Tag: Rob Saka

City Council

SPD Chief Barnes Hires Two Harrell Staffers to Executive Positions, Saka Hires Ex-Cop Who Ran for Council

1. On Monday, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes announced permanent replacements for the two civilian command staff members he fired late last year, along with a newly created position of deputy chief of staff. The two fired staffers, ex-general counsel Rebecca Boatright and ex-chief operating officer Brian Maxey, have filed a tort claim against the city alleging Barnes retaliated against them for giving advice he and his inner circle disagreed with, and discriminated against Boatright based on her gender.

Among the advice Boatright and Maxey gave Barnes and his chief of staff ewre a suggestion that they take concerns from the LGBTQ+ community more seriously including pushback over police raids at a longstanding nude beach. To that suggestion, Barnes’ chief of staff Alex Ricketts allegedly responded, “We’re not here for the gays.”

Two of the new staffers will join Barnes’ team directly from former mayor Bruce Harrell’s office.

Maxey will be replaced by Sarah Smith, a public safety advisor to Harrell who previously worked as a policy staffer for Jenny Durkan. In addition to her time at Harrell’s office, Smith’s resumé includes a brief stint at the fire department, where she “ideated, organized, and executed EMS staffing for events,” according to her LinkedIn page. Before that, she worked as a program manager at the YMCA and a manager at Specialty’s, a now-defunct bakery in downtown Seattle.

Another Harrell staffer, Cindy Wong, will become deputy chief of staff under Alex Ricketts, a new position. Prior to former chief Adrian Diaz, SPD had not had a “chief of staff”  since 2001, when an assistant police chief held the job as an informal secondary title. Wong is the author of a children’s book with a background in human resources who had worked for Harrell since 2023.

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SPD did not respond to questions.

Boatright will be replaced by her former deputy, Cherie Getchell. “Please join me in welcoming each of these women to their new roles,” Barnes wrote in an email to all SPD staff. “Their extensive experience and deep commitment to public safety in our community will be instrumental in guiding us through SPD’s next chapter.”

Combined with the five new positions Barnes added when he came on as chief last year—Ricketts, new Assistant Chief Nicole Powell, executive director of crime reduction Lee Hunt, new Deputy Chief Andre Sayles, and Chief Communications Officer Barbara DeLollis, all making well over $200,000—Barnes now has the largest executive staff of any police chief in recent memory.

Mayor Katie Wilson’s office had no comment on Barnes’ hiring of the two Harrell staffers.


2. Across the street at City Hall, the new year began with two departures from City Councilmember Rob Saka’s office, where no staffer (other than chief of staff Elaine Ko) has lasted longer than 16 months. On Monday, a new Saka staffer started work—former SPD lieutenant Brendan Kolding, who will be Saka’s policy director.

Kolding’s name may be familiar. In 2019, he ran for City Council against then-incumbent Lisa Herbold and later endorsed Phil Tavel, a conservative two-time candidate for the position, on a platform that included setting up FEMA-style camps and moving unsheltered people into them. (He lost in the primary). Although Kolding told reporters he quit SPD to run for council, the Seattle Times reported that he actually resigned in lieu of termination after an investigation concluded he had harassed a coworker and lied about it to the police chief.

Some of Kolding’s political views appear to be at odds with some of the lofty rhetoric Saka adopted when he voted against the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract last year. His most recent post on X, from 2024, is a reposted SPOG endorsement for then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert. Kolding has also reposted content from SPOG leader Mike Solan,  Turning Point USA activist Jonathan Choe, and former city councilmember Sara Nelson. 

Kolding was also fond of posting photos of his ballots, including votes for Nelson, former city attorney Ann Davison, and—whoops—Phil Tavel, who ran against Saka in 2023.

City Council

Council Finally Seats Renters Commission, New Council Rules Allow Longer Public Comments

1. After an overload of drama last week, the Seattle City Council quietly approved all 14 nominees to the Seattle Renter’s Commission—an advisory body that has had just five members (all of whose terms are now expired) for the past 18 months. The appointments were part of the council’s consent agenda, and all seven council members who were present (Maritza Rivera was excused) voted to approve them, along with several other nominees to unrelated commissions.

