Tag: Seattle Police Department

Mayor Wilson, Media, Police

Messages Show SPD Primarily Responsible for Information Gap After Bite of Seattle Shooting

 

The messages also reveal that Mayor Wilson was indecisive about going to the scene of the shooting while advisors gave conflicting recommendations and TV reporters speculated about why she wasn’t there.

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson’s office released hundreds of pages of internal Teams messages and texts between her staffers, herself, and Seattle Police Department officials from the night of the July 26 mass shooting at the Bite of Seattle and in the days following the shooting. (Full documents available here.)

The messages, which do not include communications between SPD officials except where the mayor’s office was included, show two things. First, that the mayor’s office dithered and debated whether Wilson herself should go to the scene of the shooting for three hours before she finally went to Seattle Center, partly in response to TV reporters criticizing her for not being there.

And second, that the primary reason for the delay in information, as well as almost all of the delay in holding a press conference that night, was that SPD delayed the release of information repeatedly, withholding any new information information from the public and press until the press conference finally took place around 11pm.

SPD, the messages show, knew critical details about the shooting, including the fact that it was not a random mass shooting or terrorist event within an hour of the shooting—that is, before 7:30pm—but did not put any of that information out broadly until after 1:00 in the morning on July 27.

The messages include texts from mayoral communications staffer Jonah Spangenthal-Lee to SPD Chief Operating Officer Sarah Smith asking her why SPD had not provided any information since a tweet warning the public of a shooting with “multiple shooting victims” at Seattle Center at 6:29pm. “Sarah, where is SPD”s statement?” Spangenthal-Lee wrote at 8:36. “It’s been two hours since you guys have posted anything? Even some tweets at this point…”

A few minutes later, Spangenthal-Lee told other mayoral staffers in an internal Teams chat, “It’s fucking embarrassing that SPD has waited HOURS to put anything out. … I’m just saying this is a massive fucking disaster and hit to public trust.”

Responding to the text, Smith wrote,”The team is actively handling the situation on the ground and with the media on scene. Still very chaotic right now. We will have more information out soon. A few minutes later, Wilson’s interim communications director, Dawn Schellenberg, wrote that another SPD staffer was “working on getting something on Twitter”—the only social media site SPD uses. Moments later, Smith corrected her, saying SPD would have no further updates until “after 9.”

Wilson’s own statement on the shooting went out at 8:46. It did not include information SPD was still withholding, including the critical information that the shooting appeared to be between groups of people who knew each other and that there was no need for he general public to be afraid.

At 9:26, Smith sent an update: Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis, who was filling in because Barnes and both his deputy chiefs were out of town, would be doing media interviews at 10pm; SPD would put up a Blotter post “right afterwards.” Ultimately, the press conference was delayed until almost 11pm, with both Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Governor Bob Ferguson, who had driven into town from Olympia, in attendance.

None of the messages include an order from the mayor’s office to withhold information from the public so that “dignitaries” could arrive at Seattle Center, as one of SPD’s communications staff told TV reporters who have repeatedly suggested that this was the reason SPD did not release information to the public all night.

While SPD was withholding information and failing to communicate with the press, a chaotic debate was going on within the mayor’s office about whether she should go to the scene of the shooting. The discussion began shortly before 6:30, when Wilson said she was available “as needed” and her interim communications director, Dawn Schellenberg, said Spangenthal-Lee had said she should go to Seattle Center. The mayor’s public safety advisor, Alison Holcomb, advised against this “until we know more.”

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At 7:26, Wilson texted, “It would be good to get clarity soon whether we’re planning a public conference tonight v. tomorrow morning, so we can communicate that to other elected officials. (Just talked with Ferguson and Jayapal. Ferguson is in Olympia but can head this way shortly.)”

Holcomb replied, saying to wait until after a conference call for elected officials that was being organized by SPD. That conference call didn’t take place until around 9pm, possibly because Barnes wanted to get briefed on the situation from Dallas before participating in a call with elected officials. (A release of similar internal Teams chats and text messages from SPD would shed light on what Barnes and other SPD officials were doing between approximately 7:30 and 9:45.)

