January 2025

SPD has a new chief and the Seattle City Council and the King County Council have new councilmembers

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Seattle News:

We have a new police chief in Seattle! Today was Chief Shon Barnes’s first official day at SPD. I expect to go into more depth about this next week, but this week I highly recommend reading the excellent interview with Barnes at PubliCola. The Seattle Times also shares some interesting information about Barnes.

We also have a new City Councilmember. The Council appointed Mark Solomon, a crime prevention coordinator at SPD, to fill the District 2 seat, which was vacant following the resignation of Tammy Morales. Solomon ran against Morales in 2019 and lost by 21 points. He doesn’t intend to seek reelection to the seat this November.

PubliCola reported that Solomon said he intends to address the drug market at 12th and Jackson through Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. From the article: “CPTED is a set of strategies designed to send signals that a location is hostile to crime, such as bright lights, surveillance cameras, tall fences, and the removal of trees and bushes that people might be able to hide behind.”

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck proposed the creation of a Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes. In a statement, she said, “I am proposing a dedicated select committee to identify strong local responses to changes in the federal government which threaten funding to the City of Seattle.” 

Council President Sara Nelson has agreed to set up this new committee, but its first meeting won’t be until March.

DivestSPD reported that West Precinct Captain Steve Strand violated SPD’s crowd management policy last July: “The OPA pointed out that Strand escalated things by kicking over protest props, tearing down banners, and opening the road to traffic without attempting to resolve the situation through other means outlined in the policy. Instead of attempting “to use organizers and monitors to gain voluntary compliance,” Strand arrested one of the two police liaisons.”

Strand, who has been with SPD for more than 30 years, received training referrals as a result of his actions.

This is particularly relevant given the discussion about SPD’s crowd management policy and use of less lethal weapons going on in City Council right now. The final vote on the less lethal weapons legislation has been postponed and will not be held next week; instead it will probably take place at the full council meeting on Tuesday, February 11 at 2pm. 

Real Change reported that Seattle Public School students still aren’t feeling like their mental health is well supported at school and haven’t noticed any promised changes. In December, the City announced a new pilot program for youth civic engagement. 

This week the City announced seven local provider partnerships to provide more mental health services to students, both virtually and in-person. These new partnerships should begin to provide these services early this year. 

We also have a couple new lawsuits against the City to talk about. First is a lawsuit filed two weeks ago by Lacey Gray, who used to be the records manager at the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Gray was fired last November, and she says it was in retaliation for her raising concerns that Inspector General Lisa Judge and the office might have engaged in illegal actions in handling and distributing records pertaining to former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz. 

And second is a lawsuit filed by independent journalist Glen Stellmacher, alleging that SPD illegally withheld records requested under the Public Records Act. He sued SPD last year as well for similar reasons.

Lastly, some late-breaking news from The Seattle Times on Pierce County’s new sheriff, Keith Swank: “If he were still with the Seattle Police Department, former Capt. Keith Swank would have been fired for inflammatory social media comments he made in 2023 disparaging transgender people and defending the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a disciplinary report released Friday.”

King County News:

King County Council selected De’Sean Quinn to be their new councilmember this week, taking the District 5 seat of Dave Upthegrove, who left to become the state’s Commissioner of Public Lands. Quinn was an Assistant General Manager at King County Metro and a member of the Tukwila City Council before this appointment. 

The Urbanist reported that Quinn said the following about public safety in the County:

““I think we need new revenues, because I think right now more than [at] any time, people need to feel safe. I think now more than any time as a community, looking out for one another, safety should be at this also at the center of our communities and their growth,” Quinn said, noting that cost is a significant hurdle in being able to advance non-police alternatives that improve public safety. “I think continuing to advance [public safety] alternatives is an idea that one is a kind of a difficult one, I would say. And I think we’re all experiencing that as well, because a significant portion is personnel cost.””

WA State News:

My latest piece at The Urbanist goes over some of the interesting public safety bills being discussed during the state legislative session this year. I should highlight the word “some” in that previous sentence, as I didn’t have space to discuss half of what’s on the table. However, I did include the police officer staffing grants, the potential assistance to the public defender crisis, several gun control bills including a gun tax, the Traffic Safety Bill, and the Public SAFE-T act, known last year as the judicial dismissal bill. 

In other interesting state legislature news, the House Democrats passed new rules that will allow filibusters to be ended by a simple majority instead of a two-thirds vote. This matches a similar rule already in place in the Senate and takes away a major tool of the minority party to stall, thereby meaning less overall legislation can be passed in a given session. 

