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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
