1. Former Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz is trying to get a third King County Superior Court judge tossed from his lawsuit against the city, claiming that the judge, Nelson Lee, is biased against him. Previously, Diaz petitioned successfully to have Judge Suzanne Parisien removed; a second judge, Cindi Port, later recused herself, sending Diaz’ case to Lee’s courtroom.
Mayor Bruce Harrell removed Diaz from his role as chief last May, after several women accused Diaz of sexual harassment and of fostering a hostile workplace environment for women at SPD. Diaz remained on full pay at the city until seven months later, when Harrell finally fired him after a lengthy investigation. That investigation concluded that Diaz and his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, had lied about having an inappropriate workplace relationship and coordinated to cover their tracks.
Diaz’ lawsuit claims Harrell’s true reason for firing him was because he wouldn’t assent to the mayor’s preferred discipline for Daniel Auderer, the officer who was caught on tape laughing and joking about the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old student, shortly after SPD officer Kevin Dave stuck and killed her in 2023. Interim police chief Sue Rahr fired Auderer in January.
Diaz’ motion to have Lee removed from his case claims Lee is biased against him based on the fact that he is overseeing a case filed against the city (though not against Diaz himself) by SPD officer Lauren Truscott, one of several women who have sued over alleged gender discrimination, sexual and racial harassment, and retaliation at SPD. “Although Chief Diaz is not a named defendant or party in that matter, as this Court is aware, the allegations against him in Truscott are both false and highly prejudicial,” Diaz’ petition says.
In addition, Diaz claims that because Lee “expressly admitted to following media coverage about Chief Diaz,” he is admitting bias, since the coverage of Diaz has been “overwhelmingly negative,” “salacious,” and “false.”
As one of several examples, Diaz pointed to PubliCola’s report on his firing, using an inaccurate version of a headline that appeared on the article only briefly, “Mayor Harrell Fired Diaz over ‘False’ Statements Denying ‘Intimate Relationship’ With Top Staffer.” (I shortened the headline in the interest of brevity, but the newsletter version of the post is subheaded, “Harrell said Diaz repeatedly made ‘false statements’ about an ‘intimate relationship’ with a top staffer to members of the media, to SPD’s command staff, and to Harrell himself.”
Diaz’ attorney altered our headline to remove the quotation marks, making it appear as if we were asserting his statements were false, rather than Harrell.
“Setting aside for a moment the false nature of these reports, the mere fact that Judge Lee has followed and commented on such coverage gives rise to a well-founded appearance of bias,” the motion claims.
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2. Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest (PPVNW) filed a complaint against King County Council candidate Peter Kwon, saying he falsely claimed to have their endorsement on a campaign mailing earlier this month.
Kwon, a SeaTac City Councilmember, is running against attorney Steffanie Fain for the South King County seat. The reproductive rights group rescinded their endorsement of Kwon on September 18 after learning he told the King County Republican Party that he supports banning trans girls from girls’ school sports and locker rooms.
This position was inconsistent with what Kwon told PPVNW in a written statement, according to the complaint.
The Republican questionnaire included the question, “What are your thoughts on allowing trans students assigned male at birth to play in girls’ school sports and use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms?” Kwon responded: “I believe students should compete in their respective biological category to preserve fairness and protect opportunities—especially for girls and young women. Competitive sports are often divided by sex for a reason: to ensure a level playing field and prevent physical advantages from undermining fair competition.”
In an email to Kwon rescinding the endorsement on September 18, PPVNW Washington State Director Courtney Normand wrote, “As we discussed on the phone last week and via email, there are inconsistencies between written statements you made to Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates and to other groups regarding your position on trans youth and their right to full inclusion and participation in all parts of school and community life.”
“We hold our endorsed candidates to the highest standards of integrity and any decision to rescind an endorsement is made with careful deliberation and due diligence,” Normand said in a written statement. “We have zero tolerance for the misleading or unauthorized use of our trusted name and respected brand.”
Kwon did not respond to a request for an interview.
SPD employees described several incidents that made them uncomfortable, including a 2am call to a park in North Bend and a request for makeup wipes in Diaz’ official city vehicles.
By Erica C. Barnett
Newly released records from the investigation into alleged misconduct by former police chief Adrian Diaz include previously unreported interviews with two staffers who were close to Diaz.