In Praise:

I’m watching several movies available streaming online through the Sundance Film Festival this weekend. It’s early days, but so far my favorite is the movie Bubble & Squeak, which is a screwball comedy in the tradition of Bringing Up Baby combined with absurdist sensibilities and many, many cabbages.

Recent Headlines:

SPD has a new chief and the Seattle City Council and the King County Council have new councilmembers Read More »

Obamacare is popular in Washington State

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Seattle News:

Mayor Bruce Harrell announced some key changes to his Cabinet. Jessyn Farrell, who ran against him in 2021 and has since served as the Office of Sustainability and Environment Director, has been promoted to Deputy Mayor…so I guess she won’t be running for Mayor this year!

Natalie Walton-Anderson is being promoted to “Chief Public Safety Officer, a member of the mayor’s Executive Team and the portfolio manager overseeing the Seattle Police Department, Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department, and the Office of Emergency Management, effective immediately.”  Walton-Anderson previously served as the Mayor’s Director of Public Safety after a stint at the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, where she wrote the infamous memo that basically prevents Judge Pooja Vaddadi from acting in the capacity as judge at Seattle Municipal Court that she was elected to do. 

The Seattle City Council needs to appoint someone to fill the now empty District 2 seat. The six finalists participated in a candidate forum on Tuesday night that sounded a bit like a train wreck, with no questions on land use or the comprehensive plan, even though this appointee will be chairing the Land Use committee. The new councilmember will be selected next week.

King County News:

King County Executive Dow Constantine has chosen a shortlist of candidates to fill the empty King County Council position: Karen Keiser. former State Senator, 33rd District; Julia Patterson, former King County Councilmember and State Legislator, 33rd District; and De’Sean Quinn, current Tukwila City Councilmember. The King County Council has until mid-March to make the appointment, and that person will serve until someone new is elected in November.

Former Auburn police officer Jeffrey Nelson was convicted of the murder of 26-year-old Jesse Sarey, who was homeless at the time. Sarey was unarmed and experiencing a mental health crisis.  Nelson was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in prison. PubliCola reported that Nelson had a long history of excessive use of force. This case was the second test of the new I-940 state law, which went into effect in 2019.

We’re seeing a side effect of the acute shortage of public defenders in the University of Washington’s new behavioral health hospital, which was meant primarily for patients involuntarily committed due to mental health issues. The hospital is only admitting long-term patients on a limited basis, and two thirds of its beds are empty. This is because they do not have public defenders to take on these patients’ cases. 

Washington State News:

Demand for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans, otherwise known as Obamacare, is at an all-time high in Washington State, with about 38,0000 new enrollees for 2025. More than 75% of enrollees receive federal premium tax credits, and many also receive savings through the state’s Cascade Care Savings program. However, if the state legislature doesn’t act, it looks like Cascade Care Savings will run short of funds, which could impact coverage in 2026 and beyond. The extra federal subsidies are also set to expire at the end of 2025.

The state legislature is taking a look at a new batch of gun control laws:

  • HB 1152, concerning safe storage of firearms
  • HB 1163, creating a “permit to purchase” system
  • HB 1132, limiting the number of firearms and amount of ammunition a person can purchase in a month

The Senate is also considering two new gun control measures.

Another bill, HB 1228, would allow private laboratories to test blood samples in DUI cases, a measure meant to address the backlog at the Washington State Toxicology Lab, which is currently the only lab allowed to process these samples. Seattle City Attorney Ann Davision is supporting the bill. 

Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to rescind birthright citizenship. His order will last at least 14 days as lawsuits continue to move forward. New Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued the Trump administration over the order on Tuesday along with Oregon, Arizona, and Illinois. Another similar suit is moving forward in Massachusetts.

InvestigateWest reports that Washington State Patrol troopers search indigenous people five times more often than white people, and this disparity has increased since 2020. The Traffic Safety For All Bill, HB 1512, is current legislation meant to help address these disparities.

In Praise:

For the last several weeks, when my brain has needed a bit of a rest, I’ve been watching Netflix’s Virgin River, based on the romance series by Robyn Carr. This is not necessarily a TV series I’d recommend; it is steeped in soap opera drama and seems to operate under the premise that when in doubt, it should add another pregnancy or mystery of parentage. The romance aspect is simply okay. 

