Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Top Advisor to Mayor Wilson Leaves Temporary Job After Ethics Director Reverses Course

And: Where was the police chief during last weekend’s spate of deadly shootings?

This post has been updated to note that Lisa Daugaard left her position voluntarily, rather than being asked to leave.

1. Last Friday, two teenagers were shot and killed in a double homicide near Rainier Beach High School. The following night, four people were shot during a fight in Pioneer Square; one of them, a 27-year-old, was killed. On Monday, Barnes did a presentation on Seattle’s improving crime stats, which SPD billed as the police chief’s “State of the City” address, and was apparently peppered with questions about the weekend’s violence.

PubliCola couldn’t attend Monday’s event because we’re out of town this week. If we had, we’d have asked Barnes a question SPD’s communications office refused to answer: Where was the police chief last weekend when Seattle residents were being shot? Historically, Seattle’s police chief has gone to the scene of deadly shootings, but Barnes was nowhere to be seen.

Barnes’ family lives in Chicago while he rents an apartment in Seattle and goes home periodically. When we asked why he wasn’t on the scene of the shootings and if he was at his family home in Chicago, an SPD spokesperson replied: “The Chief was out of town meeting with law enforcement officials to discuss federal immigration response policies to ensure the safety of Seattle.”

SPD did not respond when we followed up to ask where Barnes was, specifically, and reminded their communications office that this is public information.

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2. Lisa Daugaard, the co-director of Purpose Dignity Action and founder of the LEAD diversion program, has left Mayor Katie Wilson’s office after just 10 days on the job because of a purported conflict of interest between her work at PDA and her work helping the mayor implement her own homelessness and public safety strategy.

The decision is a blow to the new mayor’s homelessness strategy and another example of Seattle Ethics and Elections Director Wayne Barnett’s unusually strict decisions when it comes to Wilson. Previously, Barnett fined Wilson for accepting financial help with childcare from her parents after Wilson—under fire from right-wing commentators—said it was a temporary arrangement while she was campaigning for office and unable to stay home with her daughter.

After approving Daugaard’s six-month posting in Wilson’s office last month, Barnett apparently changed his mind, deciding that it represented a conflict of interest. Barnett told Daugaard she could work on policies unrelated to the issues she has worked on for years at PDA, such as diversion and temporary housing for people who commit “public order” crimes because of poverty and untreated behavioral health disorders.

Barnett told PubliCola that Daugaard reached out to him on Monday, and that he told her “she would need to formally sever ties with the PDA” to officially work with the mayor’s office.

Barnett saw no issue worth addressing with former mayor Bruce Harrell’s many apparent uses of the mayor’s office to campaign for reelection. For example, Harrell’s communications office dramatically ramped up the pace of press releases praising Harrell’s work in the two months before last year’s election. Harrell also stamped his “One Seattle” campaign brand across many city initiatives and aggressively used his official social media accounts to promote himself during the campaign.

LEAD provides services in lieu of arrest and jail to people who commit crimes of poverty. Another PDA program, CoLEAD, provides intensive case management and temporary lodging to people with unmet behavioral health needs.

Last year, the PDA sought funding for an encampment resolution program in Pioneer Square modeled after a similar statewide program the group ran until it lost funding earlier in the year, but faced opposition from some advocates who argued that the city needed to pay for existing programs that stood to lose federal funds under Trump before starting new pilots.

Daugaard, an influential member of Wilson’s transition team, took a leave of absence from the PDA for the six months she planned to be at the mayor’s office advising Wilson on public safety and homelessness. Some social service providers, as well as the same right-wing commentators who criticized Wilson for accepting help from her daughter’s grandparents, questioned the decision, arguing it gave LEAD an unfair advantage.

Mayor Wilson, Uncategorized

Mayor Wilson’s Inner Circle Is the Opposite of a Boys’ Club

She’s also announcing new department heads at a rapid clip, replacing a dozen Harrell appointees in her first few weeks.

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson continues to fill out a cabinet made up almost entirely of women—a casual first for a city whose last mayor, Bruce Harrell,  was accused by his own niece (and former deputy mayor) of running the office as a toxic boys’ club.