Mayor Bruce Harrell fired Diaz in December, six months after removing him as chief, after concluding he violated SPD policies by having an “improper… intimate relationship” with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, failed to disclose the relationship, and lied about it to investigators. Diaz created a position, chief of staff, for Tompkins, who resigned amid allegations of dishonesty in November.
PubliCola obtained the investigation records, which include interviews with a member of Diaz’ security detail, Tay Gray-McVey, and his executive assistant, Tricia Fuentes, through a public disclosure request.
Investigators found that Diaz had violated SPD’s policies on dishonesty, professionalism, avoiding or disclosing conflicts of interest, and improper personal relationships, and that Tompkins had not only lied to investigators but falsified evidence by disguising her handwriting in an effort to prove that she didn’t write a love note to Diaz on an Star Wars-themed birthday card.
Diaz, who is married to a woman, went on a local right-wing talk show last June to announce that he was gay, using this claim as a defense against the affair allegations as well as several harassment and hostile-workplace lawsuits by women in the department.
In his interview, which took place in January, Gray-McVey described several incidents that helped confirm his belief that Diaz and Tompkins were having an affair.
In one incident, Gray-McVey described driving out to a park in North Bend, where Tompkins lived, at around 2:00 in the morning to provide a jump to Diaz’ city-issued Chevy Tahoe, which had a dead battery. As he worked to get Diaz’ truck up and running, he said he noticed Tompkins was sitting in the passenger seat. Gray-McVey said he never spoke with Diaz about Tompkins’ presence, but told the two people present at the interview, “I’m sure we, all three of us, can figure out what two adults are doing in a park after hours in a car.”
Shortly after the encounter, Gray-McVey said, Tompkins gave him a bottle of Crown Royal with a note saying “‘Thanks for saving the day,’ or something to that effect.”
Gray-McVey also mentioned two incidents that involved Tompkins’ heavy makeup. According to Gray-McVey, before Tompkins was hired but while Diaz was spending significant time with her, the police chief began requiring all his cars—the one he drove and the ones driven by his security detail—to be with makeup removal wipes. “I think they [were] used to remove the makeup that might be on him,” Gray-McVey said.
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During a convention in San Diego, Gray-McVey continued, Tompkins escorted Diaz back to his hotel after a night of drinking with other police chiefs from around the country. The next morning, when he walked by Diaz’ room, he noticed a stack of towels on a cart outside the room, including some that were visibly smeared with makeup. They could have been someone else’s towels, Gray-McVey conceded.
Gray-McVey said his experience working for Diaz while Tompkins was in the picture, which he said began well before Diaz hired her, was stressful and contributed to a “rough patch” in his life.
Fuentes, who also worked directly for Diaz as a senior executive assistant, also described the stress of being viewed as disloyal by Diaz, telling investigators her previously positive relationship with her boss began to change after she questioned his request to notarize Tompkins’ hiring documents personally, a request that fell outside the normal hiring process and was something she didn’t ordinarily do.
Later, she said, after Diaz became “obsessed” with finding out who was spreading rumors about him and Tompkins, he asked her and another staffer to start using WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging app, instead of text messages to communicate with Diaz and other SPD staff. City employees’ texts are subject to public disclosure, both on their city-issued phones and on personal cell phones if they pertain to city business, and employees are not supposed to use encrypted apps to get around public disclosure laws.
Fuentes, who previously worked on public disclosure requests, recalled to investigators that during a closed-door meeting, Diaz said, “‘The media is making a lot of requests for text messages, so… if you guys could download WhatsApp, that’s how I want to communicate from now on.'” Fuentes said she told Diaz using WhatsApp to evade record requests would violate public disclosure law, and that she would continue using text messages instead. Diaz said “‘that’s fine’ … But from then on, again, I felt a shift in our relationship and the openness.”
For instance, Fuentes recalled, Diaz changed the way he dealt with public disclosure requests for text messages. Previously, she told investigators, “I’d usually stand in front of [Diaz or a deputy or assistant chief] and I’d say, ‘Okay, give me your phone,’ and I’d … do the search, and show them.'” Over time, though, that changed, and Diaz “just handled it himself. … He’d have me still type up the form with, ‘Oh, there was nothing responsive,’ and then he’d sign it.”
