact that it allowed CARE to respond to calls without police in tow—what’s known as a “primary” response—for the first time since its inception, in 2023.  A Until last year, police had to be present, at least initially, during every 911 response.

But the new contract also included a memorandum of understanding between the city and SPOG that dramatically reduced CARE’s ability to respond to the type of calls that were supposed to be its raison d’être: Welfare checks, “person down” calls, and nuisance calls.

The agreement, which CARE had no role in crafting and did not approve, “prohibits CARE response to calls involving substance abuse, persons in homeless encampments and on private property, and individuals in crisis,” according to the report. “This excludes a significant portion of the population CARE was intended to serve.”

“CARE’s scope of work remains significantly impacted by the terms of the SPOG contract,” the report says. “Even as the SPOG contract adds a new response type, expands call types, and removes the cap on new staffing, it also further limits the CARE Team.”

 

In a statement, Mayor Katie Wilson’s office said the review “places an important spotlight on limitations placed on CARE crisis responders under the SPOG collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the prior administration. Seattle’s residents have been unambiguously clear in their demand for an alternative response to emergency calls, and the CARE crisis responders were curtailed by past City leadership, through no fault of their own.”

Barden said she sees some positive news in the most recent data from the report, which show a 32 percent uptick in CARE responses compared to the previous 12-week average. “I think this is due in part to the team being available early morning, and in part due to stronger relationships with the SPD precinct captains and more clarity about what constitutes a crisis call that is clinical in nature and most appropriate for the CARE team,” Barden said.

Wilson’s office said the mayor is  “optimistic about the positive and productive collaboration Interim [Police] Chief [Andre] Sayles has formed with the CARE department and other community safety partners. That commitment to partnership will be an essential qualification for our next permanent chief.”

The team is planning to start operating out of library branches with a high number of crisis calls, and is launching a partnership with the downtown jail to intercept people leaving jail who need services, which Barden said should use up the rest of the 32-member team’s capacity. “I anticipate that these strategies will create more work than we currently have staff for, so I am not concerned with the existing limitations explained in the OIG report,” Barden said. The  city’s 2026 budget included funding for 48 CARE crisis responders, but Barden said she thought it made sense to spread out or slow down hiring in light of the current economic forecast and $175 million budget deficit, which could force cuts to many city departments.

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Without a change to the underlying SPOG contract, however, CARE remains severely limited in its ability to accomplish its original remit of responding to 911 calls in the place of police. The current contract runs through the end of next year.

“Dual dispatch,” which was previously the only way CARE could be sent out on calls, is limited in new ways under the MOU, the OIG report notes; officers who would previously have been directed to call CARE to provide assistance can now “take immediate action if they believe it is appropriate” without calling the team at all. Another problem, according to the report, is that SPD’s very slow response to low-priority calls that require dual dispatch under the contract means that “community members do not receive help when they need it, even if CARE is available,” undermining confidence in the team.

A large number of the calls CARE responds to—388 in the first three months of 2026—originate with police who respond to calls and then, after determining they’re appropriate for social workers, refer them to CARE. These calls, known as “SPD request” in the report, are the most common way the CARE team gets dispatched, followed by dual dispatch, primary dispatch (meaning 911 directed the CARE team to go to a call), and on-views, in which the CARE team witnesses an incident or situation where they can help and self-dispatch by responding in real time.

All of the restrictions in the SPOG contract apply to every kind of CARE response. For example, if CARE first responders saw someone in distress while walking through downtown Seattle, approached, and saw signs the person was using drugs, they would have to walk away and call SPD to the scene. Under the SPOG contract, SPD sergeants can override any 911 operator who decides to dispatch the CARE team to a call. The OIG report doesn’t indicate how often that happens.