A list circulating at the city this week, which included details about the subject areas each new staffer will be involved in overseeing, included the following names. These are in addition to several PubliCola previously reported, including City Operations Director Jen Chan, Chan’s deputy, Mark Ellerbrook, and Executive Operations Managers Alison Holcomb and Esther Handy.

Holcomb’s overseeing all the public safety departments, while Handy will oversee small departments like the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs and the Office for Civil Rights as well as Finance and Administrative Services, a catchall department that includes everything from managing city buildings to issuing pet licenses.

OCR’s former policy director, Caedmon Cahill—who left in the last year of Harrell’s term—is Wilson’s new general counsel.

Except where noted, everyone on Wilson’s office staff has the title Executive Operations Manager—another departure from Harrell’s office, which eventually had all manner of special advisors, directors, and people with corporate-sounding titles like “Chief People Officer.”

Kristina Pham, Director of the Cabinet & Sub Cabinet. Pham comes from City Light, where she was an organizational change manager in charge of a small team; in addition to heading up the cabinet, she’ll oversee the city’s IT department.

Lindsay Garrity, who’s worked on homelessness under former mayors Durkan and Harrell,  will oversee homelessness, HSD, the King County Regional Homelessness Authoirity, and the Unified Care Team. The choice of Garrity is somewhat surprising, given her extensive ties to previous administrations and their approach to homelessness, which focused largely on encampment removals and dashboard-level demonstrations of positive progress. Garrity worked under Harrell’s deputy mayor overseeing homelessness, Tiffany Washington, for years, both in the mayor’s office and when Washington was in leadership positions at the Human Services Department.

Lynda Peterson, who’s currently the managing director of Cultivate Learning at the University of Washington, will oversee the Department of Education and Early Learning as well as the Department of Neighborhoods, Office of Economic Development, and Public Health.

Hannah McIntosh, a former Seattle Department of Transportation chief of staff who went on to work at King County Metro and the Port of Seattle, will oversee three of the biggest departments—SDOT, City Light, and Seattle Public Utilities.

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Rachel Schulkin, the longtime communications director for the Parks Department, will oversee parks, libraries, Seattle Center, and the waterfront.

Sunaree Marshall, who’s currently director of housing and community development for King County’s Department of Community and Human Services, will oversee housing, the planning and construction departments, and the Office of Sustainability and the Environment.

PubliCola has also learned that Adrienne Thompson, announced internally as the city’s new Labor Relations director, will not be taking the job. In an internal email, the city’s HR director, Kimberly Loving, wrote that Thompson’s appointment “will not move forward. In the near term, the Labor Relations team will report to me. This approach best supports continuity and stability while broader alignment work is underway.” We’ve reached out to Wilson’s office and will update if we hear back.

On Wednesday, Wilson announced she’s replacing five department heads and keeping several others.

The highest-profile of these—and the subject of the most speculation among the housing advocates and developers PubliCola’s been talking to—is the Office of Housing, where Harrell appointee Maiko Winkler-Chin will be replaced on an interim basis by current deputy director Andréa Akita.

A.P. Diaz, Harrell’s parks superintendent, is also out; he’ll be replaced by deputy director Michele Finnegan, also on an interim basis.

Beto Yarce, the former CEO of a nonprofit that helps women and people of color access small business capital (and a onetime City Council candidate) will head up the Office of Economic Development, replacing Harrell appointee Markham McIntyre.

Just over a week ago, the state Department of Commerce announced that Yarce would be their new assistant director of community engagement and outreach. The announcement is no longer on the department’s website but is currently still up on their Facebook page.

Lylianna Allala, the current interim deputy director of the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, will take over as director; the interim director, Michelle Caulfield, will go back to being deputy. According to Wilson’s announcement, Allala headed up the city’s implementation of the Green New Deal and was a climate policy staffer for Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

Quyhn Pham, the head of Friends of Little Saigon—a community group that created the Phố Đẹp (Beautiful Neighborhood) plan for the neighborhood, which emphasizes community building and safety over police enforcement—will head up the Department of Neighborhoods, replacing Harrell appointee Jenifer Chao.

Amy Nguyen, the former public art director and interim deputy director for the Office of Arts and Culture, will replace Harrell appointee Gülgün Kayim.