By around 9:40, it was still unclear whether the mayor would go to Seattle Center. At almost 9:30pm, Spangenthal-Lee wrote, “I reaaaaaaally think the mayor should go down there,” but Holcomb disagreed, writing, “Harborview, where victim’s families are, makes more sense, and I’m not sure that makes sense.”

“Media aren’t looking for an in-depth conversation about gang violence, they’re. looking for sound bites,” Holcomb continued. “Good time for the Mayor to be letting first responders do their jobs and not be armchair quarterbacking.”

Around the. same time, Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt, who had been on the scene for two hours, told Wilson, “I just talked to [Assistant Police Chief] Davis. His recommendation is no.” In other words, shortly before 9:40, SPD was still saying the mayor should not come to Seattle Center.

But after KOMO reporter Chris Daniels called the mayor, and another KOMO reporter said on air that they would expect the mayor to be there if she was in town, Wilson wrote, “We should consider whether I should come down to talk to KOMO, if that expectation has been created. I’m sure they would love to spin an ‘absent mayor’ story.” (Daniels has been among the mayor’s harshest critics, and a chief ringleader of the narrative that the mayor was solely to blame for the lack of information about the shooting.) “I’m inclined to have you come down,” Surratt responded. 

Wilson was on the scene less than a half hour after that text, shortly after 10pm. The press conference happened shortly before 11.There was a brief delay for Ferguson and Jayapal to arrive from other parts of Seattle, but it was, at most, around 30 minutes—at the end of a long night in which SPD had still put out no information beyond its initial, alarming post on X saying that multiple people had been shot.

SPD’s first post on the evening’s events went up early the following morning, at 1:08 am.

Wilson and interim Police Chief Andre Sayles announced some changes to how police and the mayor’s office will communicate with each other and with the public earlier this week. The city’s Office of the Inspector General is supposed to release a report about the communications breakdown sometime this fall.

Editor’s note: This story originally reported that Chris Daniels was on the scene at Seattle Center; he was not. We regret the error.

Mayor Wilson, Police

Mayor Wilson Says City Will Improve Crisis Communications In Wake of Shooting
Mayor Katie Wilson, with interim police chief Andre Sayles on the left

Wilson rolled out the changes before a report that is supposed to explain how communications broke down after the Bite of Seattle shooting.

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson and the Seattle Police Department rolled out a new communications plan for emergencies this week that includes a few updates to the old communications plan, which broke down in still-unspecified ways during a shooting at the Bite of Seattle festival in July that left three people dead. SPD arrested a 15-year-old on the night of the shooting, but still has not found “persons of interest” who may have also been involved.

Former SPD chief Shon Barnes and both of his deputy chiefs were out of town during the shooting. Barnes’ absence was one of several factors that may have contributed to a five-hour delay before SPD and Wilson held a press conference the night of the shooting. Barnes resigned under pressure—walking away with a severance package worth at least $740,000—after his over-the-top reaction to a reporter who asked about his frequent absences turned into a national story.

The new rules, which Wilson announced earlier this week, would include clearer lines of communication between SPD and the mayor’s staff, which appear to have broken down during the chaos after the shooting. A new SPD policy, which the department says is still being drafted, would allow no more than three members of SPD’s “executive staff” to be out of town at the same time; it’s unclear if this will include all command staff or just the chief and his deputies and assistants.

In the future, Alert Seattle, an opt-in system that pings people’s phones during emergencies, will alert residents when any “significant incident” happens, although the parameters that term will include are still undefined. During major incidents like active shooter events, the city may use the system to push wireless alerts to every cell phone within a certain radius—warning them to leave the area, for instance. And there will now be an “expectation of providing information to the media within one hour of a significant incident, when it’s safe and possible to do so,” according to the announcement.

Wilson has deflected questions about what caused the five-hour delay, saying that information will be revealed in a review by the Office of Inspector General, which her office requested, later this fall.