 

 

Crime, King County, Mayor Wilson, Police, public safety

King County Enlists Uncanny AI Videos for Ethics Training; Drop in Mayor’s Approval Rating Follows Anti-Wilson Media Frenzy

1. King County is using what it calls an “innovative tool” to train 4,000 executive branch employees on how to prevent waste, fraud, and misuse of public dollars: A series of short videos in which an uncanny AI avatar, wearing a tech CEO-style quarter-zip fleece, recites scripts about various training topics in front of shelves filled with leather-bound books.

According to a King County spokesperson, the videos are part of a new training protocol the county instituted “as part of Executive Girmay Zahilay’s Better Government actions,” after an audit found potential fraud, waste, and abuse of funds in youth contracts overseen by the Department of Community and Human Services.

A quick reverse image search found dozens of identical-looking videos produced for a wide range of small companies, from a “dental AI” company to a rare-earth metal dealer to a flower shop.

Usually, the AI speaks with a plummy British accent, but occasionally it speaks in other languages, like German, or in the American accent King County’s IT department chose for the training videos.

The King County spokesperson said the AI videos are based on an anti-fraud training DCHS launched in April, and said the content was generated by humans at DCHS, “in consultation with King County’s Finance and Business Operations Division.”

King County IT put together the videos using a company called Synthesia, which costs the county about $900 a year. According to the spokesperson, the IT department approved the use of the company under the county’s AI policy.

“King County embraces the use of innovative tools, including AI,” the spokesperson said. “The training went through multiple reviews internally to ensure accuracy, the AI-generated presenter has been disclosed to staff, and no prohibited County data was provided to the AI service.”

We think they dost protest a bit too much. Our question was, “Does DCHS believe this kind of AI talking head video is an effective training tool, and if so, why?”

​

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2. The Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce released another batch of poll results on Thursday. (The first poll, done in collaboration with Challenge Seattle and released earlier this week, purported to show overwhelming support for police camera surveillance in Seattle neighborhoods). One poll question found that Mayor Katie Wilson’s approval rating has slipped 20 percentage points, to 37 percent; the other showed broad public support for a long list of potential public safety strategies and interventions.

Local media outlets interpreted the results as bad news for Wilson, which is certainly the case with her approval rating. But it’s worth noting, as my friend and colleague Marcus Harrison Green did on Bluesky, that approval ratings don’t exist in a vacuum: The same media that’s dutifully reporting on the mayor’s drop in support has also spent the last several weeks falling over themselves to blame Wilson for a delayed press conference after a shooting at the Bite of Seattle last month and suggest that she fired former police chief Shon Barnes on a baseless whim. (Marcus, citing his podcast co-host Nora Kenworthy, also pointed out that the backlash is transparently gendered, and I’ll add that it’s also ageist—no one would say Bruce Harrell had no right to fire his department heads or tell them what to do.)

As we’ve noted, Wilson had many pre-existing reasons for letting the police chief go—beyond his embarrassing explosion at a reporter who asked him a question, arguably a fireable offense in itself. And many in the mainstream press have done a disservice to their profession by failing to ask basic questions Barnes’ role in delaying his own department’s press conference while he waited to be briefed from his hotel room in Dallas. The press, as much as any official action or press release, create public opinion, and they’ve been working overtime to make Wilson look feckless, incompetent, and out of bounds.

The responses to the public safety questions, which the Chamber characterized as a sign of  “growing concern among voters about public safety,” are not so much… that, as they are a sign that people continue to support a combination of punishment (arrests and jail) and services (treatment and housing). Although the Seattle Times (which ran the news under the headline “Seattle voters are done waiting on public safety, new poll finds”) was “staggered” by the fact that people like ideas like foot patrols and drug treatment, these concepts generally poll well, as do ideas like banning encampments near schools and in public parks.

None of the coverage I’ve seen added much context to the poll results. Context like: SPD has said it lacks the resources to do regular foot patrols , or the fact that the city already prohibits sleeping in parks. The wording of questions like these is both misleading (suggesting that the mayor could do these things but is refusing) and designed to elicit a positive response. They are, in other words, predictable. But to a mainstream press invested in promoting a narrative of “socialist failure” (Wilson, who’s overseen steady improvement in public safety and increased police hiring, is hardly Leon Trotsky), the results of a business poll are just more evidence the mayor is refusing to give voters what they want.