The department heads Wilson’s office announced she’s retaining include Rico Quirondongo from the Office of Planning and Community Development, Office of Intergovernmental Relations director Mina Hashemi, and Office of the Ombud director Amarah Khan. That’s in addition to Police Chief Shon Barnes and Human Services Department director Tanya Kim.

Wilson is replacing Harrell’s appointees at a rapid clip. At this point in his term, Wilson’s predecessor Harrell had replaced just five of Durkan’s department directors; Wilson has replaced almost a dozen.

Advocates for one department head Wilson recently fired, City Light’s Dawn Lindell, showed up at this week’s City Council meeting to criticize Wilson’s decision to replace the utility executive with environmental attorney and former EPA administrator Dennis McLerran. “Dawn is the first CEO in more than a decade to have a clear positive impact on utility,” City Light engineer Aimee Kimball said. “She has dedicated significant time and effort to addressing long standing issues of sexism, racism and alcoholism that were ignored by the prior leadership at Seattle City Light and the city for decades.”
Another speaker, electrician Peter Miller, said he and others he works with were “shocked” by the decision. “We’re just mad and can’t believe what happened, and we don’t know why,” he said. Later, Councilmember Bob Kettle agreed Lindell had begun addressing “very grave challenges” at City Light, and suggested that her firing may represent a failure of “good governance.” Kettle closed his statement by reading an additional written comment from Miller. “Someone in the mayor’s office has absolutely lost their mind,” Kettle read. “Firing Dawn Lindell is a catastrophic mistake.”

City Council, Police, Uncategorized

Divided Council Passes New Police Contract That Raises Officer Pay 42 Percent, With Few Accountability Concessions
Councilmembers Sara Nelson, Debora Juarez, and Maritza Rivera confab before leaving council chambers Tuesday.

The contract, which provides $126,000 paychecks to rookie cops after 6 months, also imposes restrictions on the CARE team of unarmed first responders, prohibiting them from responding without a police escort on most calls.

By Erica C. Barnett

With three council members voting “no,” the city council approved a new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild that gives rookie cops a starting salary of $118,000—with an automatic bump to $126,000 after just six months—with few of the new accountability requirements Seattle residents were promised in 2024, when the council approved SPOG’s most recent retroactive contract.

The 2024 contract gave cops retroactive pay increases of 23 percent; the contract adopted Tuesday, which goes through 2027, gives them additional raises of 42 percent over the next two years.

The deal, which goes through the end of 2027,still falls far short of implementing accountability legislation the city passed in 2017. That legislation called for the city’s Office of Police Accountability and Office of Inspector General to have full subpoena power when investigating misconduct (to date, they’re only allowed to subpoena public records, precluding access to things like text messages on officers’ personal phones). It also called for an end to outside arbitration, a process that allows officers to appeal disciplinary decisions to private arbitrators outside Seattle, and a lower standard of proof for misconduct allegations. None of these measures are in the contract; only one, the standard of proof, will be subject to an additional arbitration process (meaning it could still happen if the city wins its case against SPOG.)

In fact, the contract includes just two changes related to accountability. First, it simplifies a 180-day “clock” for disciplinary decisions, removing some carveouts that have contributed to very long delays between the time when someone files a misconduct complaint and when it gets resolved. Second, it allows sergeants, rather than the Office of Police Accountability, to determine discipline for “less than serious” misconduct, theoretically freeing up OPA to investigate more serious claims.

It’s unclear what will happen to cases involving professionalism and conduct unbecoming an officer, which are largely subjective; we’ve asked SPD and OPA whether a case like that of Daniel Auderer, who defended his offensive jokes about the police killing of 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula as “gallows humor,” would be dealt with internally under the new rules and never see the light of day.

“This has been part of a two year process to get here, two years for us on the [Labor Relations Policy Committee] and the Select Labor Committee. This is not a rushed process,” public safety committee chair Bob Kettle said. “One of the things I’m constantly looking at is to create a functional criminal justice—a functional public safety system. This is what we’re doing with this agreement.”

After the contract passed, SPOG President Mike Solan posted this gloating tweet.

Three council members voted against the agreement—an unprecedented number in recent years. Councilmember Rob Saka, who announced his opposition in a press release and op/ed in the Stranger, said he couldn’t support giving such large raises to police without extracting some accountability concessions.

