Courts, Police, public disclosure

Police Department Reverses Course on Public Records After Lawsuit Loss

By Erica C. Barnett

Late last month, a King County Superior Court judge ruled that the Seattle Police Department’s policy of considering no more than one public disclosure request from the same person at a time, leaving subsequent requests in an indefinite “inactive” status, violates the state Public Disclosure Act.

The policy, called “grouping,” has been allowed in Seattle since 2017, when then-mayor Ed Murray and the City Council passed legislation aimed at preventing people from using bots to file dozens or hundreds of requests at a time.

In practice, SPD has been the only city department to deploy grouping on a mass scale, allowing the police to delay or deny disclosure for years by responding to every request by the same requester, in full, before even starting on subsequent requests. The Seattle Times sued to stop the practice, secured an agreement from SPD that they wouldn’t group requests from any requester that were more than eight weeks apart, and sued again when SPD failed to abide by their agreement. (PubliCola filed a declaration in support of the Times’ position).

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This week, SPD finally took action to comply with Superior Court Judge Sandra Widian’s ruling, sending notices with actual dates when the first (or next) installments of records will be available. PubliCola has nine outstanding requests with SPD, including some that SPD had been working on before they stopped responding to all our requests but one in November 2024; on Tuesday, SPD sent us new dates for all of our stalled requests. Each response said that SPD was providing these estimates “pursuant to a court order.”

SPD, of course, can push back these dates individually in the future, delaying disclosure in a way that appears more transparent than its previous practice of providing end-of-year “placeholder” dates for every request that move forward at the end of every year.

And in PubliCola’s case at least, SPD’s responses will still be far from timely: SPD now says they’ll provide new records for our oldest outstanding request, from June 2023, by July 2026, and we won’t see a single document from our most recent request, from December 2024, until June at the earliest. (That request, appropriately enough, is for correspondence between the public disclosure office and other records requesters about “grouping” in 2024). But perhaps it’s a sign of progress that SPD appears to be complying with this court order, so far. We’ll let you know in June.

City Council, housing, Mayor Wilson, zoning

With a Year of Zoning Changes Ahead, Mayor Wilson Can Still Put an Urbanist Stamp on the “One Seattle Plan”

By Erica C. Barnett

The city’s Office of Planning and Community Development rolled out legislation this week that will implement “Phase 2” of the city’s 10-year update to its comprehensive plan, the document that guides density and zoning in Seattle. Former mayor Bruce Harrell officially dubbed the proposal the “One Seattle Plan,” in keeping with his campaign and mayoral catch phrase.

The legislation complements the comp plan updates City Council adopted last year by increasing the density of housing allowed in 30 new Neighborhood Centers—areas within about 800 feet of existing commercial “nodes” or major transit stops—and expanding Urban Centers, where significantly more apartments are allowed.

The new plan will simplify the requirements for developers to build apartments in midrise areas. OPCD staff said apartments rarely get built in the existing midrise zone, because the four-story height restriction is too low to justify building and because Midrise has the most complex requirements of any zone in the city.

“Today, every single project that is built in a midrise zone has to come in and get a departure [from the standards because these are so complicated,” OPCD strategic advisor Brennon Staley said during a briefing on the legislation last week.

The legislation was finalized under former mayor Bruce Harrell, so it doesn’t bear Mayor Katie Wilson’s stamp. Wilson ran an explicitly urbanist campaign, with a commitment to allowing more housing in more places—something she’ll have a chance to demonstrate in later phases of the comprehensive plan.

Under Harrell, the city delayed the comprehensive plan update repeatedly, which is one reason it’s now broken up into four separate phases; the first phase, which got Seattle into compliance with a state law passed in 2023 requiring more density in former single-family areas, passed in December.

The zoning update also increases the amount of housing that’s allowed along “corridors”—areas directly adjacent to streets with frequent transit routes. As Doug Trumm at The Urbanist reported last week, OPCD reduced the size of some corridors in response to incumbent residents’ complaints about allowing too many apartments near single-family houses.

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“Today in the city, there are really very, very different viewpoints about housing,” Staley said. “There are people who own their home for a very long time. It’s been a great investment. … There are other people who think they will need to leave Seattle because they can’t afford a place to live.” The final legislation, he said, is an attempt to “recognize that both those types of opinions are valid.”

