Tag: Mike Solan

City Council, Media, Police

Critics Say Bombastic Podcast that Replaced Police Union Newspaper Represents Strategic Shift at SPOG
The Guardian, March 2015

By Paul Kiefer

The Guardian, the official newspaper of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG), went out of print a few months into the pandemic. The paper’s disappearance was a sign of an important shift within Seattle’s largest police union, and one that closed a window into the guild’s interior life.

The print-only newspaper, which had a circulation of about 3,000 at its peak, was read mostly by police officers, retired police officers, labor organizers and city hall staffers. When articles from the paper did make it into the public eye, they were generally buoyed by controversy, like a 2011 opinion piece in which an officer called a training course on racial profiling an attack on “American values” and described Seattle’s elected leaders as a “quaint socialist cabal.”

Among SPOG members and retirees, however, The Guardian’s demise was a sign of a strategic and generational shift. The new guild president, Mike Solan, had recently defeated the incumbent, Kevin Stuckey, by promising to aggressively and publicly defend Seattle police officers against criticism from the public and elected city officials. Solan’s dramatic campaign video, featuring footage of riot police clashing with protesters, drew tens of thousands of views. Stuckey’s video, which focused on the guild’s stability and relationships with other unions, drew only a few hundred views.

After his victory, Solan began reshaping the guild’s approach to public relations. A few months after he took office in February 2020, Solan dismissed former SPOG president Rich O’Neill—who had retired from SPD and returned to SPOG to handle contract negotiations and media relations for Stuckey—and quietly shuttered The Guardian. In December of that year, he introduced a replacement: A bombastic monthly podcast called “Hold the Line with Mike Solan“, produced in the style of conservative talk radio shows.

“On the podcast, we hear the president’s opinion. Where’s the rest of the [SPOG] board? What forum does an officer have now to get their opinion out? There isn’t one.”—Former SPOG President Rich O’Neill

Typically, Solan uses his podcast to criticize the Seattle City Council, who he argues have sacrificed public safety and the well-being of police officers to appease an “activist mob.” The details of this criticism vary. In one 90-minute episode, Solan decried Seattle’s “Homeless Industrial Complex”; in another, he condemned the vaccine mandate for city workers as an ill-advised blow to SPD’s already shrinking ranks. In contrast to The Guardian, few other guild members have appeared on “Hold the Line”; instead, Solan relies on guests from outside the police department, ranging from former mayoral candidate James Donaldson to encampment removal activist Andrea Suarez.

While Solan’s allies pointed to The Guardian’s shrinking readership among younger officers as a reason to replace the paper with a podcast, O’Neill does not believe that younger officers were to blame for the paper’s demise. Instead, he said Solan made the change as “a way to give the president more control over the guild’s voice. On the podcast, we hear the president’s opinion. Where’s the rest of the [SPOG] board? What forum does an officer have now to get their opinion out? There isn’t one.”

SPOG published the first issue of The Guardian in 1970 as a venue for editorials about the state of SPD and city politics, announcements about deaths and retirements, updates on contract negotiations, and the occasional recipe. Although the guild appointed officers with writing experience to edit the paper, SPOG’s president had the final say on what made it into print. The paper was mostly written by officers themselves.

“It afforded officers a place to get their frustrations out,” Stuckey said. “If there was a training they didn’t like, they could write about it in the paper.” O’Neill said that he tried to strike a balance between allowing officers to air their opinions and avoiding direct criticism of elected officials or SPD command staff. He did, however, make some exceptions: The paper regularly criticized former city attorney Pete Holmes. Holmes did not return a call for comment.

O’Neill viewed The Guardian as a centerpiece of SPOG’s public relations strategy, and an opportunity for transparency. “It made officers more accessible,” he said. “The department has a policy that says you can’t speak to the press without permission, and if you try to talk to the press anonymously, you can get in trouble. But if you wrote something in the union paper, that was considered protected union speech.”