“I have lived through encounters where the actions of an officer cross the line, where I felt fear rather than protection. I’ve experienced police brutality firsthand,” Saka said. “These moments have shaped me, and I carry them with me every single day, not with resentment or animus, but with responsibility. No person in Seattle should ever feel powerless, unseen or vulnerable to unequal justice and an encounter with law enforcement.”

Saka also noted that the huge pay increases come at an increasing cost—by 2027, an estimated budget increase of $57 million a year— at a time when the city is facing major budget deficits and federal cuts to programs that serve vulnerable people.

The newest councilmember, Eddie Lin, described an incident in his 20s when a cop in St. Paul, Minnesota “ended up putting his hands around my throat while I was handcuffed in the back of the police car and threatening me” after he refused to give up the name of a drunk and disorderly friend who had escaped arrest. After driving him around town for half an hour and “continuing to tell me how they were going to ruin my life,” the officer threw Lin in jail, where he said he stayed “for several nights.” Later, he got pulled over by the same cop and was terrified the same thing would happen again.

“There’s one harm when misconduct occurs,” Lin said. “There’s another harm, which is just as serious, when that misconduct does not get addressed. And if we really want to move toward a more positive relationship between community and the police, toward a comprehensive approach, toward public safety, accountability has to be our priority.”

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Lin also noted that the contract includes no mention of the department’s purported goal of having a recruit class that is 30 percent women by 2030. In 2025, less than 10 percent of SPD’s new hires have been women, and the department never bothered to fill a position that was supposed to help with this goal.

Alexis Mercedes Rinck also voted against the contract, saying the agreement  fails to include meaningful accountability provisions that our community has demanding, has been demanding for years. … In short, this contract asks Seattle taxpayers to invest more in policing without requiring more accountability in return, and that’s not a deal I can support.”

Under the new contract, the CARE Team, a group of social workers who respond to calls that don’t require an armed police response,,will be allowed to dispatch without police officers present, a change Mayor Bruce Harrell and many council members have touted as a significant win. (The CARE Department, which includes the 911 call center, is a part of the SPOG contract because, according to SPOG, their work impacts police officers’ working conditions and therefore must be approved by the guild.)

But as PubliCola reported in October, the deal with CARE effectively prohibits them from responding to most crisis calls, forcing them to call police instead of responding if they see any drugs or drug paraphernalia, such as foil; if the person in crisis is anywhere besides a public sidewalk or public building, such as a library; or if the person is in a homeless encampment, among a long list of restrictions.

CARE Department Chief Amy Barden told PubliCola she’s “happy that the process has concluded” and hopeful that police sergeants will voluntarily refer calls to CARE, as she said they did in 2023 and 2024. “If we return to the level of collaboration that we had for so long, then the contract will not be nearly as restrictive to the work,” Barden said.

But relying on police to voluntarily work with CARE is different than allowing CARE team members to use their judgment and discretion, Barden added. “The neighbors that I’m most interested in helping are people who are struggling with substance use and people who are unsheltered, and those two populations are named specifically in the exclusionary criteria, so that’s a problem.”

She also criticized the prohibition on responding to crises in non-public spaces, such as businesses, comparing it to a medical response. “If somebody’s having a stroke in the lobby of a business, versus a public space, it doesn’t make it not a stroke. If it’s happening in the city of Seattle, there should be a team who goes to that event regardless of location.”

The agreement resolves some grievances between the city and SPOG by cutting additional checks to cops who worked at various special events, such as Seahawks games, in the past; officers who worked at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event in 2022, for example, will receive double their hourly pay plus a full day of vacation, while those who worked at the Seahawks game on October 7, 2021 will get extra pay equal to 10 hours of work. The agreement also provides free parking to 19 additional civilian SPD employees, including the HR unit and a front desk staffer, who work desk jobs at police headquarters downtown—a perk most city employees do not receive.

After the three councilmembers who opposed the contract spoke, Councilmember Dan Strauss began to justify voting yes on the contract, saying it was the only way to “move accountability forward” and allow CARE to assist more people. As a group of people who had testified against the contract earlier began to boo and shout, calling Strauss “complicit in the murders” of people like Christian Nelson, who was shot and killed by SPD officers near the Othello light rail station last week, the council moved quickly to vote, curtailing further speeches. While most of the council left to meet from their offices, Lin, Strauss, and Rinck remained at the dais, their expressions ranging from pained (Rinck) to detached (Strauss) as the crowd chanted “knees off our necks,” “jail killer cops,” and “shame!”