As we reported last Wednesday, Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Rob Saka skipped out on the housing and human services committee meeting at the last minute, depriving the committee of a quorum and wasting the time of the nominees who showed up in person and online expecting to finally receive their long-delayed confirmations. Solomon and Alexis Mercedes Rinck held a “community discussion” of the appointments and other business on the committee agenda in lieu of the scheduled committee meeting.

Nelson told Solomon she wouldn’t attend the meeting on Tuesday, after receiving an email from former councilmember Moore urging her to not let the appointments move forward.

Saka, who was cc’d on a late-night email from Moore touting her proposed alternative to the renters’ commission, which would have added seven landlords to the mix, told Solomon he wouldn’t be attending the meeting just minutes before it started, citing unspecified personal matters for his unexcused absence.

During a council briefing meeting on Monday, Saka told his colleagues that “right before that meeting, on the bus to City Hall, I got some uncomfortable calls and and that really impacted my ability to to show up in a public meeting … and so in any event, I make no apologies for the decision.” Saka dismissed suggestions that he sat out the vote in order to deprive the committee of a quorum as a “grand conspiracy” with no factual basis.

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2. Also Tuesday, the council passed a new rule that will effectively prevent the council president and committee chairs from cutting public comment short just because they feel like it.

Currently, the person who’s chairing a meeting can decide, based entirely on their own feelings in the moment, to restrict comments to one minute instead of the standard two and to limit the amount of time allowed for public comments, depriving people of the opportunity to speak to their representatives.

This broad discretionary power has caused major problems in the recent past, as Council President Nelson has repeatedly shut down public comment and closed down the council chambers after would-be commenters have loudly protested being cut off. (Moore, who often took umbrage at critical public comments, once suggested that a group of people who had been locked out of council chambers planned to rush the dais and assault the council because they were pounding on the walls.)

The new public comment rule, proposed by frequent Nelson antagonist Dan Strauss (who will, if Nelson isn’t reelected this year, be the council’s most senior member and a contender for council president), increases the minimum time allotted for public comment from 20 minutes to an hour and stipulates that if there are fewer than 30 commenters, they will each get two minutes to speak. If the number of commenters is between 30 and 60, they’ll get a minute, and if there are more than 60, they’ll still get a minute unless the council president or committee chair sets a lower time.

City Council

Renters Commission Appointments Thwarted by Saka and Nelson’s Last-Minute Absence from Their Own Committee

By Erica C. Barnett

For 18 months, under former city councilmember Cathy Moore’s leadership, nominees to the Seattle Renters Commission did not receive a single hearing. Moore, whose job as housing and human services committee chair included confirming appointments and reappointments to volunteer city commissions under the committee’s purview, refused to seat the Renters Commission even as she worked on legislation to dramatically reduce eviction protections, an issue the commission would have worked on if it was ever allowed to exist.

After Moore resigned, the vice-chair of the committee, Mark Solomon, approached the renters’ commission members and unconfirmed nominees and told them that before Moore’s replacement—likely former councilmember Debora Juarez—takes over next month, he would finally appoint as many renters’ commission nominees as possible, said Kate Rubin, whose membership on the renters’ commission expired in February.

Thrilled, commission appointees showed up at City Hall Wednesday morning—only to learn that their appointments would continue to be delayed: About three minutes before the committee was scheduled to start, Councilmember Rob Saka sent a message down from his City Hall office that he would not be attending.

Before Solomon adjourned the meeting (and re-convened the same gathering as an informal “community discussion” to avoid breaking council rules), Rinck went to Saka’s second-floor office to see if he was there. Saka’s staffer disappeared behind his closed inner-office door, emerged a few minutes later, and told Rinck that Saka wasn’t available because he was meeting with his chief of staff, Elaine Ko.

In a statement Wednesday, Saka told PubliCola, “This morning I was unable to attend the Housing & Human Services committee meeting due to unexpected personal conflicts. I understand this may have caused undue frustration and inconvenience for attendees and I will work with my colleagues to discuss next steps to carry out necessary committee business.”

The previous day, Council President Sara Nelson, who reportedly got an email from Moore asking her not to allow the appointments to move forward earlier in the week, had reportedly asked Solomon to remove the appointments from the committee agenda. That same day, Nelson reportedly told Solomon she would not attend the meeting, leaving the committee with less than the three-member quorum required to meet.

On Tuesday, at 2:30 in the morning, Moore sent an email to Solomon, cc’ing Saka and Nelson, expressing apparent surprise that there was “a slew of appointments to the Renters’ Commission scheduled for a vote on Wednesday.”