Some former readers outside the guild, however, believe publishing contentious articles actually harmed SPOG’s mission as a union. Continue reading “Critics Say Bombastic Podcast that Replaced Police Union Newspaper Represents Strategic Shift at SPOG” →

Cops, Mayor Durkan

Police Union Head’s Refusal to Resign Raises Questions About Upcoming Contract Negotiations

By Paul Kiefer

On Monday evening, Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG) President Mike Solan sent an email to members of his guild. “Connecting with you today to directly respond to the latest media frenzy surrounding our union,” he began.

The police union leader had been under fire since last week after posting a tweet that appeared to blame Black Lives Matter activists for the attempted pro-Trump insurrection at the US Capitol, and after he refused to condemn two officers—both SPOG members—for traveling to Washington, D.C. during the attacks.

Last Friday, the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) opened an investigation into both officers. That same day, Mayor Jenny Durkan and former Seattle police chief Carmen Best called for Solan’s resignation. Since then, members of city council have added their voices to the chorus. Interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz made clear that he will only fire the two officers if the OPA investigation finds that they took part in attacks on Capitol police officers or otherwise violated federal law.

“I am in communication with those two members and have provided SPOG resources to assist them during this process,” Solan wrote in his email on Monday. “As you can imagine, we are concerned for their safety, mental health and for what appears to be their guilt by association for merely exercising their constitutionally protected first amendment rights. We are in a scary time in our nation’s history as voicing a dissenting opinion can get you ‘canceled’.” SPOG’s resources likely include defense attorneys, paid for with union dues.

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Solan made no effort to condemn the attack on the U.S. Capitol, nor did he endorse Diaz’s plan to fire the two officers if the OPA finds that they participated in the attack.

Pivoting to calls from city leaders for his resignation—which spurred a second OPA investigation into whether his tweets violated the department’s social media policy—Solan declared that he has no intention of stepping down. “I will never bend to cancel culture as I lead this union with conviction,” he wrote. He did, however, backhandedly admit that his comments on Twitter hadn’t helped SPOG’s public image, writing that his tweets have “been spun intentionally for political reasons to hurt SPOG and limit our influence” and that he will “definitely take this as a lesson learned in Seattle politics.”

Solan did not, however, back down from his claims that Black Lives Matter and left-wing activists bear some blame for the attack on the Capitol last week. “At no point did I blame one faction over the other, including BLM, Antifa or Proud Boys,” he wrote. “What I was trying to convey is that we as police are caught in the middle of two extreme political groups (left/right) whom [sic] are vying for political control via violence.” Continue reading “Police Union Head’s Refusal to Resign Raises Questions About Upcoming Contract Negotiations” →

City Council, Cops, Elections, Health, Morning Fizz, Police

Unclear if Cops in D.C. During Riot Will Face Discipline; Council Weighs in on Cuba; Mosqueda Aide to Run for Mayor

1. Interim Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz held a brief press conference on Wednesday afternoon to address both his announcement last Friday night that two SPD officers were present in Washington, D.C. on the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and a spike in homicides in Seattle in 2020. As PubliCola reported on Friday, the department learned that two of its officers were in D.C. through a photo posted on social media; Diaz placed both officers on administrative leave while the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) investigates whether they were involved in the attack on the Capitol.

According to Diaz’s statement Monday, another officer reported the pair to their superiors, and the photos reached Assistant Chief of Patrol Operations Tom Mahaffey and Diaz by last Thursday. Diaz said he didn’t immediately terminate the two officers because “participating in a political event on their own time, out of uniform, violates no policy or law.”

In response to questions Monday, Diaz said that he will immediately fire the officers if the OPA investigation finds that they “participat[ed] in altercations with Capitol Police” or violated federal law.

The OPA also opened an investigation into Solan’s tweets last Friday. SPD has disciplined officers for social media posts in the recent past; last January, then-police chief Carmen Best fired Officer Duane Goodman for Instagram posts attacking Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and “illegal immigrants.”