The contract now heads to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s desk.

LGBTQ+, Police, Uncategorized

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

By Erica C. Barnett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police, Uncategorized

Black-Led Group Responds to Mayor’s Claim They “Darkened” His Skin; Real Estate-Backed Harrell PAC Tops $1 Million; Police Chief Disparages PubliCola

1. On Friday, Mayor Bruce Harrell accused his opponent, Katie Wilson, of “darkening” his photo in a social media post, blaming her for “another chapter in the troubling history of manipulating skin color to dehumanize candidates of color” like himself. The image Harrell circulated, an Instagram post by the Black-led progressive nonprofit Common Power, made his skin looked unnaturally orange.

In a statement, Harrell campaign manager Marta Johnson said, “We are asking the Wilson Campaign and Common Power to immediately retract the manipulated image and apologize for the clear intent to darken Bruce’s skin tone. There is no excuse to alter the tone of a candidate’s skin, especially given the troubling history of racist intent behind these types of manipulations.”

Harrell made the accusation again during a debate on Saturday at the Royal Room in Southeast Seattle, saying she had used the “common tactic—to darken my image in a regular picture, to make me look ominous, okay?”

The practice of darkening Black and brown people’s skin tone in photographs has a long and ignominious history based in colorism and the racist idea that darker-skinned people are more threatening than those with lighter skin. The most famous example comes from Time magazine, which dramatically darkened OJ Simpson’s skin color on its cover in 1994.

Beyond the screen shot, Harrell presented no evidence for his claims.

On Sunday, Common Power director Charles Douglas responded to Harrell’s accusation that his group had darkened Harrell’s skin to make him look “ominous”: “The claim that we ‘darkened’ Mayor Harrell’s photo is both offensive and untrue. As a Black man leading an organization primarily run by people of color, I know firsthand the harm caused when racial tropes are weaponized in politics.”

“To suggest that Common Power engaged in such tactics is a sensationalist smear that reeks of desperation from a mayor who has repeatedly contributed to inequality and hurt the very communities he now claims to represent.” On Sunday, Common Power and the 36th District Democrats swapped out the photo of Halloween Harrell for a less orange version.

The source for the image appears to have been a story by the (UK) Independent about the 2021 mayor’s race. The photo appears to have been taken in low light at this debate, creating the unnaturally orange cast.

Smartphone photos taken by several different people in similar conditions at Saturday’s low-light debate at the Royal Room made both Harrell and Wilson look orange, with Harrell’s black hair coming through as grayish in the photos. For example, a reader contributed this photo of Harrell checking in on the Huskies game during the debate; my own, unedited iPhone photos, taken from the front row, turned Harrell an even more extreme orange color and tinted Wilson orange as well.

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2. As I reported on Bluesky last week (seriously, follow me there for the latest breaking news, short news items, and live coverage of everything from mayoral debates to the council’s budget deliberations), the  business-backed political action committee supporting Mayor Bruce Harrell, Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future, has raised more than a million to defeat Harrell’s challenger, Katie Wilson. Most of that money, $554,000, has come in since the beginning of September—revealing a rush to fill the pro-Harrell campaign’s coffers after the mayor’s dispiriting 41 percent showing in the August primary.

The biggest donations to the PAC, which is separate from Harrell’s official campaign, come from real estate advocacy groups, development and property management companies and their current or retired CEOs, and land-use attorneys who work for real-estate interests. Overall, real-estate interests contributed at least $592,000 of the $1,080,500 the PAC has collected so far. Tech companies and their leaders, including retired tech company founders as well as current executives like Microsoft CEO Brad Smith, gave another $257,000, at a minimum.

A majority of the 218 contributors to the pro-Harrell PAC listed their occupations as “retired” (59 total) or did not list their occupations (56 total), so the true percentage of both real estate interests and tech company executives is almost certainly higher than the ones I was able to confirm.

A pro-Wilson PAC, Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle, has raised about $85,000.

3. During a meeting about the city’s police department budget on Monday, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes responded to a question from Council President Sara Nelson by saying he couldn’t answer it because Nelson cited PubliCola as her source.