But what I find fascinating about this show is the other fantasy it is presenting: namely, the fantasy of community and care. The show is set in this little Northern Californian town that is unsurprisingly gorgeous, but what matters even more than the natural beauty is its close-knit commuity. So many things go wrong for plot reasons, but every time there is a new eruption of drama, everyone is there to help and chip in. People routinely feed each other, find each other places to stay, and provide free childcare. They are constantly offering to help each other, and if a person is lonely, they can just go on over to Jack’s Bar and people will definitely want to hang out with them. There is also as much medical care as you could possibly need, with compassionate medical practitioners who figure out what’s going on within a single episode, and no one ever worries about paying for it! 

So that is what I’m writing in praise of this week: the idea of a community where everyone cares for one another and has adequate health care. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Obamacare is popular in Washington State Read More »

Seattle is the only large city in the US that hasn’t had a homicide in 2025

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Seattle News:

Seattle is the only large American city that has not yet experienced a homicide this year. 

There was a public safety committee meeting on Tuesday where councilmembers discussed the new less lethal weapons legislation. I wrote about that meeting for The Urbanist. Warning: at times it got rather colorful!

Today, the Council narrowed down the list of candidates for the open D2 council seat from 20 applicants to 6 finalists: Chukundi Salisbury, Mark Solomon, Adonis Ducksworth, Thaddaeus Gregory, Edward Lin, and Hong Chhuor. There will be a public forum for these finalists on Tuesday, January 21 at 5:30pm at Columbia City Theater, hosted by Seattle CityClub. Current councilmembers will make their final selection on Monday, January 27. 

Pedro Gomez, who served as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s director of external affairs, has resigned after facing rape allegations from someone with whom he was having an after-hours business meeting. Marcus Harrison Green interviewed the woman pressing charges who was torn between her views as a prison abolitionist and her desire to protect her community and hold Gomez accountable.

This week PubliCola followed up on the 30×30 pledge made by SPD to have 30% of their sworn staff be women by 2030. In 2024 86% of the 84 new officers hired were men, a number reflective of gender breakdown in applicants more generally.

PubliCola also reported that Kevin Dave, the SPD officer who was fired last week, two years after hitting and killing Jaahnavi Kandula, has appealed his firing. The Public Safety Civil Service Commission held an initial hearing on this appeal on January 16, but the case could take a long time to be decided.

King County News:

King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay was just unanimously chosen by his fellow councilmembers to be the Chair of the King County Council. He is also running for the County Executive position in November, as is fellow Councilmember Claudia Balducci. 

King County Council has a vacancy due to Dave Upthegrove’s recent election to Public Lands Commissioner. Councilmembers will have to select someone to fill Upthegrove’s spot, and committee assignments are expected to be made in February. 

WA State News:

Last week I went down to Olympia for a special media event before the legislative session began this Monday, January 13, which I found very enlightening. As a result, I wrote a piece for The Urbanist: Ferguson Pushes Budget Cuts as Washington Legislature Seeks New Revenue. 

As my readers doubtless know, I cover Seattle’s budget season in some detail every year, and I was pleased to be able to apply some of that budget knowledge to understanding what’s going on with the state’s budget right now. I posted on Bluesky that the state budget that gets passed this year will have reverberations for years to come. We’re still experiencing consequences from the austerity practiced at the state level from the Great Recession, so that gives you an idea of how impactful lawmakers’ choices are this year: how much and where will they cut, what programs will they delay (and what will their plan be for making sure the delay isn’t permanent?), and will they pass new revenue options to help ease the difficulty? 

Even the legislature’s decision as to whether to raise the property tax cap for local municipalities (cities and counties) will have strong ripple effects either way, as King County, for example, continues to struggle with its budget as its revenues have had no way to keep up with expenditures due to the high inflation a few years ago. 

On Wednesday, our new governor, Bob Ferguson, gave his inaugural address, which seems to have made Republicans happier than Democrats. You can read a recent interview with Ferguson here. Ferugson also signed three executive orders on his first day: one to work to protect reproductive rights in Washington and two related to housing regulations and permitting. 

Nick Brown, the new Attorney General taking over the office from Ferguson, is unhappy about the cuts Ferguson has said he wants the office to make. The Seattle Times reported that Ferguson protected the office’s funds while he was Attorney General but as governor has changed his tune. Brown opposes the cut, saying it will impact the office’s ability to take on civil rights and anti-trust cases.

In Praise:

I was thinking over the winter vacation about how to incorporate joy, hope, and a positive vision into the work I do. For those of you who know me personally, it will come as no surprise that these are part of my daily project of living, and yet it is also true that in my journalism work, I am most often covering very serious topics that can be emotionally taxing and discouraging to engage with. 