Diaz said he didn’t immediately terminate the two officers because “participating in a political event on their own time, out of uniform, violates no policy or law.”

Halfway through his prepared remarks, Diaz pivoted to the subject of the surge in homicides in Seattle in 2020. According to year-end statistics, homicides rose by 61 percent from from 2019—from 31 to 50, the highest number in 26 years. Of those, 60 percent involved a gun, compared to 66 percent in the previous year. Half of all victims were Black, and most were men between the ages of 18 and 49. According to Diaz, last year saw an increase in domestic violence homicides in the city and a decrease in homicides in which the victims were unsheltered.

2. During Monday’s city council briefing, several council members added their voices to calls for Seattle Police Officers’ Guild president Mike Solan to resign after he took to Twitter last week to assert that members of the “far left” and Black Lives Matter activists were involved in the attack on the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday. Mayor Jenny Durkan, former Seattle police chief Carmen Best and frequent department ally Scott Lindsay publicly called for Solan to apologize or resign on Friday evening.

In her comments at the start of the council briefing, Councilmember Lisa Herbold pointed to Solan’s lengthy record of inflammatory public statements and suggested that SPOG members should consider recalling or censuring Solan. “This is not the person I believe should be leading the guild during challenging times,” Herbold said, “and I hope members of SPOG agree.”

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If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

Council President Lorena González and Councilmember Andrew Lewis made more direct calls for SPOG to remove Solan from its leadership, with Lewis arguing that Solan “has done nothing to advance the cause or the issues of that union or the quality of support of workers in that union.” And Councilmember Alex Pedersen connected Solan’s comments to the upcoming contract negotiations with SPOG, which will begin sometime in 2021. 

“We will all agree that Officer Solan’s remarks and their implications are reprehensible and untrue, but also that there is a need to revamp an inflexible, expensive and unjust police union contract,” Pedersen said. “The current president of the police union has, in my view, disqualified himself to a fair partner to negotiate that contract.”

3. Also at today’s council meeting, council members Teresa Mosqueda and Kshama Sawant introduced a resolution calling for collaboration between US and Cuban scientists and urging Congress and the incoming Administration to end the United States’ economic blockade against its southern neighbor. Citing reports from Cuban authorities, the resolution reads, “Cuba’s free community-based healthcare system, unified government approach, and robust biopharmaceutical industry have enabled the country to effectively deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.” Continue reading “Unclear if Cops in D.C. During Riot Will Face Discipline; Council Weighs in on Cuba; Mosqueda Aide to Run for Mayor” →

Cops, Health, human services, King County, Mayor Durkan, Morning Fizz, race, Transit, Transportation

Durkan’s Pedestrian Bridge Idea Raises Feasibility Questions, SPOG President Debuts New Podcast, and Homeless Vaccinations Threatened

1. When Mayor Jenny Durkan announced last month that the city would repair, rather than replace, the damaged West Seattle Bridge, she made an offhand comment that could have major implications for Sound Transit’s light rail project if it turns into policy: The new light rail bridge connecting downtown to West Seattle, she said, should include crossings for pedestrians and cyclists as well as light rail itself. “It makes no sense to build a bridge that does only one thing,” Durkan said.

Sound Transit is facing a revenue shortfall of $8 billion to $12 billion over the life of the Sound Transit 3 program due to the COVID-fueled economic downturn. Rachelle Cunningham, a spokeswoman for the agency, said Durkan’s office and Seattle Department of Transportation Staff “informed us of the mayor’s idea prior to her announcement but there were not any substantive discussions” about how the bridge would need to be revamped to accommodate other, non-light rail modes and how much additional time and cost such changes would add to the project.

