Tag: Seattle Police Department

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.

Uncategorized

Former Police Chief’s Payout Will Be Higher Than Previously Known; KCRHA Still at Full Staffing as Contract Transition Begins

1. Former police chief Shon Barnes’ $700,000 settlement agreement with the city, which PubliCola received Thursday through a records request, includes a year of paid health care, 18 months’ full salary, the $50,000 “lateral officer” bonus Barnes took when former mayor Bruce Harrell hired him, and a $60,000 relocation allowance for Barnes to move to Seattle from Chicago. (Barnes rented a apartment downtown, listed on Trulia in December 2024 at $3,228 a month, while retaining his family home in Chicago and frequently visiting his family there).

That adds up to $700,000. But the deal also includes a payout for any time off Barnes has accrued but not used. SPD has not responded to any of PubliCola’s questions since last week (except to tell us the chief’s schedule was “locked down” when he left) and the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to our question about how much time Barnes had accrued.  Barnes made $179.54 an hour and his accrued time off was paid out at that rate.

As we reported, Barnes began calling around last Wednesday to tell people he’d been fired (one of our sources was a retired officer who got the news directly from an SPD captain). In reality, Mayor Katie Wilson had asked him to resign and he refused. As a result, rumors swirled for almost a full day before the two sides signed the settlement agreement late Thursday afternoon.

In the agreement, Barnes agreed not to sue the city, and the city agreed not to say anything negative about him to potential future employers. Although Wilson critics have demanded to know exactly what Barnes did wrong (beyond the obvious), the agreement to refrain from badmouthing Barnes likely restricts Wilson’s ability to provide more details about why she fired him. But we can make some educated guesses based on issues that came up before last week, when Barnes confronted a reporter who asked him about PubliCola’s reporting on his frequent travel.

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2. Seattle and King County provided more details this week about their plans to claw back homeless service contracts from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority as part of the “right-sizing” they announced last month that will dramatically reduce the size and responsibilities of the homelessness agency.

After the contracts return to the city and county, which oversaw homeless services before setting up the KCRHA through an interlocal agreement in 2019, the KCRHA will be in charge of the county’s severe weather shelters (but not the city’s), the annual federal funding process (already at risk due to Trump Administration changes to the funding criteria), and the completion of this year’s Point In Time Count analysis of the region’s homeless population. As the region’s Continuum of Care for homeless services, it will also hang on to a number of administrative functions, like overseeing the region’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) database, at least for now.

The city will take back 117 contracts with 40 providers, totaling around $113 million. The county will take back 100 contracts with 40 providers totaling around $46 million.

Seattle plans to hire 23 new staffers in the Human Services Department to administer the contracts, and the county will hire 11 people.

It’s unclear how much staff duplication will occur while the contracts move from KCRHA to the two local governments. Currently, KCRHA has 73 staffers. The “right-sizing” announced more than a month ago included between 20 and 25 layoffs, but so far, none of those layoffs have occurred. The city is facing a budget deficit of at least $175 million, so it will need to cut KCRHA’s budget (and staff) by at least the equivalent of the new staff it’s hiring to avoid paying for double staffing next year.

Almost all of the KCRHA’s $203 million budget comes from Seattle and King County.

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police

Wilson, New Interim Police Chief Sayles Address Barnes’ Ouster, SPD’s Future

By Erica C. Barnett

This post has been updated to include the information that former chief Barnes is receiving a $700,000 payout to leave the city.

A press conference with Mayor Katie Wilson and new interim Police Chief Andre Sayles revolved, somewhat predictably, around questions about why Wilson didn’t talk to the press sooner both after Sunday’s mass shooting and yesterday, when she finally announced at 3:30 that she had asked for Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes’ resignation.

Sayles, Barnes’ replacement, was previously the police chief of Beloit, Wisconsin, a small town near the Illinois border. Barnes hired Sayles as his second deputy chief as part of a hiring spree that included several other brand-new executive positions. During the press conference, Sayles confirmed that his family, like Barnes’, lives in Illinois (not Wisconsin, as I previously reported); property records indicate they live in a town called Belvidere, just across the Wisconsin border.

“I do frequently go back to visit my family, probably about every eight weeks or so, but my wife spends most of her time out here with me” at a second home in East King County, Sayles said. “We’re looking to make this our home. It’s our area that we can retire from one day. But right now, we have kids that we need to get settled, and one day we’ll make this area our home.”