Before she resigned, Moore had suggested replacing the Renters Commission with a joint landlord-tenant commission with seven landlords and eight tenants.

“When we spoke several weeks ago, you mentioned you were interested in my proposal to revamp the commission into a rental housing commission composed of renters and housing providers,” Moore told Solomon.

The renters’ commission is the only city body that works and advocates on behalf of tenants. Rubin said that if Moore’s legislation moves forward, it will inevitably be dominated by landlords. “Having worked in those spaces, I can tell you that the renters would have been shut out,” Rubin said.

 

 

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Nelson confirmed that she told Solomon Tuesday afternoon that “I wasn’t going to be here, so they already knew.” She declined to comment further about why she wasn’t present.

Solomon told PubliCola he was “disappointed” in the lack of quorum, adding, “I believe it’s common-sense good governance to promptly seat all vacancies on City commissions. It’s what constituents should expect from our work. These commission volunteers took time out of their day to show up both in person and online, to talk about their qualifications and lived-experiences as renters in Seattle, and to share their vision for their work on the Seattle Renters Commission. I am grateful to everyone who showed up and enjoyed learning more about these qualified nominees.”

During the meeting, commission nominees expressed frustration at what many of them described as Saka and Nelson’s callous disregard for people who showed up to accept appointments to a volunteer commission.

Commission member Julissa Sánchez, the advocacy director at Choose 180 and a former advocate at the Tenants Union, said she was”very disappointed that we did not meet quorum, because we have been waiting for two years to expand the Seattle Renters Commission.”
Sanchéz, whose term expired in February, said, “I’m here to be reinstated into the Seattle Renters Commission, because … renters [for whom] English is not their first language, or who may not speak English at all, are often left off the table or out of access to different resources.”

“I am so furious,” Rubin told PubliCola on Wednesday. As the only paid staffer for the renters’ advocacy group Be: Seattle, Rubin said advocating for the renters’ commission “is pulling me away from my actual job, seemingly for no reason,” given that the council appears to have no interest in seating the commission.

“It’s so disrespectful to waste our time in this way we’re not being paid to do this work and there’s no real voice for renters at city hall other than Councilmember Rinck. … It’s hard for renters to show up to testify. It’s been just awful.”

Rinck, who became visibly emotional while expressing her frustration Nelson and Saka from the dais, echoed Rubin’s sentiment about disrespect when we spoke a few hours after the meeting ended.

“It’s my job to sit in this seat. I had the time on my calendar dedicated to be there. It’s my job to be there. Everyone else in the room was there on a volunteer basis,” Rinck said. “We want people to be engaged in our local government and have trust and have a collaborative relationship with our commissions, so what I’m struggling with is the disrespect to those folks that [Saka and Nelson] displayed by just not even showing up to committee.”

Many of the renters’ commission appointments were from Mayor Bruce Harrell; a spokesperson for the mayor told PubliCola his office was “disappointed that the Council’s Housing and Human Services committee was unable to reach quorum today, given we had commission nominees who we had asked to attend, and the agenda contained important legislative matters, including our proposal to protect constituents from predatory homebuying practices.”

In addition to the renters’ commission appointments, the committee was supposed to approve appointments to the Disability Commission, the Seattle Housing Authority Board, and the Seattle Social Housing Public Development Authority Governing Council.

And it was supposed to adopt an annual action plan for $16 million in federal Housing and Urban Development funding that has not been canceled by the Trump Administration. Delaying that action plan won’t put the funding at risk in itself, but Rinck said it speaks to the absent committee members’ priorities that they allowed such an important vote to slip.

Members of the renters’ commission planned to attend a meeting tonight of an ad hoc group called the Safe and Stable Housing Working Group to discuss potential reforms to Moore’s draft legislation, which would have ended the winter and school-year eviction moratoriums, eliminated limits on fees for late payment, and overturned a law allowing tenants to add new roommates without prior approval, among other changes.

“Councilmember Solomon said his intention was to ensure that nobody was forced out of their housing and to make the nonprofit landlords whole,” Rubin said.

Now, the meeting may end up focusing on the council’s refusal to seat the renters’ commission.