Sound Transit is scheduled to publish the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project in mid-2021; that document will only include the light-rail-only options that the agency has considered so far, “consistent with the ST3 plan,” Cunningham said. During their conversations with the mayor’s office, “Sound Transit staff noted that the voter-approved ST3 plan only authorizes construction of a light rail bridge. Changing that plan to a multi-modal crossing would require additional funding from alternative sources as well as additional planning time” to accommodate things like supplementary design work and additional environmental review.

The steep grades required for an elevated rail line across the Duwamish River crossing could be an issue for people walking, biking, or rolling as well. Any changes to the current plan would likely require review and action by the Sound Transit board, Cunningham said.

2. In a promotional email sent on Tuesday, Police Officers’ Guild President Mike Solan wrote that his new podcast could become “an effective tool to push back against the progressive march to socialism.” The first episode of Hold the Line with Mike Solan (rhymes if you say it with a Southern accent!) appeared on YouTube the same day; the featured guest was Victoria Beach, the chair of the Seattle Police Department’s African American Community Advisory Council.

Solan opened his debut appearance with a call for unity, then pivoted to denounce a legislative proposal by city council member Lisa Herbold as a “preposterous” attempt to “legalize most crime.” (The legislation he was referring to would not “legalize most crime”; it would create new defenses against prosecution for crimes that result from poverty or an unmanaged mental health or addiction disorder). But, Solan added, he’s open to bringing Herbold on the podcast to “talk it out.”

After a jarring transition involving a clip from the 1996 sci-fi film Independence Day, Solan introduced Beach, a close ally of retired Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best who made periodic appearances at protests on Capitol Hill this summer.

Beach, a lifelong Seattleite, told Solan she “grew up hating police.” Her nephew was beaten bloody more than a decade ago; in 2000, two SPD officers pointed guns at her 5-year-old daughter while responding to an erroneous call from a white college student about a stolen car. Solan interrupted her as she told this story to explain why officers might point guns at children during “high risk felony stop[s],” but Beach forged ahead. “I’ve never had a positive experience,” she said. “Nothing positive?” he asked, sounding hurt.

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If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter. Earlier this month, we took a look back at just some of the work we’ve been able to do thanks to generous contributions from our readers, but those pieces represent just a handful of the hundreds of stories we’ve published this year.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely and exclusively by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

During an hour-long conversation, Solan occasionally ventured toward self-reflection, at one point noting that his hunger as a rookie patrol officer for “action” and car chases in  the Rainier Valley was immature. But he also repeatedly minimized the significance of race in policing: he expressed discomfort with the “social justice term ‘white privilege'” because of his hard-working two-parent upbringing; he dismissed racial profiling by police as the consequence of inexperienced cops with “bad intuition”; and he lamented the public’s tendency to focus on “about 30 cases a year” in which police kill unarmed Black people when “most people killed by police are white.” When Solan commented that “there are racist cops, but there are racist plumbers and racist teachers,” Beach intervened. “But plumbers and teachers don’t carry weapons,” she said.

3. King County Public Health Officer Dr. Jeff Duchin—whose press conferences often feature stark reminders about COVID morbidity and phrases like “unprecedented death and devastation”—said Friday that even if the health department gets access to a vaccine, it may have to lay off the workers who would administer it to low-income and homeless people around the county. Continue reading “Durkan’s Pedestrian Bridge Idea Raises Feasibility Questions, SPOG President Debuts New Podcast, and Homeless Vaccinations Threatened” →

City Council, Cops, Elections, Featured, homelessness, King County

Afternoon Crank: Slightly NSFW Edition

1. Monday’s city council meeting featured the official swearing-in ceremonies for all but one of the council’s seven reelected and newly elected members—the odd one out being District 3 council member Kshama Sawant, who is holding a special ceremony for herself in a week. Sawant still took the opportunity to give a speech denouncing “big business,” Amazon specifically, and other opponents before describing her charge as head of the council’s new sustainability and renters’ rights committee—implementing rent control, placing a moratorium on winter evictions, and passing a tax on Amazon. The council’s new rules will require Sawant (and all other committee chairs—sorry, Andrew Lewis) to convince at least two of their four fellow committee members to show up if they want to hold a meeting, because committees can no longer meet without at least three council members present.