 

Drugs, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, neighborhoods, public safety

KCRHA Spins the News that Homelessness Is Growing
Nearly half of all homeless families are unsheltered, according to the latest count.

We discuss the latest estimate of the region’s homeless population and the latest “new approach” to drug use and crime in Little Saigon on this week’s Seattle Nice.

By Erica C. Barnett

After releasing a high-level summary of the latest “point in time count” report on King County’s homeless population last week, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority tried to put a positive spin on the results at a meeting of the agency’s governing board last week. The new numbers showed a 9 percent increase in overall homelessness—from an estimated 16,868 to 18,365—between 2024 and 2026.

On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we dug into all these numbers—and the KCRHA’s take on what they mean.

At a presentation to the governing board on Friday, the KCRHA’s associate director for strategy, William Towey, said “one of the key takeaways from the Point In Time count is that the system is doing amazing work. It’s moving a lot of people through, we’re housing a lot of people, a lot of people are coming in and successfully exiting, but the inflow just continues to grow.”

Every year, according to KCRHA, about 17,000 people stop using homeless services (a widely used proxy for no longer being homeless), while about 18,000 enter or re-enter the system. As long as the rate of people entering the system exceeds the number of people exiting, overall homelessness will continue to grow.

The KCRHA has focused heavily on the fact that although both sheltered and unsheltered homelessness continue to increase, the rate of increase in overall homelessness has declined—from 21 percent between 2022 and 2024 to 9 percent over the last two years. At the governing board meeting, Towey argued that the “declination in the rate of increase” represented a specific number of people who would be homeless but are not. “That translates to over 2,500 individuals or households who aren’t homeless because of that decrease in the rate of increase,” Towey said.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson pointed to a troubling aspect of the numbers Towey didn’t mention, but which we highlighted in our coverage of the count last week—unsheltered homelessness, which is both more visible and more dangerous for people living outdoors than living in shelter, has spiked by 21 percent even as sheltered homelessness has grown more slowly. That’s more than 2,000 additional people living unsheltered compared to the count released in 2024.

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“I’m very, very concerned by the really significant increase in the rate of unsheltered homelessness,” Wilson said. “We were already a national outlier in having over 50 percent of our homeless population unsheltered, and now when it’s up to over two thirds, that’s pretty shocking.”

Towey attributed the increase to the closure of 689 shelter beds, including an unspecified number of family shelter beds, which Towey called the “primary driver” of the shelter losses. Family homelessness, according to the report, has declined slightly over the past two years, but the percentage of  families who are unsheltered increased almost 40 percent, to nearly half of all households with minor children. In the 2024 count, about 35 percent of people living in family households were unsheltered.

Also on this week’s show, we discussed the latest  “new approach” to address the crowded drug and stolen goods market around 12th and Jackson in Little Saigon, which consists of expanding the hours service providers are on site, directing existing LEAD diversion services to the area, and, as ever, flooding the zone with cops, who are supposed to send some people to LEAD instead of arresting them.

Personally, I’m tired of hearing elected officials (and certain podcast cohosts) argue that hot spot policing, plus a nominal new investment in services, will improve conditions this time despite the many previous times the same basic approach has failed. Sandeep thinks there’s something truly new this time. I’m far less optimistic.

City Council, Civil Rights, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, public safety

This Week on PubliCola: June 13, 2026
Upheaval at the Mayor’s Office, KCRHA Gets a Lifeline, SPD Hiring Surges, and nine other PubliCola stories you may have missed this week

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, June 8

Morning Fizz: Wilson Backs Down on Tenant Protection Rollbacks

Fire Department Funding Plan Fizzles

Privacy Advocates Push Back on Surveillance During World Cup

Three stories in this week’s first Morning Fizz.