In an email to committee members on Wednesday, Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness director Alison Eisinger said the council’s refusal to seat the renters’ commission in the last scheduled housing committee meeting before the council goes on its August recess “undermine[s] not only that group’s ability to convene and meaningfully carry out its role” but contributes “to the sense that ‘government’  has no interest in solving problems of the people, by the people, and for the people. There is work to be done in this city regarding housing and human services, and it’s reasonable to expect that City Council Committee meetings are one of the places where it gets done.”

Saka’s office sent an automated response to Eisinger and others who contacted his office about his absence, which included a link to “Eviction Assistance.” That link leads to a 404 Error page.

City Council, Transportation

Saka: People Who Support Keeping “Curby” Are Anti-Immigrant, Radical “Defund the Police” Carpetbaggers

By Erica C. Barnett

In a 2,100-word, emoji-filled email blast (that’s about three times the length of this post!) announcing a compromise that will keep a traffic safety divider in place while allowing cars to park in the bus lane on Delridge Way SW, City Councilmember Rob Saka blamed a “radical proxy ‘war on cars'” for demonizing his efforts to remove the divider. The barrier, a standard-issue hardened centerline identical to hundreds installed around the city, was installed as part of Metro’s RapidRide H project.

As PubliCola reported exclusively in 2023, Saka wanted to remove a standard eight-inch divider that prevents drivers from making illegal left turns across two lanes of car traffic, a bus lane, and a sidewalk into the parking lot of the daycare his kids attended, the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center. Saka, who was a corporate attorney for Meta when he sent a series of increasingly heated emails Seattle Department of Transportation employees in 2021 and 2022, complained that the hardened centerline was “triggering” and “severely traumatizing” to immigrants who “have faced significant trauma during their perilous journeys, including by navigating divisive structures and barriers designed to exclude lives in the US.”

Saka has consistently portrayed the lack of left-turn car access into the small preschool as an issue of racial and social justice, and his newsletter doubles down on that canard, accusing people who oppose eliminating the divider of “targeting the very immigrant families they claim to support” by denying cars from turning left into the parking lot.

In Saka’s version of reality, “radical” “anti-car ideologues” from other parts of the city are the only ones who opposed his proposal to remove the traffic-safety divider. These extremists, Saka wrote, would “rather villainize and punish drivers than support real multimodal safety. Local anti-car, anti-mode choice activists have attempted to make this project a rallying cry for direct action against transportation options that involve cars. I reject the false choice. This project has always been about safety for everyone — bikes, buses, pedestrians, and yes, cars. That’s the Seattle I believe in — coexistence over culture wars.”

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Saka did not identify who, precisely, is against “mode choice” or how preventing left turns into one preschool parking lot prevents people from driving cars.

On a roll, Saka accused the “activists” who opposed his $2 million folly of supporting Trump’s anti- immigrant policies and being connected to the “Defund the Police” movement, accusing these unidentified adversaries of “White Saviorism” and saying that he sees through their “insulting and revealing” opposition to the barrier’s removal “[a]s a Black man, son of immigrants, and survivor of poverty and foster care.”

It’s a striking escalation in Saka’s rhetorical battle against supporters of a project that was, again, built by the Seattle Department of Transportation to support safety for residents of West Seattle who use the new bus lane and improved sidewalk, along with a new bike lane across the street.

“Seattle loves to call itself pro-immigrant, yet some of the loudest ‘progressives’ opposing this project are targeting the very immigrant families they claim to support,” Saka wrote. “Why the outrage and sudden personal vendettas here? Why do some seem paralyzingly focused, even hellbent, on strictly policing and enforcing the desired traffic patterns and left turns by immigrants in a narrow 140-foot stretch in Delridge—but nowhere else in our 84-square-mile city?”

At the risk of repetition, the city of Seattle has installed hundreds of these hardened centerlines around the city, including in wealthy neighborhoods; to my knowledge, the one on Delridge is the only one that has been the subject of a high-profile campaign to remove it, which is why the opposition emerged. In Ballard, the city recently upgraded an identical (but much longer) hardened centerline on 15th Ave. NW to a broad median with street plantings, preventing people from driving over the curbs to turn left into oncoming traffic.

Saka continued, accusing safety advocates of actively “harassing” immigrants, effectively allying with Trump and his deportation agenda.

“Amid a resurgent Trump agenda threatening immigrant rights, we should be uniting to protect—not harass—these communities. As the son of a Nigerian immigrant, I see through the hypocrisy — and so do the families and workers affected. Real immigrant justice means backing up words with action.”