The council also adopted its new committee roster without amendment, preserving an apparent power imbalance among the council’s newcomers that I pointed out last week. While Alex Pedersen, who joined the council in November, will oversee several of the city’s largest departments—transportation, City Light, Seattle Public Utilities, and IT—and Dan Strauss will chair the important land use committee, Tammy Morales will lead a once-monthly committee overseeing community economic development, and Lewis, as mentioned, won’t chair any standing committees. One thing Morales and Lewis have in common: Both were out of town for much of December, the critical month when council members typically negotiate their committee assignments.

Although attendees were reportedly told that performer Beyonce St. James was volunteering her time at the annual All Home conference on homelessness last November, King County confirms that she received $500 for the performance, paid by Department of Community and Human Services director Leo Flor out of his own personal funds

2. Pedersen’s primary and general-election field manager, Joseph Rouse, got into a social-media scrap with several Pedersen critics a few days ago, posting a link on the District 4 Facebook page to a piece by Safe Seattle leader David Preston that revealed where one of the Pedersen critics lives and works. The link to the doxxing post was removed by an administrator, but not before several group members pointed out that Rouse edited and wrote for a conservative campus satire publication called the Oregon Commentator when he was a student at the University of Oregon several years ago.

Rouse wrote for and held a variety of positions at the paper, whose mission statement endorses a “political philosophy of conservatism, free thought and individual liberty,” between 2011 and 2013. The publication, which is now defunct, ran numerous articles endorsing guns (“If women are to actually prevent rapes from occurring, and actually protect themselves and not ‘women’ as a social construct, then it is time we discussed women equipping themselves with firearms”), taking potshots at women, left-wing students, and people of color (“As I approached one hall, I could hear people speaking Spanish. So I walked up to one of the students and naturally said, ‘Hey, so are you guys waiting to water some begonia or what?”). How edgy was this publication? SO edgy that they ran a hardcore porn money shot as a full-page ad (page 15, and obviously NSFW).

At the end of one of his columns, which seems to be a confusing parody of the concept of “rape culture,” Rouse described himself this way: “Joseph Rouse is the publisher of Oregon Commentator and has a bitch tied up in his truck right now.” In another, trashing a proposed campus ban on smoking, he and a cowriter decry “the promotion of diversity and suffocating political correctness”  and the whole “back-patting, cum-spouting” smoking ban proposal. “Because blacks, whites, gays, straights and many others use tobacco, it can’t be grouped into a minority and, hence, isn’t worth shit. Well, fuck that,” Rouse and his coauthor wrote.

Pedersen said in an email that he was not aware of Rouse’s views or writing, and that the writings do not reflect his values. (Pedersen, notably, did not hire Rouse as a council aide.) Rouse has not returned messages seeking comment. But he has continued to aggressively argue with Pedersen critics on Facebook, where he says he “invested seven months of my life getting [Pedersen] into office and “actually know[s] the man.” (Rouse confirmed on Facebook that he wrote for the publication but said it was not a “right-wing periodical.”)

According to campaign records, Pedersen paid Rouse a total of $3,500 for “campaign operations work” in August and November. Rouse’s local campaign contributions include $75 to Pedersen and $25 to Pat Murakami, who ran unsuccessfully for the District 3 council seat last year.

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3. Mike Solan, a Seattle police officer and vice president of the Seattle Police Officer Guild who has carved out a niche for himself as the voice of the far right wing of the Seattle Police Department, is running to lead the SPOG on a campaign focused on “thwarting the anti-police activist agenda that is driving Seattle’s politics,” “Fundamentally chang[ing] the activist narrative,” and… pepper-spraying anti-fascist demonstrators? Continue reading “Afternoon Crank: Slightly NSFW Edition” →