Efforts to accommodate homeowner complaints about apartments—that is, renters—have long been a centerpiece of Seattle politics. The result has been decades of anti-growth policies. Some, like exclusive single-family zoning, have only been eroded by outside intervention—it’s unlikely that Seattle would have allowed up to six units on every residential lot if the state legislature hadn’t passed House Bill 1110, which forced the city’s hand. Others, like the longstanding practice of segregating apartment buildings from single-family areas by concentrating them on busy, polluted arterials, remain in effect and are baked into the comp plan update.

Within those constraints, the remaining phases of the comp plan leave plenty of room for the new mayor (and progressive urbanists on the council, like Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Dionne Foster, and Eddie Lin) to allow more housing in other parts of the city.

After Phase 2—the “centers and corridors” legislation—the city will rezone the existing regional and urban centers, which include downtown, Northgate, and Capitol Hill. That will happen later this year and early next year, as will consideration of of nine more neighborhood centers, which require additional review because Harrell removed them from his plan.In  Phase 4, in 2027, the city will upzone areas around frequent transit stops—another density gift from the state legislature, which forced cities to add more housing near transit through House Bill 1491 last year.

Editor’s note: The original version of this story incorrectly described the city’s midrise zones as allowing six-story apartment buildings. That describes one of the city’s lowrise zones; midrise zones allow taller buildings. The story also misstated when the city will consider adding new neighborhood centers to the plan; that will be later this year, not in the first quarter of this year. 

This Week on PubliCola

This Week on PubliCola: January 31, 2026

CARE Team Struggles Under Cop Contract Restrictions, SPD Loses In Court, County Prosecutors Post Lurid Photos, and More

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, January 26

Two Years In, CARE Chief Amy Barden Says Her Crisis Response Team Still Faces Roadblocks

In a wide-ranging interview with the podcast I co-host, Seattle Nice, CARE Department Chief Amy Barden laid out some the obstacles her team of unarmed first responders still faces in responding to mental health crisis calls. Among them: A contract with the city’s police union that dictates CARE’s working conditions (even though CARE isn’t party to the contract); later in the week, the guild president mocked Barden for her comments.

Tuesday, January 27

SPD’s Obstructive “Grouping” Policy “Violates the Public Records Act,” Judge Rules

A King County judge ruled in favor of the Seattle Times in their public disclosure lawsuit against the police department, whose policy of refusing to respond to more than one public records request from the same person or outlet at a time PubliCola has covered extensively. The ruling should force SPD to end the current, obstructionist practice, but leaves several other issues open, including whether the city should allow “grouping” to continue.

Wednesday, January 28

County Prosecutors Give Lurid Presentation on Sex Work Featuring Unredacted Images of Brutalized Women to Seattle Council Committee

King County prosecutors gave an shockingly graphic presentation about sex work and human trafficking to a council committee on Tuesday, showing unredacted images of brutalized, identifiable women with bloodied and battered faces and bleeding bodies. The prosecutors said showing these women’s photos was necessary to demonstrate how dangerous sex work is; after enough people expressed outrage, Kettle’s office removed the images from the city’s website and apologized for the presentation.

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Thursday, January 29

Three stories from Fizz today:

More Big Changes at City Hall, as Mayor Katie Wilson continues to shake up the departments. This week’s departures included Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections director Brooke Belman, who’s returning to Sound Transit as deputy director, and Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs director Hamdi Mohamed.

Jamie Tompkins has a Podcast: The ex-chief of staff to former police chief Adrian Diaz, who was fired for dishonesty (along with Diaz) after allegedly lying to investigators looking into the pair’s alleged ethics-violating affair, has a podcast that promises to tell her story, “Real. Raw. Rebellious.” It’s unclear what this means, if anything, for her ongoing gender discrimination lawsuit against the city.

Mike Solan Thinks He’s Cute for posting a photo of CARE Chief Barden, stamped “CLUELESS,” on social media and saying that the CARE Team aren’t real “first responders.” Solan capped off his week on Friday by saying police should ignore orders from Mayor Katie Wilson to document ICE activities in Seattle.

Friday, January 30

Police Launching “Neighborhood Resource Centers,” Starting in Magnuson Park

The Seattle Police Department is setting up a permanent “Neighborhood Resource Center” in Magnuson Park and hiring two full-time officers to staff it, with more locations to come. The park has been a source of complaints about loud parties and late-night music for decades, as well as gun violence. It’s also the location of the low-income housing complex where police shot and killed a pregnant woman, Charleena Lyles, in 2017.