Saka even went so far as to connect support for the fully vetted, constructed safety project to the so-called “Defund movement,” saying that while “local immigrant families, other working families, small businesses, workers, and nonprofits in the area” support tearing out the divider, the opposition has come “[m]ostly from activists outside Delridge, and many outside West Seattle — many of whom pushed failed “defund” policies — now trying to block a safety project that helps communities they claim to support but don’t actually live in. The hypocrisy speaks volumes.”

Saka does not include any evidence that opponents of removing the safety barrier are from outside his district; that they oppose immigrants; or that they supported defunding the police.

The compromise the city reached with Saka will create a new detour around the curb, making it more convenient for drivers to access the preschool parking lot. It will also include new signs letting drivers know they can park in the dedicated bus lane during off-peak hours—restricting the lane’s intended use as public transit for people who live in Saka’s district but don’t own cars or choose not to drive.

City Council, King County, public safety, Transportation

Shannon Braddock Appointed Acting County Executive; Saka Says He Opposed Traffic Diverters In His Neighborhood Because of Equity Concerns

1. On Tuesday, the King County Council unanimously appointed Shannon Braddock as acting King County Executive; previously, Braddock was deputy county executive to Dow Constantine, who took a new job this month as CEO of Sound Transit. Braddock previously worked at the county for 15 years, starting as chief of staff to former councilmember Joe McDermott; she also ran unsuccessfully for Seattle City Council in 2015 and for state senate in 2018.

Braddock will be the first female county executive in King County history. At yesterday’s meeting, several male council members praised Braddock without mentioning this historic fact—including two who did mention Braddock’s father, former state legislator Dennis Braddock, saying he should be proud. It fell to Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda to note that Braddock’s appointment marked “a big moment for our county.”

Councilmember Claudia Balducci called Braddock’s appointment “a milestone that should be and will be celebrated,” and asked the council to move quickly to appoint Braddock not just acting but full county executive through November, when a new county executive will take office, “so that we get the stability and the value of the complete and total confidence that we have in Shannon through November.” (As acting executive, Braddock can be removed and replaced at any time.)

When Balducci asked what the process would be to vote on Braddock’s appointment through November, council chair Girmay Zahilay abruptly called the council into a closed-door executive session, and the meeting ended without a clear answer on whether the council will appoint Braddock permanently or go through a second, separate process, potentially considering other candidates. Balducci said she plans to introduce legislation to appoint Braddock as full county executive at the council’s next meeting on April 15.

Balducci and Zahilay are running against each other for county executive; a third candidate, county assessor John Arthur Wilson, is also running.

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2. When he isn’t denouncing the words of people who left the council years ago, Rob Saka is head of the Seattle City Council’s transportation committee, which got a briefing from the Seattle Department of Transportation Tuesday about the city’s efforts to deploy new automated traffic enforcement cameras in school zones and to site five new full-time automated speed enforcement cameras.

After SDOT staffers laid out their plans to pick the best locations for the speed cameras by studying safety and equity issues at potential camera sites, Saka raised an objection: The city council, he said, had already decided where the new cameras should go. “So, Alki-Harbor Avenue, Magnuson Park, Golden Gardens, and probably Belltown,” Saka said. “So, boom! There’s four for you… We took care of the siting for ya.” That, an SDOT staffer noted quickly, is not how the process works; the state law authorizing automated traffic cameras requires an equity and safety analysis, and that—not vibes or the volume of neighborhood complaints—becomes the basis for placing the new cameras around the city.

Before the camera discussion began, Saka took a few minutes to respond to a public commenter who called out Saka’s opposition, as a neighborhood resident, to two proposed traffic diverters that would prevent people from cutting across the 26th Avenue SW greenway in the North Delridge neighborhood. The commenter, who identified himself as Max, noted that the diverter was supposed to reduce cut-through car traffic on 26th, the main cycling route in the area after SDOT canceled a planned northbound bike lane on Delridge. The diverter was canceled after residents objected that it would slow down car traffic, among other complaints.

Saka said his opposition to this and other traffic calming measures was a matter of “equity” because North Delridge is a “food desert” and the dividers, at SW Brandon and SW Genesee, would have prevented people from accessing “fresh food” in the neighborhood.