On one occasion, Fuentes said, Diaz found out about a records request seeking information about his schedule and told her “I need to find out who this guy is. … “He said, ‘Well, I’m being followed and I believe that that requester knows Jamie’s ex-husband.’ It was just—I couldn’t follow. It was like this long conspiracy theory.”
Fuentes corroborated previous SPD accounts that Diaz became convinced that someone was planting listening devices in his office, and said he “became obsessive on the rumors” about him and Tompkins—sometimes spending “a lot of his workday” in his office with Tompkins discussing who might be spreading rumors about them. “That’s not the normal behavior of a chief of police, especially when we’re in a time when we were having you know such short staffing and crime and all that,” she told investigators.
Around that same time, she said, the way Diaz talked in her presence became more “crude”—she said he talked about how Tompkins was “constantly being sent dick pics,’ [and] I was like, Why is he telling me this?” Diaz also commented frequently on Tompkins “looks… and her makeup and her hair,” and “about her not leaving her house unless she’s got her hair and makeup done. .. I just remember thinking that was kind of a weird—a weird, out-of-nowhere thing.”
On another occasion, he said “something incredibly crass”—after egging Fuentes on to agree that one of her coworkers looked good in his new suit, Fuentes said Diaz told them the coworker “was over with me at the mayor’s office today and the mayor whispered, ‘I’d fuck him in that suit.'” Asked about this account, a spokesman for the mayor’s office said “this absolutely didn’t happen,” and noted that Diaz was fired for dishonesty.
Records reveal that Diaz, who was prohibited from talking about the investigation into his alleged misconduct, was formally admonished last October for sharing information about the case in violation of a direct order from then-interim police chief Sue Rahr. An investigative supervisor with the OIG warned him that failing to follow orders or violating investigative protocols could result in additional misconduct charges.
Diaz, through his attorney, declined to respond to questions. “This matter involves ongoing litigation, and the individuals you reference below are fact witnesses in the case. For those reasons, we will not be answering questions or providing comment at this time,” attorney Joseph P. Corr said. “That being said, Chief Diaz continues to deny any wrongdoing in connection with his former employment with the City of Seattle and/or his relationship with Ms. Tompkins.”
1. City Attorney Ann Davison and Mayor Bruce Harrell announced on Thursday—a date also known as Six Days Before the Primary Election—that they are suing the Trump Administration over two January 2025 executive orders threatening to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions that support diversity, equity, and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of trans and nonbinary people, a policy the Trump order refers to as “gender ideology.” (Harrell said there was nothing political about the timing. OK.)
The lawsuit isn’t the first in the nation to challenge the two executive orders, which seek to dismantle policies adopted by local jurisdictions by threatening the loss of critical federal funds. But it is the first such lawsuit initiated by the city of Seattle, which has also joined two other anti-Trump lawsuits filed by other jurisdictions.
The lawsuit argues that the Trump Administration has overstepped its authority by unilaterally imposing illegal conditions on federal contracts. By requiring the city to certify that it doesn’t have any programs that promote diversity or acknowledge genders other than “biological male and female,” the city argues the Trump Administration is subjecting it to “impossible choice when it accepts and spends federal grant money—either submit to the Administration’s policies through unlawful means or forgo vital funding for major infrastructure and safety initiatives.”
In a press conference Thursday, Davison avoided talking explicitly about gender diversity and DEI, limiting her comments to the legal aspects of the lawsuit. (Harrell, in contrast, talked about his own history of advocating for gender-affirming care to be included in the city’s health care plans and for the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative.) “We should not have to forego our own local policies in order to obtain that money that has already been provided to us,” Davison said.
This year, Seattle has the authority to spend around $370 million in federal grant funds, much of that for transportation projects. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s executive orders put all that funding at risk.
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3. Late last month, former police chief Adrian Diaz quietly agreed to dismiss all claims against Mayor Bruce Harrell in his defamation lawsuit against the city of Seattle—a surprising turn for a legal claim that puts Harrell at the center of most of its allegations, claiming he helped spread false rumors that Diaz had an inappropriate affair with a subordinate, Jamie Tompkins, and that Diaz and Tompkins lied to investigators looking into the allegations.