New Drug Sensors Lead to Restroom Closures at Four Seattle Library Branches

The Seattle Public Library has installed “air-quality sensors” that detect vapor from drugs like fentanyl and alert staff to close the restrooms down for at least 15 minutes or until the air quality improves. Although public health experts say fentanyl vapor has little or none of the drug in it, staff have reported getting sick from fumes, prompting the new sensors (and frequent restroom closures).

Drugs

New Drug Sensors Lead to Restroom Closures at Four Seattle Library Branches
Seattle’s Ballard branch library. Photo by Dennis Bratland, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-by-4.0 license.

By Erica C. Barnett

If you need to use the restrooms at the Lake City, Ballard, Capitol Hill, or International District libraries and find them closed, it may be thanks to new “air-quality sensors” that detect vapor from drugs that don’t set off regular smoke detectors, like fentanyl and meth, and alert staff to immediately close the restrooms down for at least 15 minutes or until the air quality improves to a minimum threshold level.

Library staff already have the authority to issue temporary or permanent bans for people who use drugs in the restrooms and other violations of the library’s code of conduct or the law.

According to Seattle Public Library spokeswoman Elisa Murray, SPL decided to start shutting down restrooms at certain branches in response to drug use as a way to protect patrons and staff.

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“Prior to implementing this technology, staff only became aware of unsafe conditions when fumes reached the service desks or when a patron comment prompted staff to enter the restrooms and detect smells, at which point they’re already risking exposure,” Murray said. “An alert allows the behavior to be interrupted as early as possible, and access to live data informs staff decisions about whether or not the restrooms should remain closed without exposing staff to harmful chemicals.”

King County has long advised that fentanyl “fumes” are generally harmless. “When someone smokes fentanyl, most of the drug has been filtered out by the user before there is secondhand smoke. It doesn’t just sort of float around,” Washington Poison Center medical director Scott Phillips said in a King County Public Health blog post in 2022. “There’s no real risk for the everyday person being exposed to secondhand opioid smoke.”

Despite this, Murray said library “staff have reported feeling sick from drug-related fumes, and we have had to close restrooms because of fumes related to drug activity. Air quality sensors help us maintain a safe and healthy environment for both staff and patrons.”

Murray said the library has received no complaints from patrons or staff about the restroom closures. Using or possessing drugs in public became a misdemeanor in 2023, and people accused of either offense can be banished from certain parts of the city even without a conviction.

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Police

Police Launching “Neighborhood Resource Centers,” Starting in Magnuson Park
Image by TIA International Photography; CC-by-4.0 license.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department is setting up a permanent “Neighborhood Resource Center” at a Seattle Parks Department building in Magnuson Park in Northeast Seattle and hiring two full-time officers to staff it, with more locations to come.

The department is also “working with community partners from Santos Place and Mercy Housing to address the safety challenges in the area through this program,” according to an internal email from Deputy Chief Yvonne Underwood announcing the new positions.

The park has been a source of neighborhood (and City Councilmember) complaints about loud parties and late-night music for decades, as well as gun violence.

It’s also the location of the low-income housing complex where police shot and killed a pregnant woman, Charleena Lyles, in 2017. Solid Ground operates the apartment complex where Lyles lived and also owns Santos Place. According to a police spokesperson, SPD has discussed operating out of space owned by Mercy Housing, “with appropriate safeguards.”

The new “resource center” appears to be an extension of a pilot SPD did last summer in the park, which SPD has credited with reducing shots fired, robberies, and car thefts in the area.

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But when PubliCola asked about the new resource centers, a spokesperson downplayed the announcement, saying SPD was simply “continuing a program, the ‘Neighborhood Resource Program,” that involves two officers, housed at a Seattle Parks Office in the park” that will not be open to the public.

A search for any past SPD program by this name came up blank, and in a response to followup questions, SPD described the new neighborhood centers as basically glorified restrooms: “These are just breakrooms with a bathroom and a place to lock up coats and non-sensitive equipment,” the spokesperson said.

The new positions will come with premium pay: An extra 1.5 percent of the highest salary available to patrol officers, which currently works out to  just over $2,250 a year. Underwood wrote that the officers working at the new neighborhood resource centers would “serve in the selected communities as vehicle, foot, and bicycle patrol officers” who will engage in “enforcement and non-enforcement capacities/activities” and “[m]aximize police visibility and citizen contact.”