“It makes no sense,” Saka said. “It’s a head scratcher, in my view, to install a traffic diverter and prevent left-hand turns in a food desert, rendering Delridge the only single point of access to any fresh foods [or ] vegetables whatsoever. … It doesn’t make a lot of sense, from my perspective, to install such a drastic, draconian measure that has a a significant impact on neighborhoods and communities.”

This is hardly the first time Saka has raised “equity” objections to projects designed to protect vulnerable road users. In 2023, PubliCola reported on Saka’s fervid opposition to another traffic-safety divider, installed as part of a major transit upgrade on Delridge and also intended to protect cyclists and pedestrians. Saka compared the 8-inch divider, which prevents illegal left turns into the parking lot of the preschool his children attended, to Trump’s border wall, and set aside $2 million in last year’s budget to remove it.

City Council, Police, Transportation

Seattle Budget Update: Rob Saka Has Questions
L’il Sebastian, one of the horses that will soon be unemployed under SPD’s current budget plan.

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Rob Saka raised a number of concerns during this week’s budget briefings, asking questions no one else thought to ask. Questions like:

• Can we bodega our way out of this?

At least twice this week, Saka asked whether it made sense to encourage “bodegas”—which he defined as “small, locally sourced, organic kind of stores”—when many neighborhoods are losing large grocery stores. “We’re not gonna bodega our way out of this,” Saka said during a presentation by the city’s Department of Construction and Inspections. He repeated the quip at a presentation by the Office of Sustainability and Environment, adding that in his West Seattle district alone, “we can expect to lose at least two grocery stores, big grocery stores. They’re on the chopping block as the result of a proposed merger” between Albertson’s and Kroger.

The city (unlike federal regulators) can’t do much to impact the decisions of national corporations, but they do have the power to support or oppose land-use policies that make it easier to build small grocery stores as part of the upcoming comprehensive plan update; currently, as we’ve reported, the mayor’s proposal would once again make corner stores legal, but only on literal corner lots—a proposal unlikely to make much dent in the existing food deserts in Saka’s West Seattle district and other parts of the city.

• Speeding cameras that “just send you a ticket in the mail”: Y/N?

Saka, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, raised objections this week to speed enforcement cameras in school zones, saying he was “default skeptical of of enforcement cameras that have the capability to just send you a ticket in the mail. I don’t support wide-scale mass deployment of those.” The city has slowly rolled out speed  cameras at 19 schools over the last decade, and funded new cameras in 18 additional school zones last year.

School zone cameras have proven to be an effective deterrent to speeding in school zones, which in turns reduces collisions between cars and pedestrians, including school children, around schools.

“Rather than having these cameras as a revenue-generating tool only … I think our approach needs to be guided by data,” Saka said, adding that he worried the city was targeting  “historically marginalized and underrepresented” communities with the cameras.

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“We are being asked to to review and approve a substantial decision, a significant decision, a policy choice, regarding automated enforcement in our city. And is this the appropriate balance and deployment of these cameras relative to the other potential uses that we talked about? I don’t know. I don’t know.”

As The Urbanist reported in 2023, the new cameras will primarily be deployed in more affluent parts of the city.

Saka has been a vocal supporter of a different use of camera technology—live police surveillance cameras, which will be used to keep constant tabs on crime “hot spots” like Aurora Ave. N, downtown, and the Chinatown/International District. In fact, he added an amendment to the CCTV surveillance bill last month to put Alki and Harbor Aves. SW next in line for cameras to deter street races.

• Should horses be cops?

The Seattle Police Department has proposed cutting the police department’s mounted patrol, which includes a half-dozen horses, and moving mounted officers to other duties; in a presentation to the council, SPD Chief Sue Rahr explained that the decision to eliminate SPD’s small mounted patrol was “a decision that has been in the making for more than a decade.”

Saka argued that the mounted patrol plays a vital “community engagement role,” then suggested SPD’s decision might not be final—”maybe it is, maybe it isn’t”—before returning to the horses at the end of the meeting, when he took the time to recite each of their names out loud, like an In Memoriam segment at the Oscars.

“Callum, Blue, Change, Sebastian, Doobie, and how can I not forget the two lovable barn cats, Sully and Katy Perry,” Saka said. “So there’s real-life animals behind the impact of the decision.” He then added the names of the “impacted officers,” calling them “real-life people… that are directly impacted.” The horses will go to other owners, the police officers, unlike 76 other real-life people who will lose their jobs under Harrell’s budget proposal, will be reassigned to other duties.