I also think that political thought does not need to be inherently bleak and depressing, a statement which I realize is especially bold on this particular weekend. But perhaps it is more important now than ever to remember this. 

For an example, I offer up the novel I’ve been working on for the past year, the second in the Satori Chronicles series, entitled Stars, Hide Your Fires. The first novel in that series was distinctly a dystopia, but this new one is not. This new one imagines how a society could be better: not perfect, not a utopia. Indeed, one of the main themes of the book is that societies cannot be static and perfect but must be continually invested into and engaged with or risk falling into complacency and potential injustice. But better. 

In the process of writing this novel, I’ve realized that what seems on the surface to be a simple act–to imagine a world that is a bit better than this one or the dystopia portrayed in the first book–can feel subversive. It was, it turns out, not always easy to imagine such a world and how to set an interesting story within it. It was certainly more difficult than following the tried and true path of the dystopia. In spite of its challenges, it has been a rewarding experiment, trying to create this more positive vision. 

In that spirit, I am experimenting with adding this “In Praise” section to the newsletter. I have been waffling about it, not wanting to create more work for myself, but this morning I was reading Orwell’s Roses, a book by Rebecca Solnit, and I came across this quotation from George Orwell and realized I’d made up my mind:

“A correspondent reproaches me with being ‘negative’ and ‘always attacking things.’ The fact is that we live in a time when causes for rejoicing are not numerous. But I like praising things, when there is anything to praise, and I would like here to write a few lines–they have to be retrospective, unfortunately–in praise of the Woolworth’s Rose.”

What a wonderful thing to publish in a column! Orwell wrote this at the beginning of 1944. Now here, at the beginning of 2025, some of us might also feel like the causes for rejoicing may not be numerous. But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to take some time to appreciate the roses. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle is the only large city in the US that hasn’t had a homicide in 2025 Read More »

Murder numbers dropped dramatically across the nation in 2024

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Seattle News:

First, SPD interim Chief Sue Rahr decided to fire Kevin Dave, the officer who hit and killed Jaahnavi Kandula two years ago. You can read all about it in my article for The Urbanist.

The Seattle Times is suing SPD for alleged public record violations. This is great news, as it is intensely difficult to get public records from SPD, and Seattle Times is a local outlet with deep enough pockets to fund a lawsuit to try to address the issue. 

The Mayor’s Office sent out a press release celebrating 2024 as the first year SPD has hired more officers than it lost…by one. Given Dave was then immediately fired at the start of 2025, they pretty much broke even. It’s also worth noting that an increase in the number of applications to become an SPD officer does not necessarily translate into a higher number of officers who are ultimately hired. In fact, before he left, former Chief Adrian Diaz mentioned at a committee meeting that the department often has to reject lateral applications because the candidates aren’t suitable for SPD. 

Next week there will be a public safety committee meeting on Tuesday, 1/14 at 9:30am. The sole item on the agenda is the less lethal weapons legislation first discussed in December. There are ten proposed amendments to the base bill, and a committee vote is expected. There will be public comment at the beginning of the meeting. 

King County, WA State, and U.S. News:

The King County assessor, John Wilson, who is now running for King County Executive against King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay, was accused of stalking and harassment by his domestic partner and now-fianceé.

In spite of a significant state budget deficit, Governor-elect Bob Ferguson wants to find $100 million over the next biennium to provide grants to local municipalities to hire more police officers. The idea of helping hire more officers has bipartisan support, but there is an open question as to where exactly the money will come from.  I’ll have more about the state budget situation and legislative priorities for this session coming soon at The Urbanist.

Nationally, murders and other violent crime have dropped dramatically. The New York Times looked at data through October 2024 and reported that “if the drop in murders continued at the same rate for the rest of the year, 2024 had the largest percent decrease — nearly 16 percent — ever recorded nationwide.”

Other violent crimes also fell, as did overall property crime. These latest numbers suggest what I’ve been suggesting for some time already: namely, that the Covid-19 pandemic and the chaos it wrought was a root cause for the higher crime numbers we saw nationally from 2021-2023.

Data analyst Jeff Asher also wrote about this trend, saying, “America’s crime trends in 2024 were remarkably positive with an enormous decline in murder, a continued small but steady decline in violent crime, and a sizable decline in motor vehicle theft on the heels of several years of surges. The nation’s murder rate has largely erased the post-COVID surge and was roughly around or [at] 2019’s level while reported violent and property crime were likely amongst the lowest rates recorded since the 1960s and 1970s.”

Recent Headlines:

 

Murder numbers dropped dramatically across the nation in 2024 Read More »