Diaz’ complaint rehashes a number of his longstanding grievances, including his claim that a love letter, written in what an expert identified as Tompkins’ handwriting, was a “forgery.” (Four days after Diaz filed the lawsuit, the city released records and recordings from the investigation, which PubliCola covered at length.) But it also included many specific allegations against Harrell.
After Harrell “wrongfully” fired Diaz, the complaint says, he “escalated the injustice by making knowingly false and defamatory statements to the media and public, accusing Chief Diaz of dishonesty, lying, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, acting unprofessionally, and engaging in an improper personal relationship.”
Then, the complaint alleges, “in an effort to score political points in an upcoming election year, Mayor Harrell then engaged in a self-aggrandizing media tour during which he repeatedly and falsely proclaimed Chief Diaz had lied to him, statements that wrongfully labeled Chief Diaz as a dishonest cop who could not be trusted.”
Diaz is still suing the city—the other named defendant in his lawsuit. Asked about his removal from the lawsuit on Thursday, Harrell said tersely, “No reaction. No comment.”
3. Talk about performative: Two of Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s colleagues—Sara Nelson and Maritza Rivera—along with the council appointee Rinck handily defeated, Tanya Woo, recently endorsed Rinck’s opponent Ray Rogers, who’s one of four people running against the popular incumbent.
Rogers, a self-identified former gang member who supports community policing and opposes a “return to the radical council of the past,” has raised just $4,000 and is polling at about 2 percent. Like her other nominal opponents, he isn’t a threat to Rinck. By endorsing him, her colleagues (and Woo) are sending Rinck a message that they’d rather endorse a nonviable candidate than accept the fact that voters overwhelmingly support her.
The inside of the infamous Ewok card. Investigators say it is “highly probable” that the card was written to Adrian Diaz by Jamie Tompkins.
By Erica C. Barnett
Newly released records from the investigation into former police chief Adrian Diaz and his former chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, shed new light on efforts by Tompkins and Diaz to discredit SPD staffers who believed Diaz had hired, and created a new position, for Tompkins because they were having an affair. They also show that Diaz’ security staff, who reported directly to Tompkins, were afraid of speaking out about the alleged affair because they believed they would be fired or criminally investigated if they talked.
The records, which PubliCola received in response to a public disclosure request, include transcripts of interviews with Tompkins, Diaz, and three members of Diaz’ security detail, along with a copy of a love letter written on an Ewok birthday card that investigators determined Tompkins wrote, based on an expert analysis of her handwriting.
Outside investigators determined last year that both Tompkins and Diaz had lied to investigators about their relationship, and that Tompkins had falsified evidence in the investigation by disguising her handwriting in an effort to prove that she didn’t write a love note to Diaz.
The investigation, by attorney Shayda Le from Barran Liebman LLP, was limited to “fact-finding” and came out after Tompkins resigned; she has since filed a $3 million claim against the city, alleging she was sexually harassed over the rumors about her and Diaz. Mayor Bruce Harrell demoted Diaz last May and fired him in December.
A comparison of the handwriting in the “Ewok” letter to Diaz and a sample of Tompkins’ writing from another document.
“It Scared the Crap Out of Me”
One of Diaz’ security officers, Andre Sinn, found a (since much-discussed) apparent love note, written on an Ewok-themed birthday card, in the Toyota Highlander Diaz had been driving while waiting for a new Chevy Tahoe he had ordered to arrive. Sinn brought the card along to his interview and handed it over to investigators, saying he had held on to it for more than a year because he and the other members of Diaz’ detail didn’t know what to do with it and who they could trust. “To be honest, it scared the crap out of me,” Sinn said.
Tay Gray-McVey, another member of Diaz’ security team, said the team discuss “different ways to turn it in without getting in trouble for not turning it sooner.” He assumed Diaz would fire them for telling anyone about the card; during the interview, a union representative, Matt Newsome, noted that Diaz kept a box in office that contained the badges of officers he’d fired, as if to say, “this is what could happen to you,” Newsome said.