In an interview, Wilson said she decided to announce new communications policies prior to the publication of the OIG review “because it’s very important that the public has confidence that we’re prepared for Bumbershoot this weekend and all the big events coming up. … What this is about is saying there were gaps. We did not measure up to the standard that we have set for ourselves in terms of communications with the public. And we are fixing that moving forward.”

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Wilson’s communications office has seen significant turnover throughout her eight-month administration, including the firing of a multimedia specialist last week. Currently, Wilson has a temporary press secretary and temporary communications director, along with multiple consultants working on communications.

Asked whether the lack of a permanent comms team was a factor in the communications issues that arose after the shooting, Wilson said, “No, I don’t think so. We have excellent interim leadership in our comms department. And I’m not just saying that because my interim comms director,” Dawn Schellenberg, “is sitting here,” she joked.

It’s unclear how much the changes will impact how quickly the public receives direct information about major incidents, and how often.  The new rules say Alert Seattle subscribers will get push notices about “significant incidents,” an SPD term of art that includes everything from robberies to reports of shots fired to assaults to “any other event a sergeant believes is significant.” Notifying the public every time one of these incidents occurs could contribute to fear—or apathy. Wilson said her office would get back to me on the new threshold for alerts. “We’re not going to spam people,” she said.

Wilson said her office will also direct people to X, SPD’s platform of choice for putting out timely information, “when appropriate,” and confirmed that her office hasn’t asked SPD to put out information on additional platforms, such as Instagram, Reddit, and Bluesky. Most people in Seattle are not on X, the controversial, Elon Musk-owned platform that has become a haven for right-wing disinformation and hate speech.

Most of the mainstream media in Seattle have focused their coverage of the communications breakdown on Wilson’s responsibility, almost to the exclusion of SPD—the organization that actually conducts media briefings after shootings and other major events.

Asked about the media’s singular focus on her role, Wilson said, “I’m not going to sit here and complain about the media.”

“What’s unfortunate,” Wilson continued, “is that so much of the media narrative has focused on communications, in a way that has gotten away from gun violence and the victims and really just what we can do moving forward as a city to make sure our public spaces are safe.”

While the mayor has declined to comment on SPD’s role in the communications breakdown or discuss how much the former chief’s absence from the city contributed to the information bottleneck, Barnes has been making the media rounds to give his own version of events.

Earlier this week, for instance, he told KOMO’s Chris Daniels that his absence from the city during the shooting wasn’t an issue, because he had access to Teams and a copy of the Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist on his phone. (As I reported, Barnes had planned to be out of the city until mid-August.)  “What I did, virtually, if you will, is what I would have done if I was here on the ground here in in Seattle,” Barnes told Daniels.

LGBTQ+, Police

Police Accountability Office Investigating Retaliation Complaint Against Interim Police Chief

The investigation comes after the Office of Police Accountability said any “further investigation” of Sayles’ complaint against a detective who spoke at a pro-LGBTQ press conference could violate her constitutional rights and open the city to a lawsuit. 

By Erica C. Barnett

The city’s Office of Police Accountability is investigating a complaint filed against interim Police Chief Andre Sayles alleging that he retaliated against a detective who spoke at a pro-LGBTQ rally with SPD’s permission last year. The complaint, filed last month, also accuses Sayles of violating SPD’s policy on professionalism.

As PublCola reported exclusively last week, Sayles filed a potentially career-ending OPA complaint against longtime SPD detective Beth Wareing after she spoke at a press conference held by No Hate in WA State. The group is opposing two initiatives that would take away students’ ability to speak in confidence to school counselors and require girls to submit to genital exams to prove they have vaginas before participating in school sports.

Wareing had written permission to speak at the rally as long as she didn’t mention she worked at SPD or purport to represent the views of the department, and she followed those guidelines in her remarks, which lasted roughly three minutes and were available online shortly after the rally.

It’s not uncommon for police to speak publicly on political issues; former police guild president Mike Solan spouted off every week on his incendiary podcast. What is unusual is for police to express left-leaning views. Wareing’s comments got the attention of right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse, who promptly told SPD Wareing had misrepresented the initiatives when she spoke. At least partly on the basis of Kruse’s claims, Sayles filed his complaint against Wareing, accusing her of disobeying a direct order and being “dishonest in saying inaccurate and untrue things at the press conference.”