“I came across an article in PubliCola … that mentioned [the city’s proposed contract with the south King County jail] SCORE, and I wanted some information on this,” Nelson said. “I think that it mentioned that we are no longer depending on that contract. Is that the case?” 

In response, Barnes told Nelson he would not answer her question, forcing her to reframe her factual question about SCORE. “I’ll be clear. I do not read PubliCola, so I won’t respond to that,” Barnes said. After Barnes answered the rest of Nelson’s questions, but not the one about SCORE,  budget director Dan Eder had to jump in and answer in the affirmative. 

Barnes’ dismissive comment about PubliCola was the first time I can recall, in this publication’s 16-year history, that a department director has used a public meeting to disparage us directly. SPD’s communications department has reportedly stopped including stories from PubliCola in the department’s daily news clippings email, and in a recent social media post, Barnes said he wouldn’t be “swayed by opinions, criticism, lies, or the stories that others may fabricate.” He added, cryptically, “This is my leadership journey and you won’t make me quit! The battle is not mine.. It’s the Lords!”

PubliCola will, of course, continue to apply a critical lens to SPD and other city departments in our coverage, as we have since 2009.

 

labor, Mayor Harrell, Police, Uncategorized

New Police Chief Shon Barnes Accepted $50,000 Hiring Bonus Created for Rank and File Officers

SPD says the city offered Barnes the bonus, first approved in 2022 to boost police officer hiring, “as part of his compensation.” 

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post is an update to yesterday’s story revealing that the Seattle Police Department paid $50,000 bonuses intended for new rank and-file-officers to new Deputy Police Chief Andre Sayles and new Assistant Chief Nicole Powell. Sayles and Powell’s positions, along with other positions added by Barnes, are new, and add ongoing costs to the Seattle Police Department’s budget.

The Seattle Police Department confirmed that Police Chief Shon Barnes, appointed by Mayor Bruce Harrell in December and confirmed by the Seattle City Council last month, received a $50,000 recruitment bonus under legislation first passed in 2022 to promote the “recruitment of new police officers” during what proponents called a crisis-level officer shortage. (In 2024, the council increased the bonus from $30,000 to $50,000).

“While recruiting Shon Barnes, a respected law enforcement leader, the City of Seattle offered as part of his compensation a ‘hiring incentive’ of $50,000 under the City’s 2024 legislation, which is related to the recruitment and retention of police officers at the understaffed Seattle Police Department,” an SPD spokesperson told PubliCola.

As we reported yesterday, the legislation that created lateral hiring bonuses was explicitly about police officers, not executives. According to the 2022 legislation, the bonuses are meant to entice trained officers who “require minimal training and can immediately bolster the department’s 9-1-1 response ability or provision of investigative services.”

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Lisa Herbold, the former councilmember who sponsored the 2022 legislation, confirmed that the bonuses were intended for police officers, not command staff. Council President Sara Nelson, who sponsored a 2024 bill  that increased the lateral hiring bonus from $30,000 to $50,000, said her intent was to provide an extra incentive to help SPD recruit more “lower-level officers.”

SPD’s statement suggests that Mayor Bruce Harrell proactively offered Barnes the $50,000 bonus on top of an annual salary of more than $360,000 a year. We’ve reached out to Harrell’s office to find out whether and, if so, why he initiated this offer.

SPD said they’re splitting Barnes’ payment into two parts in accordance with the hiring-bonus legislation. “To date, $25,000 has been paid to Barnes according to the City’s agreed-upon compensation structure,” the SPD spokesperson said.

The section of the about splitting the hiring bonuses actually highlights the fact that the bonuses were never intended for the top SPD brass. According to the legislation, “Half of the hiring incentive will be paid in the first paycheck and the second half upon completion of any probationary period required by the Public Safety Civil Service Rules.” The probationary period isn’t there just to require cops to prove they can do the job—once they’re off probation, they get job protections as part of the civil service.

Chiefs (including deputy and assistant chiefs) aren’t part of the civil service—they can be fired at will. As such, they don’t have any probationary period. Put another way, Barnes’ position falls outside the parameters of the legislation, so he isn’t subject to the two-payment structure mandated in that law.

We’ve asked SPD to clarify this explanation.