The handwriting analysis compared the writing on the card to two separate samples Tompkins submitted to investigators—one impromptu sample, a standard handwriting analysis worksheet, that Tompkins provided at the end of her interview, and another she submitted about two weeks later. The final sample looked noticeably different than other examples of Tompkins’ writing, and caused the certified handwriting analyst to conclude that Tompkins had purposely disguised her handwriting so that investigators would be unable to conclude she’d written the card.
The handwriting expert, a certified document examiner, concluded that Tompkins wrote the love note and that her final writing sample “showed evidence of disguise.”
Tompkins and Diaz have denied the allegations, and Diaz hired his own handwriting expert who he claimed had discredited the outside investigator’s finding that Tompkins most likely wrote the love letter and later attempted to disguise her handwriting.
Side-by-side comparison of pages from Jamie Tompkins’ handwriting submissions on August 30 and September 11.
Special Treatment?
Many of the people interviewed during the investigation, including Sinn, said they didn’t really care one way or another if Diaz and Tompkins were having an affair—that was between them. “But when you hire a person into that role and you … bring them into our department, that, to me, is a huge problem, and then without divulging their relationship,” Sinn told investigators.
Specifically, Diaz was accused of creating a new position—Chief of Staff—for Tompkins, then promoting her to his command staff and putting her in charge of Clancy as well as Diaz’ own security detail. Then, SPD staffers claimed, he proceeded to give Tompkins special treatment, allowing her to work from home at a time when most people were expected to be in the office and spending large amounts of the work day “socializing,” as Sinn put it, instead of actually doing work.
“I don’t think anyone really knows what her job is honestly,” said Gray-McVey, who was interviewed when Tompkins still worked for SPD. “For a good portion, up until we got Chief [Sue] Rahr, we didn’t see her much in the office. Maybe one or two days for a couple hours.”
Tompkins said in her interview that Diaz hired her for her expertise in journalism, attention to detail, and willingness to tell him the truth while others on his staff were content to be “yes men” telling him what he wanted to hear. “I’m a perfectionist and it needs to be executed in just the right way,” he said.
Both Diaz and Tompkins claimed that the SPD chief had a chief of staff before Tompkins. For example, they said that Chris Fisher—SPD’s chief data analyst, whose title was Director of Strategic Initiatives—was Diaz’ previous chief of staff, even though he had a different title and responsibilities. “This isn’t a new fancy position and it’s not special,” Tompkins said.
Investigators seemed unconvinced by this argument, noting that Diaz already had a different Director of Strategic Initiatives, Heather Marx, when Tompkins was hired. The Chief of Staff title has not been use since 2001, although various people has served as adjutants or aides to police chiefs since then.
Throughout her interview, Tompkins returned to the idea that people at SPD were inventing the controversy over her role, along with the alleged affair, because she looked and acted different than a typical SPD employee. Tompkins told investigators Diaz’ executive assistant told her Gray-McVey “had a thing for me” and was “enamored” to the point of updating the Q13 FOX website constantly to see when her bio would come down (indicating she was about to start at SPD).
Diaz’ assistant, Tompkins continued, “would get phone calls: ‘What is she wearing today, where is she, is she going to be at this event?’ And I asked her, like, ‘Why—why would they want this?’ and she’s like, “because they want to experience you. They want to have an experience with you. … [because] you’re from television.”A communications training consultant once told her “they don’t know what to do with you here,” Tompkins told investigators. “She’s like, ‘People just stare at you, like… I can’t possibly have a brain and really great ideas.”
If Diaz did create a position for Tompkins because he was in a relationship with her, that would be a form of misconduct and potentially a misuse of city funds. Proving this kind of misconduct would require the city to demonstrate that the affair actually occurred.
“Nervous and Scared”
Many of the most salacious details of Diaz’ alleged comments about Tompkins have been reported before, including his alleged statement that he couldn’t keep up with Tompkins sexually and told her to use her Rabbit vibrator when he wasn’t around. But the interviews show that the stories Diaz’ security detail told investigators were remarkably consistent and limited to information each man could have obtained firsthand—for example, in one instance when one person was driving and another was riding in the back with Diaz, investigators concluded that each story reflected what they could have heard from their relative positions in the car.