OPA, which is housed in the police department, quickly dismissed the complaint, noting that any further investigation would clearly violate Wareing’s right to free speech and open SPD up to a lawsuit. The complaint against Sayles was opened after the investigation into Wareing concluded.

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According to a notice that went to select city officials, including the mayor, city attorney, and Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth and Bob Kettle last week, the complaint against Sayles “alleges potential violations of department policy relating to retaliation and professionalism by the Interim Chief of Police.”

Since 2022, when the city codified the first formal process for complaints against the police chief, city law has treated complaints against the chief of police differently than complaints against all other officers. Anyone, including OPA itself, can file a complaint against the chief. Once that happens,  OPA decides whether to consider the case and whether to dismiss it as a “contact log” or conduct a full investigation into whether the chief has violated an SPD policy or a law.

Police chief investigations are rare. At the end of 2025, for example, the Office of Inspector General, an independent police accountability office that certifies OPA cases as timely, thorough, and objective, reported two open police chief investigations and 29 cases that were closed without an investigation.

OPA would not comment on the complaint against Sayles, other than to confirm that it exists. But the existence of an investigation itself indicates that the city’s police accountability system is taking the complaint against Sayles seriously. OPA’s findings (and recommended discipline, if any), along with OIG’s review of those findings, will include the agency’s assessment of whether Sayles violated Wareing’s First Amendment rights or retaliated against her for exercising them.

Police

SPD Officer Alleges Retaliation by Lieutenant at Center of Discrimination Lawsuit

SPD West Precinct

By Erica C. Barnett

Valerie Carson, one of four female police officers who split a $2.6 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and discrimination by former SPD chief Adrian Diaz, former assistant chief Dan Nelson, and current Lieutenant John O’Neil, has filed a new complaint against O’Neil with the city’s Office of Police Accountability.

PubliCola covered a previous retaliation complaint Carson filed against O’Neil, who accused her of refusing to follow orders after she declined to do a TV interview and went on mental-health leave. In an interview for his complaint, O’Neil said Carson was “combative,” “angry,” and “hostile,” and claimed that her only “mental health condition” was being too emotional about a recent breakup.

Carson’s new complaint accuses O’Neil of making unprofessional, dishonest, and retaliatory comments about Carson and her co-litigants, Lauren Truscott, Kame Spencer, and Jean Gulpan during a recent staff meet-and-greet event.

Carson worked for O’Neil when he was a sergeant heading up SPD’s communications office. He has since moved on and up, and is now a lieutenant overseeing SPD’s traffic investigation unit, crime scene investigations, and SPD’s evidence unit—high-profile positions that coincided with a pay increase of nearly $50,000 between 2025 and 2026.

O’Neil filed a counter-claim against the four female officers, who included two women of color, accusing them of being racist and retaliating against him; he ended up with a settlement of $200,000.

In her complaint, Carson says that during a getting-to-know-you meeting with his new staff in June, O’Neil badmouthed all four of his accusers—Carson, Lauren Truscott, Kame Spencer, and Jean Gulpan—and told his staff that “he is the most innocent man that has ever been investigated and that his accusers … are liars.” Carson’s allegations were based on accounts from two officers who were at the event.

By making derogatory statements about the four women, Carson wrote,  O’Neil was “telling our peers we can’t be trusted”—and that as a high-ranking official at SPD, he was doing so on SPD’s behalf. Spencer, Carson, and Gulpan remain at SPD, while Truscott left.

“This was not a situation in which he was free to express his own personal opinions —he was speaking as a representative of the department and as a supervisor and manager of our peers,” Carson wrote. “These are people we work with at events and crime scenes, people we coordinate with for casework, and in my case, people I see in my building. His words foment a hostile work environment.”

“Plus, in slandering us and delegitimizing the accountability and legal processes we went through, O’Neil’s actions would dissuade a reasonable employee from raising their own concerns about possible violations,” Carson wrote.