Morning Fizz

More Big Changes at City Departments, Jamie Tompkins Has a Podcast, Mike Solan Thinks He’s Cute

1. Mike Solan, a police officer and the outgoing president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, insulted Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department Chief Amy Barden in an Instagram post on Thursday, calling her “clueless” and her team of first responders a group of “social workers that want to cosplay as first responders. They are not first responders.”

The CARE Team is a group of first responders who can be dispatched to 911 calls that don’t require police, including some mental health crisis calls. The SPOG contract adopted last year expanded the size of the team but placed new restrictions on their ability to respond to people in crisis, requiring them to back off and call police if any sign of drug use is present, if the person is inside a car or building, or if the person is “aggressive” or “confrontational.”

During a recent appearance on the Seattle Nice podcast, which I co-host,  arden expressed frustration at the new restrictions and the fact that police sergeants still serve as gatekeepers deciding whether 911 calls require a police or CARE response. Barden said she was “disappointed that it’s actually gotten worse since the contract,” with sergeants directing even more 911 crisis calls to police unnecessarily, leaving the CARE team unable to their jobs.

Solan, a guy who loves to Photoshop his head onto bulging superhero costumes, grabbed a photo of Barden he probably thinks is unflattering (but is actually cute), and professed outrage at her “attacks on sworn sergeants, SPOG members, and civilian community service officers (CSO),” who, Barden correctly observed, are responding to all kinds of calls for which they don’t have the same specialized training as CARE.

Solan will step down as SPOG president next year. He’s endorsed a mini-Mike.

2. Jamie Tompkins, the former chief of staff to fired former police chief Adrian Diaz, has a new gig: Like the rest of us, she’s now a podcaster! According to an Instagram post, the new show, “Respectfu11y” (or “Respectfu11y”? It’s a really confusing name) will feature the former Q13 anchor telling her own story for the first time. “She’s held the mic. She’s held the space. Now, she’s not holding back,” the promo copy reads. “Real. Raw. Rebellious.”

Tompkins was fired last year after investigators concluded she had lied about an affair with Diaz that violated SPD policies; investigators also concluded she had faked a handwriting sample in an effort to prove she did not write a love note found in Diaz’ car. She filed a tort claim against the city, seeking $3 million in damages for alleged gender discrimination, last year.

Her guests so far include a social media influencer and an actor-turned-“connection expert” who played Frankie Valli’s wife in “Jersey Boys.” They’re probably famous; PubliCola is not the target audience.

3. Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections Director Brooke Belman, resigned on Thursday to return to position as Deputy CEO at Sound Transit, PubliCola has confirmed. Belman, the former deputy CEO and interim CEO of the regional transit agency, was appointed to head the department last September, replacing interim director Kye Lee after longtime department leader Nathan Torgelson left the city in March.

Belman’s apparently sudden departure—we’re told she gave two weeks’ notice—may have come as a surprise to Mayor Katie Wilson, who did not make an official announcement.

The change at the top of the city’s permitting department came on the same day that the city’s other development-related department, the Office of Planning and Community Development, released legislation and zoning maps for “Phase 2” of the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan update (unfortunately, reporters were told yesterday, OPCD can’t remove former mayor Bruce Harrell’s signature branding without legislation changing the name). We’ll have more on the zoning changes in a separate post; for now, you can check out the detailed new zoning maps here.

4. Hamdi Mohamed, who was appointed head of the city’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs by former mayor Bruce Harrell in 2022, is out, she announced on Wednesday. Mohamed, who supported Harrell during his unsuccessful reelection campaign, will be replaced on an interim basis by former OIRA director Cuc Vu. OIRA provides support to immigrants in Seattle, including know-your-rights trainings and programs that provide legal assistance to migrants and people targeted by ICE.

Mohamed, who’s currently on leave awaiting the arrival of her second child, told PubliCola “it’s a bittersweet moment” to leave the city, but she’s hoping to “support this work in a new way, especially right now when immigrant communities are under attack.” Mohamed was an active supporter of former mayor Bruce Harrell and is one of many department heads Mayor Katie Wilson has replaced in her first month in office.

During her four years, Mohamed said, she was able to increase OIRA’s budget by 40 percent. “It really took holding the line for the community advocating for them, and being able to articulate why the funds that flow through our office directly support community organizations on the front lines.”