Brandon James, a member of Diaz’ detail recalled Diaz telling him he couldn’t have sex as often as Tompkins wanted, and said that he specifically suggested Cialis, not Viagra, as an effective male-enhancement pill. The two had initially bonded, James said, after he confided in Diaz about his own divorce and Diaz helped him get off the night shift so he could see his kids, James said. During one drive—around the time James took Diaz on a “road trip” to get a specially tailored suit—James said Diaz confided in him that he was considering a divorce from his wife because he and Tompkins “were dating and wanted to be together,” and James advised him on how expensive and complicated divorce can be.
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Around that time, both Gray-McVey and James said, they separately discussed various “cover stories” Diaz could use to explain why he was away from home so often, including the excuse that he was seeing a personal trainer. Diaz did later tell investigators he was seeing a personal trainer—Tompkins’ brother—at her apartment building, meeting for their sessions in the conference room. James said he told Diaz he needed a more specific excuse that wasn’t so easy to disprove. “I said, ‘Quite frankly, you need to have better cover stories.'”
In her final investigation report, investigator Le concluded that Diaz and Tompkins most likely had had the affair and lied about it, based on testimony from the three security detail members as well as their obvious fear of retaliation by Diaz. “I noticed how nervous and scared all of the members of the security detail were to participate in the investigation,” Le wrote.
“The members of the security detail described fear of retaliation from Mr. Diaz based on his historical behavior, explained that their trepidation came from the fact that their testimony would be easily identifiable and traceable back to them, and suggested that the investigation could seek other sources of information, such as phone records or vehicle data in order to reduce the pressure and potential backlash they expected to experience from providing truthful testimony that would be damaging to Mr. Diaz.”
Additionally, Le wrote, there was no obvious reason why all three men would lie about Diaz. In an interview with investigators last October, Diaz suggested that Gray-McVey and James were both lying to help an unrelated officer who had sued the department, who Diaz said was “sleeping with” Gray-McVey. The interviewer seemed confused by this somewhat byzantine tale, and ultimately didn’t find it germane, concluding that “Mr. Diaz made direct statements to Det. Gray-McVey and Lt. James about sexual and intimate interactions with Ms. Tompkins.”
During her interview, Tompkins said there was “no way in hell” Diaz would have said he was having an affair with her, adding that the suggestion was “insulting” and “a form of sexual harassment.”
“Paranoid”
Both Diaz and Tompkins claimed that people were surveilling them. Tompkins, as previously reported, believed officers from the West Precinct, which is directly adjacent to the her condo building, were hanging around her building to see if Diaz was going in and out. Tompkins had Diaz do “counter-surveillance” around her building, on one occasion watching a white SUV that she said had been “parked weird” and was “always facing my apartment”; she also put sensors on all her doors and “invested in all different types of security things.”
Diaz, too, believed he was being surveilled and followed, and was worried his car and office might be bugged with listening devices. James recalled Diaz telling him he was sure he was being followed, and was “paranoid about believing his cars were being bugged.” In an interview with investigators, Diaz said he believed people followed him home, and said “there were many times when I took in plenty of license plates because I thought I was being followed.”
Although other SPD personnel, including Maxey, told Diaz that physical tracking devices are mostly a thing of the past—”if you want to get somebody, you don’t plant a bug anymore, yo can hack their phone. Just go directly to the microphone they’re already carrying around with them,” Maxey told investigators—Diaz insisted on having his car swept for “bugs” and was alarmed when a sweeping device appeared to pick up something near one of the rear tires—most likely the Bluetooth system that monitors tire pressure on modern cars.
James said that, at Diaz’ insistence, he searched his office for bugs, but told investigators it was really “just for show”—to demonstrate to Diaz that he had nothing to worry about. But Diaz continued to believe he was being followed and targeted. Often, he would stop in a parking lot and just sit there for “20, 30, 40 minutes,” Sinn recalled, while his security escort waited for him to leave for home.
During those times, members of Diaz’ detail believed he was on the phone with Tompkins. In an interview with investigators, Diaz denied calling Tompkins during those times, then said he talks to “hundreds of people” and finally conceded that it was possible she was among the people he talked to on the phone before going home.
“We Have This Bomb That’s Going to Go Off”
Shortly after Mayor Bruce Harrell demoted Diaz in response to multiple sexual harassment complaints against him, Diaz came out as gay, telling people inside and outside the department that he had begun to question his sexuality a few years before making the announcement.