Wilson emphasized the need for the next permanent police chief to live here full-time and be part of the Seattle community. Unlike Harrell, who appointed Barnes with no public process, Wilson said she’ll appoint a search committee “that reflects the full diversity of Seattle to conduct “a meaningful engagement process.”

Reporters, including many TV reporters who spent much of yesterday fuming about the lack of information from the mayor’s office, also asked why the mayor was firing a chief who’s popular with so many current council members.

Five council members issued statements (and several did interviews) yesterday excoriating the mayor for firing Barnes. Four of the five (Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, Bob Kettle, and Debora Juarez) are centrists elected as a bloc in 2023 and most explicitly supported Harrell over Wilson last year. (Juarez, who described herself as an “elected leader” in an interview with KOMO, declined to run for reelection in 2023 and was appointed last year to replace Cathy Moore, a member of the Class of 2023 who quit less than a year and a half into her term).

Asked about the council’s opposition to her decision, Wilson said, “As the executive of the city, I do have a different window into our police department,” adding that she was confident that she made the right decision.

As I reported yesterday, one reason police took so long to release information about Sunday’s shooting was that the police chief, who spent much of his time out of town and whose family lives in Chicago, was at a conference in Dallas. Barnes reportedly wanted to be briefed on the shooting before he would allow SPD assistant chief Tyrone Davis to brief the press, who had gathered at the scene of the shooting and spent hours irritably standing around waiting for information on the shooting.

Wilson has not directly explained the reason for yesterday’s delay in releasing information. However, my own reporting indicates that Barnes did not agree to a settlement until late afternoon—a full day after rumors that he had been fired began swirling.

Barnes will receive a settlement of $700,000—about two years’ annual salary—as part of his agreement to step down. Wilson wouldn’t say how much he’ll receive; I’ve filed a records request for that information.

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I was able to confirm that Barnes gets to keep the entire $50,000 “lateral hiring bonus” he and several of his new staff received when Harrell hired him, a story I broke last August. The city approved the lateral hiring bonus during what Harrell and most of the city council claimed was a police hiring “crisis,” and it was designed explicitly to recruit “new police officers”—not top executives—from other police departments. Under the law, any officer who receives the bonus and doesn’t remain at the city for five years has to pay the bonus back on a pro-rated basis, so Barnes has received an exemption from that requirement.

Although the mayor declined to elaborate on why she gave Barnes the boot, it’s clear that his temperament and frequent travel out of town, both to his family home in Chicago and to conferences around the country, were factors in the decision. Barnes was also reportedly unpopular with many rank and file officers, and gave short shrift to the CARE Team, a group of social workers created to respond to 911 crisis calls that don’t require police. Barnes did not meet with CARE Department Chief Amy Barden for more than a year, and CARE has been hamstrung since last year by a police union contract that restricts what kind of calls they can respond to.

In searching for a new chief, Wilson said, she’ll be looking for a person “who can earn the respect of our police force while also leading needed changes to culture and protocol in a way that’s firm and fair. I will be looking for someone who can practice clear communication in stressful situations. I will be looking for someone who is consistently present in Seattle, keeping travel to an appropriate minimum, and who also ensures that when they are away, there is sufficient SPD leadership in town to guide our city from any emergency.” Wilson also name-checked the CARE Team, saying she wants a police chief “who understands the value of our alternative crisis response system, our CARE and fire departments, and our service providers.”

We discussed Barnes’ ouster, which was still unconfirmed at the time we recorded, on this week’s edition of Seattle Nice, and will be doing another episode over the weekend, so stay tuned.

Mayor Wilson

Police Chief Shon Barnes is Out, His Deputy Andre Sayles Will Serve as Interim Chief

 

By Erica C. Barnett

After a silence of nearly 24 hours, Mayor Katie Wilson announced at 3:30 this afternoon that Police Chief Shon Barnes has resigned and will be replaced on an interim basis by one of his two deputies, Andre Sayles.

Wilson asked for Barnes’ resignation yesterday, but discussions over how much he will receive in severance did not conclude until late this afternoon, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

In an interview late Thursday afternoon, Wilson told PubliCola, “Last night, we agreed [on Barnes’ resignation] at a very high level and needed some extra time to make sure that we were entirely on the same page about the path forward and how we were rolling it out. And in addition, we had to figure out interim leadership for the department. So there were a lot of details and moving pieces that needed to be settled before it was appropriate to make a public statement.”