First up: Mayor Katie Wilson, who had been considering rollbacks to tenant protections requested by local affordable housing developers, has decided not to propose changes to the just cause ordinance that would have made it easier for landlords to evict tenants with three day’s notice and made it harder for renters to take in roommates and family members.

Second, a proposal to address the city’s budget deficit by moving much of the Fire Department’s funding onto a special taxing district—a story PubliCola broke last month—is dead, after the firefighters’ union declined to get on board with the mayor’s plan.

Finally, privacy advocates who supported Wilson’s campaign expressed skepticism at the mayor’s claim that she has seen evidence of a “credible threat” that justified turning surveillance cameras on at the stadiums during the World Cup games.

Tuesday, June 9

Seattle Turned on the Surveillance Cameras Before It Wrote the Rules

In a guest op/ed, anti-surveillance advocate Phil Mocek argued that Wilson decided to turn on police surveillance cameras near the stadiums before the city has even come up with rules for when and how surveillance will be deployed throughout the city.

City, County Plan to “Embed” Consultant to Address Financial Issues at Homelessness Agency

After a flurry of discussions last week, the city and county pulled back on a planned announcement that they would be taking over the homelessness contracts currently managed by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Instead, Mayor Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay announced plans to “embed” a consulting team at the agency to work on addressing financial issues identified in a recent forensic audit.

Wednesday, June 10

New Council Legislation Could Make Your Utility Bills Cheaper

Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss is proposing legislation that would expand eligibility for the city’s utility discount program to people at higher income levels over the next few years. Tenants without their own City Light accounts whose landlords use “ratio utility billing systems,” or RUBS, will continue to be ineligible for the discount program.

Auditor: KCRHA’s Corrective Action Plan Fails to Take Audit Findings Seriously

Responding to a “corrective action plan” KCRHA proposed to address the findings in a recent (devastating) forensic audit, the auditors urged local leaders to be skeptical of the KCRHA’s claims. The KCRHA has adopted a fairly dismissive attitude toward the audit, suggesting that most of the serious financial issues identified in the audit have been corrected, are being corrected, or resulted to forces outside their control; the auditors strongly disagree.

Thursday, June 11

Another Upheaval on Mayor Wilson’s Staff as Communications Director Departs

In a staff shakeup that PubliCola has heard won’t be the last, Mayor Wilson asked her communications director, Seferiana Day, to step down, and announced a major overhaul of her org chart (though no new hires). Sources said there’s an ongoing debate over who’s to blame for bad (or a lack of positive) press—the comms team or the mayor and her policy staff.

Friday, June 12

Morning Fizz: Police Chief Says No Plan to Slow Hiring Amid Budget Crunch

City Attorney Says “SOAP Orders Don’t Work” at Aurora Ave. Safety Event

At an event outside Council Chambers to announce actions the city is taking to address gun violence and sex trafficking on Aurora (including street closures and taking back guns from people accused of being involved in shootings), Police Chief Shon Barnes said the department has no plans to slow down on hiring, despite a budget presentation showing that SPD is on track to hire more new officers than it has funding to pay for.

During the same event, City Attorney Erika Evans took a strong position against Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution banishment orders—a bold position in a crowd of SOAP advocates, including the original SOAP sponsor, former councilmember Cathy Moore.

There was some backstage drama surrounding the event, which was originally planned as a council event excoriating the mayor for her lack of action on Aurora. Council-mayor relationships, which range from chilly to hostile, haven’t improved; lately, the council has been refusing invitations to mayoral press conferences as a kind of protest against Wilson’s tendency to announce big initiatives without talking to them first.

Afternoon Fizz:

Union Urges Wilson to Act After Investigation into Civil Rights Director Concludes

KCRHA Proposes 7 New Hires

Two more stories to close out the week. First, PROTEC17, the union that represents workers at the city’s Office for Civil Rights, urged Mayor Wilson to dismiss OCR Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith after an investigation into widespread misconduct claims affirmed at least some of the allegations staff made against the director earlier tthis year.