Both Gray-McVey and James told investigators it seemed clear that Diaz believed that if he came out as gay, it would be impossible for Harrell to fire him, because he would be a member of a protected class. Maxey said Diaz initially told him that “we have this bomb that’s going to go off, it’s going to reset all of this.” After Diaz made this cryptic remark, Maxey recalled, he told Diaz that being gay didn’t mean he couldn’t have had an affair with Tompkins and created a position for her—the two things weren’t mutually exclusive; sexuality is fluid.
At that point, Maxey said, Diaz “got very angry with me—he kept saying, you know, ‘This means somebody would be betraying their true self and acting contrary to their feelings and their beliefs and what was right for them.'”
Diaz told investigators, and the public, that one reason he spent so much time hanging out with Tompkins was because she was one of his key emotional supports when he made the decision to come out as gay. However, investigators noted that in their lengthy interview with Tompkins, she never mentioned this among the many reasons she said she spent time with Diaz; nor did she mention personal training or working out, which were among the main reasons Diaz said he might have been seen entering and leaving her apartment building. Tompkins also told investigators she stopped “socializing” with Diaz outside of work once she started at SPD.
It’s clear from the interviews with SPD staff that no one was bothered by Diaz’ profession that he was gay; even the members of his detail who didn’t believe him said it didn’t matter to them if someone was gay or straight. This included OIG director Lisa Judge, who Diaz and Tompkins accused of “outing” him to other SPD staff before he announced his sexual orientation publicly.
Although Diaz and Tompkins both claimed Judge was telling people Diaz wasn’t really gay, Maxey said the opposite was true—Judge told her she thought Diaz might have come out to her, and she wanted to know if she should offer him advice on coming out later in life, as a fellow member of the LGBTQ community “She was genuinely concerned that he was hurting,” Maxey said. “You don’t have that level of concern if you’re doubting the reality of it.”
The city of Seattle has settled a discrimination lawsuit filed by Seattle Police Department Captain Eric Greening, a former assistant police chief who was demoted by former Seattle police chief Adrian Diaz last year, reportedly for for around $1 million. Greening’s lawsuit, which received national attention, alleged that Diaz demoted Greening, who is Black, for raising concerns about discrimination against women and people of color in the department.
SPD general counsel Rebecca Boatright confirmed the settlement, referring more detailed questions to City Attorney Ann Davison’s office, which did not immediately respond to PublCola’s questions late Monday morning.
Greening’s lawsuit is one of many alleging sexist and racist discrimination at SPD under Diaz, who was reassigned by Mayor Bruce Harrell last year to an ill-defined “special projects” role where he continued to collect a $338,000 annual salary until Harrell finally fired him in December.
When Harrell announced he was removing Diaz as chief last May, he praised Diaz as “a good human being” whose “integrity, in my mind, is beyond reproach.” At the time, Diaz faced a half-dozen discrimination lawsuits. Immediately after his reassignment, Diaz went on a right-wing talk show to announce that he was gay, which the host said proved his “innocence” of charges that he had harassed women who worked for him, or of the “absurd” claim that was having an affair with a female staffer former FOX newscaster Jamie Tompkins, whom he hired and promoted. (Diaz is married to a woman.)
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Ultimately, that alleged affair—not the lawsuits and allegations of harassment and discrimination—is what brought him down, after investigators found he and Tompkins had lied to investigators repeatedly about their relationship.
Steve Hirjak, another former assistant chief, settled his own discrimination lawsuit for $650,000 in 2023.. KUOW reported last year that eight officers had sued over alleged discrimination at the department, including four lawsuits that directly named Diaz. Over the last two city budget cycles, the city’s budget has included a cumulative $21 million in extra funding to defend the city and pay out judgments and claims in lawsuits, owing to “extraordinary, high-cost cases and a naFonwide trend of increasingly expensive settlements and judgments,” according to the 2025-2026 budget.
Greening’s attorney, Toby Marshall, said he was “unable to comment” on the settlement.
A collage of images of officers with children, plus a puppy, from the presentation
By Erica C. Barnett
The Seattle Police Department spent $40,000 last year on two media training sessions for high-ranking department staff, flying consultants from San Francisco and Tampa for two-day sessions in March and June of last year. One of the trainings was for executive-level SPD staff; the other was for command staff with the rank of captain or below.