PubliCola reported on the mayor’s decision last night.

Barnes’ family lives at their home in Chicago while he rents an apartment here, and he has been under fire recently for his frequent absences from the city. Those absences have included trips around the country to conferences as well as trips home to see his family in Chicago. PubliCola first reported on Barnes’ heavy travel schedule last July, and was the first to report that he was out of town, at a conference in Dallas, when a mass shooting took place at Seattle center on Sunday.

When South Seattle Emerald reporter Connor Nash asked Barnes about my reporting on his absences, the police chief lashed out, telling Nash “no, you listen to me!” before he was hustled away, still sputtering, by his chief of staff Alex Ricketts.

Asked if Barnes’ outsize reaction to a reporter’s question about his schedulewas a factor in her decision to ditch the chief, Wilson said, “there were multiple factors and considerations that informed the conversation that the chief and I had that led to this call, and obviously, how Sunday unfolded and the aftermath was part of that, but not certainly not the only thing. I don’t believe I’m someone who acts rashly, and there were multiple considerations in this decision.”

Sayles’ family, like Barnes’, lives outside the state—in Illinois, just across the border from Beloit, WI, a small town where Sayles was police chief before Barnes appointed him deputy chief in Seattle. We’ve requested his schedule to see how much time he has spent with his family in Illinois. Asked if she was concerned about hiring another chief whose family home is out of state, Wilson said, “I want to emphasize that this is an interim role, and also that Deputy Chief Sayles understands the importance of presence in Seattle during this interim period.” (Editor’s note: This post originally said Sayles’ family home is in Wisconsin; we’ve updated the post to reflect that they live in Illinois.)

City council members have criticized the mayor’s decision, which leaves the police department without permanent leadership during an active investigation of a major shooting incident and with one potential suspect still at large. City council members were quick to criticize the decision, with Rob Saka and Maritza Rivera criticizing the decision before it was official on Thursday. A majority of the council has reportedly expressed disapproval of the decision, according to sources familiar with the council’s reaction.

Progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck expressed frustration with the lack of information from the mayor’s office, saying in a statement, “I am disappointed that I found out about the possible dismissal of Chief Barnes from reports on social media last night and did not receive any update or information about this development from the Mayor or Mayor’s Office until mid-morning today. Chief Barnes’ recent interactions with press have been concerning, but I have yet to receive an explanation of what decisions have or haven’t been made, or full rationale behind why any decision has been made.”

Wilson said she gets that “many of the council members strongly disagree with the path that we’re on with this decision” but dismissed the idea that they would try to block her when it comes time to appoint a new permanent chief. “I believe that moving forward, we will be able to work together to select an excellent candidate for our next chief.”

Barnes issued a statement Thursday evening, which read in part, “Dr. Barnes is a long-time law enforcement leader known for establishing a culture of excellence and procedural justice within the departments he has led and the communities he has served. He brought the same steadfast leadership and professionalism to the City of Seattle that has defined his law enforcement career, which resulted in a substantial reduction in the city’s crime rates and an important vision for further reduction in the years to come.” Barnes, who has not typically used the title “doctor” while serving as police chief, has a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

On Thursday afternoon, reporters swarmed the lobby of City Hall, doing standups at 4pm waiting around all day for interviews and information.  Wilson gave one-on-one interviews to a handful of reporters (Publicola’s is supposed to happen at 4), which prompted those left downstairs, including TV reporters who have hounded Wilson and blamed her for inaccurate information and delays in the hours and days after the shooting. Cameramen and reporters could be heard grousing about the differential treatment; Wilson plans to hold a general press conference at 11:00 tomorrow morning.

“I understand the frustration and the desire for information, and in this case, I don’t think that was avoidable,” Wilson said.

Interim Chief Sayles, like Assistant Chief Nicole Powell and Barnes himself, accepted a $50,000 hiring bonus intended to recruit experienced rank and file police officers from other departments during what police described as a hiring crisis. The terms of the bonus require officers to return the money, on a prorated basis, if they serve less than five years. We’ve reached out to the mayor’s office to find out whether Barnes will have to return his bonus.