The KCRHA’s finance committee recommended making seven new hires at the beleaguered agency, despite a recommendation from the city, county, and auditors that the agency institute a hiring freeze.

 

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police, public safety

Police Chief Says No Plan to Slow Hiring Amid Budget Crunch; City Attorney Says “SOAP Orders Don’t Work” at Aurora Ave. Safety Event
Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans

1. Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes, responding to a question from PubliCola, said the police department does not plan to slow down hiring, despite a city council presentation this week that concluded, “SPD may need to slow hiring to live within its budget” because the speed at which it’s hiring new officers is outpacing the department’s spending capacity.

“I have not been notified that the police department will slow down on our current hiring plan for this year. We’re moving forward,” Barnes said. “I think we all share [the belief] that we need more police officers, but we also understand the constraints of a budget, and until I hear anything differently, we’re going to continue moving forward.”

A planned briefing of the council’s public safety committee, which was postponed due to time constraints earlier this week, found that SPD hiring will outpace the department’s budget by a projected $1.7 million this year. Recruitment has been up ever since a new police contract raised starting salaries, after training, to $126,000 last year, and the number of highly paid late-career officers leaving the department has declined. SPD is on pace to have just under 1,200 officers by the end of the year.

Mayor Katie Wilson has asked all city departments to come up with cuts of 5 to 10 percent to help close a budget gap of at least $175 million. The police department, whose nearly-$500 million budget is by far the city’s biggest general-fund obligation, was reportedly asked to come up with $20 million in potential cuts.

2. Barnes made his comments during an announcement about the city’s latest efforts to address gun violence and sex trafficking on Aurora Ave. N. City Attorney Erika Evans announced she would use Extreme Risk Protection Orders, a tool typically used to take guns away from domestic violence offenders, to remove guns from people accused of committing gun-related crimes, whether or not they have been convicted. (Violent gun-related offenses are typically prosecuted by the King County Prosecutor.) Evans also said she would seek funding for a full-time prosecutor to pursue the orders.

 

At the same press conference, Mayor Katie Wilson announced the Seattle Department of Transportation will install barriers on four streets that intersect with Aurora Ave. N to block traffic from getting through; residents who have demanded the city do something about increasing gun violence in the area have installed makeshift barricades in recent weeks.

City Attorney Evans broke with council members on one key issue, saying that she did not believe banishing men who pay for sex from the area around Aurora, which is designated as the city’s Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) zone, are an effective way to protect women and girls from pimps and traffickers. (Former Councilmember Cathy Moore, who sponsored the SOAP legislation, then skedaddled off the council, was in the audience for yesterday’s event.)

Noting that the city has had SOAP orders off and on for 30 years, Evans said, “If they were effective, Aurora and other areas of Seattle, including Little Saigon, would be safe, and they’re not. … SOAP orders don’t work. ERPO orders work.”

3. The press conference, which took place on the same day Wilson announced internally that she was reorganizing her office and that her communications director, Seferiana Day, was leaving, featured some internal drama of its own. According to sources, councilmembers frustrated with what they viewed as inaction on Aurora planned to hold their own press conference without Wilson at which they would criticize her lack of action on gun violence and sex trafficking in the area.

After a flurry of discussions, the mayor and council agreed to hold the press conference in the awkward, narrow space outside council chambers, rather than outside Wilson’s office. Councilmembers have repeatedly refused to participate in the mayor’s press conferences, despite being invited—an indication that council-mayor relations still have a long way to go after some dramatic early missteps by the Wilson administration.

Mayor Wilson, Privacy, public safety, Taxes

Wilson Backs Down on Tenant Protection Rollbacks, Fire Department Funding Plan Fizzles, Privacy Advocates Push Back on Surveillance During World Cup

1. Mayor Katie Wilson’s office confirmed that Wilson will not be proposing changes to the city’s just cause eviction ordinance that housing developers, including the Housing Development Consortium, had been pushing for months. Tenant advocacy groups opposed the potential changes and met with Wilson the week before last to urge her not to move forward with the changes.