An SPD spokesman confirmed the training “was initially requested by Jamie Tompkins and approved at the request of then Chief Adrian Diaz.”
Tompkins resigned last year after an investigation by the city’s Office of Inspector General concluded that she, along with Diaz, lied about an affair they were having while she was his chief of staff. After several female SPD officers accused Diaz of sexual harassment and fostering a culture of discrimination, Diaz announced he was gay on a right-wing talk show and sued the city for discrimination based on sexual orientation—which, he suggested, made the very idea that he was involved with a woman preposterous.
According to an invoice for one of the two trainings, obtained through records provided to PubliCola, the $20,000 price tag included a $1,227 flight from Tampa for one trainer and a $636 flight from San Francisco for another, plus around $2,600 for hotel rooms and miscellaneous travel expenses during the two-day event. The trainers were also paid a total of $15,000 for their work.
One training was held last March; the second, in June. Both came shortly after Mayor Bruce Harrell implemented a hiring freeze that prevented city departments from replacing people when they leave. Harrell’s proposed budget reduced the travel and training budget for several departments, including an initial $35,000 cut to travel and training for the Office of Emergency Management, which responds to disasters.
So what did city taxpayers get for their $40,000? For that, we’re going to need to take a brief look at the PowerPoint. At 131 pages, it’s too long to cover in full, but you can see the entire presentation here.
The presentation starts by emphasizing the importance of getting the media to write positive stories by “embracing communication as a value,” rather than a “technique” to show that police are “Worthy of the Power to Arrest & Use Deadly Force.”
How can police elicit positive coverage? According to the presentation, by offering media the chance to watch demonstrations of new technology (cue video of stiff-armed cops getting hit with a Bola Wrap), inviting them on ridealongs, and creating pre-packaged videos that look appealing, which they’re likely to run “even if it has little news value.”
As this photo of Adrian Diaz attests, “You’re in Control”:
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The less said about Diaz’ “Money Sound Bites,” the better.
After critical incidents (like when officers get caught roaring with laughter over someone who just got killed by a speeding cop, or the press finds out about the faux tombstone for a victim of police in a precinct break room), it’s important to react quickly, the presentation notes. Be decisive, like a bunch of cops hiding behind a riot shield, and not reactive, which makes AI-generated protesters demand indictments:
When in crisis, there’s even an easy-to-remember acronym:
Officers also learned that social media is changing the way people get their information. You know it’s an up-to-date image, because the image features thought bubbles that say “SMS” and “BLOG”.
The media are “not your friends,” the presentation notes. If police don’t provide something that seems like information, the media will “usually get it wrong,” as demonstrated by a random 11-year-old tweet about earplugs.
No corporate presentation would be complete without a quote misattributed to Mark Twain (via meetville.com, which appears to be a dating site).
Finally, the SPD brass got a refresher on what to say when they don’t want to answer questions.
Now, look, a lot of this stuff about the media is true, especially when it local TV news. Yes, there are dogged, dedicated reporters at every outlet, but news stations often serve as training grounds for communications jobs at police departments—as Tompkins, a former FOX13 reporter Diaz hired shortly after she did a flattering story about him, knows well.
But nothing in this presentation—including the 90 minutes or so of videos that pad it out—is remotely novel, nor does it differ from what officials authorized to speak to the media are currently doing every day. Hell, I worked in communications for a hot second with no formal training at all, and even I knew that the job involved posting things on social media, pitching positive stories, spinning negative ones in the best possible light, and trying to avoid insulting reporters or saying something offensive. (SPD has historically been pretty bad at these last two, but I don’t think it’s for lack of training). This is how-to-boil-water stuff: At some point, someone probably has to tell you how to do it, but it probably doesn’t require hiring a $40,000 consultant.
Mayor Bruce Harrell removed Diaz from his role as chief last May, after several women accused Diaz of sexual harassment and of fostering a hostile workplace environment for women at SPD. Diaz remained on full pay at the city until seven months later, when Harrell finally fired him after a lengthy investigation. That investigation concluded that Diaz and his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, had lied about having an inappropriate workplace relationship and coordinated to cover their tracks.