A spokesperson for SPD declined to respond to our questions, saying they were a matter for OPA to address. O’Neil did not respond to a request for comment, and Carson declined to speak to PubliCola on the record.

Mayor Wilson, Police, public safety

Report: Police Contract Severely Limits CARE Team’s Ability to Do Their Jobs
Flow chart demonstrating how a CARE dispatch proceeds when a 911 operator directs the team to respond to a call directly.

By Erica C. Barnett

A new report from the city’s Office of Inspector General confirms what Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) Department Chief Amy Barden has been saying for more than a year: The new contract between the city and the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which was put on a fast track last year after Katie Wilson beat incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell, drastically limits the ability of the CARE team of civilian first responders to respond to crisis calls, which is the entire the reason they exist.

Although many other US cities now have crisis response teams who have replaced police for calls that don’t require armed officers or where police may make the situation worse), Seattle has increasingly lagged behind. When Harrell announced the new contract, he emphasized the fact that it allowed CARE to respond to calls without police in tow—what’s known as a “primary” response—for the first time since its inception, in 2023.  A Until last year, police had to be present, at least initially, during every 911 response.

But the new contract also included a memorandum of understanding between the city and SPOG that dramatically reduced CARE’s ability to respond to the type of calls that were supposed to be its raison d’être: Welfare checks, “person down” calls, and nuisance calls.

The agreement, which CARE had no role in crafting and did not approve, “prohibits CARE response to calls involving substance abuse, persons in homeless encampments and on private property, and individuals in crisis,” according to the report. “This excludes a significant portion of the population CARE was intended to serve.”

“CARE’s scope of work remains significantly impacted by the terms of the SPOG contract,” the report says. “Even as the SPOG contract adds a new response type, expands call types, and removes the cap on new staffing, it also further limits the CARE Team.”

 

In a statement, Mayor Katie Wilson’s office said the review “places an important spotlight on limitations placed on CARE crisis responders under the SPOG collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the prior administration. Seattle’s residents have been unambiguously clear in their demand for an alternative response to emergency calls, and the CARE crisis responders were curtailed by past City leadership, through no fault of their own.”

Barden said she sees some positive news in the most recent data from the report, which show a 32 percent uptick in CARE responses compared to the previous 12-week average. “I think this is due in part to the team being available early morning, and in part due to stronger relationships with the SPD precinct captains and more clarity about what constitutes a crisis call that is clinical in nature and most appropriate for the CARE team,” Barden said.

Wilson’s office said the mayor is  “optimistic about the positive and productive collaboration Interim [Police] Chief [Andre] Sayles has formed with the CARE department and other community safety partners. That commitment to partnership will be an essential qualification for our next permanent chief.”

The team is planning to start operating out of library branches with a high number of crisis calls, and is launching a partnership with the downtown jail to intercept people leaving jail who need services, which Barden said should use up the rest of the 32-member team’s capacity. “I anticipate that these strategies will create more work than we currently have staff for, so I am not concerned with the existing limitations explained in the OIG report,” Barden said. The  city’s 2026 budget included funding for 48 CARE crisis responders, but Barden said she thought it made sense to spread out or slow down hiring in light of the current economic forecast and $175 million budget deficit, which could force cuts to many city departments.

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Without a change to the underlying SPOG contract, however, CARE remains severely limited in its ability to accomplish its original remit of responding to 911 calls in the place of police. The current contract runs through the end of next year.

“Dual dispatch,” which was previously the only way CARE could be sent out on calls, is limited in new ways under the MOU, the OIG report notes; officers who would previously have been directed to call CARE to provide assistance can now “take immediate action if they believe it is appropriate” without calling the team at all. Another problem, according to the report, is that SPD’s very slow response to low-priority calls that require dual dispatch under the contract means that “community members do not receive help when they need it, even if CARE is available,” undermining confidence in the team.