Some affordable housing developers have argued for years that the city’s landlord-tenant protections, which are stronger than the state’s,  have made it impossible for them to evict tenants who don’t pay rent or break the law. Specifically, they wanted Wilson to roll back the city’s roommate law, which allows renters to add roommates without asking their landlords’ permission, and and align the requirements to evict a tenant with three days’ notice with the more landlord-friendly state law.

“The Mayor is not proposing changes to the roommate law or the three‑day notice,” a Wilson spokesperson said. “Her office has received proposals and perspectives on a wide range of economic, health, safety, and operational issues.”

Former City Councilmember Cathy Moore said she would introduce legislation that would have rolled back the roommate and three-day notice provisions but resigned before she actually introduced it.

Had Wilson introduced the rollbacks, tenant advocates argued, it would have given centrist councilmembers the opportunity to reopen the entire just cause eviction law, which includes many other provisions landlords oppose. The optics of Wilson—a tenants’ rights activist before becoming mayor—proposing landlord-friendly legislation that even her predecessor, Bruce Harrell, didn’t support would also be terrible, for obvious reasons.

Wilson does plan to propose legislation, in collaboration with Councilmember Dionne Foster, to curb rental “junk fees” in July, her spokesperson said. Wilson wrote about these fees, which include “notice fees,” fees for going month-to-month, and monthly “billing fees,” for PubliCola in 2023.

2. A proposal to create a special taxing district to pay for the Seattle Fire Department is dead, at least for this year, PubliCola has confirmed.

Creating a fire district would have allowed the city to fund much of SFD’s budget through a new property tax, moving that money out of the city’s general fund and helping to close a budget deficit Wilson recently said would be close to $175 million. The district, authorized by a new state law this year, would have had the ability to levy taxes outside the existing property tax cap of $3.60 per $1,000 of assessed property value, making it an appealing way to offload a big chunk of city spending.

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The firefighters’ union, however, did not get on board, effectively killing the proposal. The plan would have made much of the fire department’s funding subject to regular voter approval; it would have also moved SFD under the direct control of the city council, acting as the fire district’s board; the union reportedly wanted SFD to have direct participation on the board, at a minimum.

PubliCola exclusively reported on the potential fire district proposal last month. At a City Club event last week, Wilson said the city is facing a budget deficit of “about $175 million next year.” Without the fire district serving as a relief valve, Wilson will likely introduce additional taxes this year, including a local capital gain tax opposed by business groups like the Seattle Metro Chamber and Downtown Seattle Association.

3. In response to Wilson’s announcement last week that she will turn on police surveillance cameras in the stadium district for the upcoming World Cup games, the anti-surveillance advocates at Community Not Cameras questioned the mayor’s claim that police and the FBI had presented evidence of a “credible threat” to public safety. Wilson previously said she would not turn the cameras on without evidence of a credible threat, but did not clearly define what she meant by that term; last week, she cited “general but credible” threats to justify activating the cameras.

“By activating an Axon-backed surveillance grid in Seattle, the City is risking this data being handed over to a weaponized federal intelligence apparatus,” the coalition said in a statement.

“[R]egardless of whatever bureaucratic policy or verbal assurances the Mayor hides behind, the City of Seattle does not have the power to stop the federal government from obtaining this data once it exists. Any local safeguards or policy limitations the City claims SPD follows are completely meaningless against the collection capabilities and legal mechanisms available to the federal government.  If you build it, and if you turn it on, they can take it.”

Our Seattle, a group of Wilson supporters who organized to hold the mayor accountable to her campaign promises, requested footage from one of the surveillance cameras, which SPD has maintained is deleted after five days and only accessible to a handful of people. They received and posted the footage on Instagram on May 28.