A large number of the calls CARE responds to—388 in the first three months of 2026—originate with police who respond to calls and then, after determining they’re appropriate for social workers, refer them to CARE. These calls, known as “SPD request” in the report, are the most common way the CARE team gets dispatched, followed by dual dispatch, primary dispatch (meaning 911 directed the CARE team to go to a call), and on-views, in which the CARE team witnesses an incident or situation where they can help and self-dispatch by responding in real time.

All of the restrictions in the SPOG contract apply to every kind of CARE response. For example, if CARE first responders saw someone in distress while walking through downtown Seattle, approached, and saw signs the person was using drugs, they would have to walk away and call SPD to the scene. Under the SPOG contract, SPD sergeants can override any 911 operator who decides to dispatch the CARE team to a call. The OIG report doesn’t indicate how often that happens.

 

 

labor, Media, podcasts, Police

Former Chief Barnes’ Top Staffers Leave SPD, KOMO Reporters Leave Union, and More

1. Two top staffers hired by former police chief Shon Barnes are leaving SPD. Chief communications officer Barbara DeLollis, who’s been on leave caring for a family member on the East Coast, will not return to Seattle, and Lee Hunt, Barnes’ Executive Director of Crime and Community Harm Reduction, Lee Hunt, is retiring, according to SPD. Both will be gone by early September.

Shortly after his confirmation last year, Barnes brought on a number of new executive-level staffers, including a second deputy chief, now-interim Police Chief Andre Sayles; a chief of staff, Alex Ricketts, DeLollis; Hunt; and an additional assistant chief, Nicole Powell. New positions had to be created for Sayles, Hunt, and Powell, and DeLollis’ title was new.

The chief of staff position, which had not existed since 2001, was revived by former chief Adrian Diaz for Jamie Tompkins, who was fired, along with Diaz, after an investigation found they lied to cover up an improper relationship. Ricketts, who also worked alongside Barnes in Madison and North Carolina, remains at SPD for now.

SPD Chief Operating Officer Sarah Smith (another Barnes hire) said Hunt “has given notice to the department of his upcoming retirement in September. … We are deeply appreciative of his insight and work on stratified policing within SPD.” Stratified policing consisted of focusing on crime “hot spots” and focusing higher-ranked officers on “high-priority” crimes and geographic areas. Of DeLollis, Smith said, “We will miss her passion for transparent communication and really hope her family is well.”

DeLollis made $230,000 a year. Hunt, who—like Ricketts—previously worked with Barnes in North Carolina and Madison, made $320,000 a year. Not counting Ricketts and DeLollis, and setting aside the $50,000 bonuses Barnes, Sayles, and Powell all received under an incentive program created to recruit rank-and-file officers, the newly created positions cost the city almost a million dollars a year. The city is facing a minimum $175 million budget deficit, and Barnes reportedly resisted reducing the size of his unusually large executive staff to help close that gap.

In addition, Barnes received a total settlement worth at least $741,000 (including that $50,000 bonus, which the city let him keep) in exchange for not suing the city.

DeLollis, a former corporate communicator and luxury travel writer, has scrubbed her LinkedIn page of any references to SPD, where she worked for more than a year. Her page now says she has been communications director for Harvard’s Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society since 2022.

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2. KOMO News reporters and anchors voted narrowly—9 to 7—to leave their union, the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) on Wednesday, with another half-dozen members apparently declining to vote. Unless SAG-AFTRA challenges the proceedings—unlikely, given that they reportedly raised no objections during or leading up to the vote—KOMO’s on-air talent will no longer be represented by a union.

As I reported last week, there are a number of reasons some at KOMO wanted out of the union, including the fact that they negotiate their contracts individually, rather than through SAG-AFTRA, whose contract guarantees a minimum salary that is much lower than the anchors and reporters make. The group already gets its health care through Sinclair, which owns KOMO, rather than the union.

3. I was a guest on Brian Callanan’s News, Views, and Brews podcast this week, where we had a great conversation about Barnes’ resignation (including my reporting on the ex-chief’s frequent absences from Seattle, which a recent guest incorrectly claimed was false or fabricated) the recent primary elections, and the passage of Mayor Katie Wilson’s legislation banning rental “junk fees.” Check it out.