May 2025

Yes, surveillance technology IS helping ICE and allowing law enforcement to hunt abortion seekers

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Seattle News:

First up, I published an article this week on the debate over bringing police officers back to Seattle Public Schools…and the related debate as to whether the forthcoming FEPP levy should help pay for it. The next school board meeting to discuss the district’s proposal around police in schools, including a potential new Memorandum of Understanding between the district and SPD, will take place on Wednesday, June 4 at 4:15pm at the John Stanford Center. There will be a rally ahead of time at 3:45pm. 

Meanwhile, the City Council’s Select Committee on the FEPP Levy met on Thursday morning and discussed many possible amendments. Several councilmembers signaled that they would like to see police back in schools. 

There has been lots of concern over what data ICE may be accessing in its quest to deport people. Recent record requests show that data collected from Flock’s license plate readers has been shared with ICE for immigration purposes. Uncovered data also shows police in Texas used Flock data to perform a nationwide search for a person who had an abortion. 

Many local municipalities are giving information to ICE in return for funding from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP). The United States government has collected the DNA from 133,000 migrant children and stores the data in a criminal database.

Locally, Mountlake Terrace City Council is deciding next week whether they should sign onto purchasing Flock’s surveillance services as well. One can only hope someone shares the news of Flock’s data being used to assist ICE and hunt down people who received abortions with the councilmembers prior to the vote on June 5.

The Northwest Progressive Institute released a couple of widely discussed polls this week and last week. One poll showed the mayoral race, and Katie Wilson’s candidacy in particular, is more competitive than some people assumed. Another poll showed how unpopular Seattle’s elected officials currently are. 

Perhaps recognizing the especial unpopularity of the recent proposal to weaken the city council’s Code of Ethics, Councilmember Cathy Moore announced this morning that she withdrew the bill. However, she signaled that she might well revisit the issue again in the future.  

There were a few great investigative pieces this week. Real Change discovered that both SPD and the FBI used confidential informants during the George Floyd protests of 2020. The FBI was also conducting surveillance during that period. As the article says, “Technologies used by the FBI to surveil Seattle protesters could be seen as a way to circumvent Seattle’s surveillance ordinance if the output of that surveillance was fed directly to SPD.”

And in reporting at The Urbanist, it appears that the City was trying to bury an independent report on allegations raised against the OPA and OIG about obtaining and disclosing a protester’s private medical records. According to the Urbanist, the report found that Andrew Myerberg, who was the head of the OPA at the time and now works for the Mayor’s Office, “improperly disclosed the protester’s private medical information, and improperly interpreted the meaning of those medical records, despite not being trained to do so. Improper disclosure means that Myerberg violated state medical privacy laws, and therefore violated City policy.”

However, Jeremy Racca, who works as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s chief of staff and general counsel, in consultation with Pacifica Law Group, LLC, as outside counsel, formed a second opinion that actually what Myerberg did was fine.

Finally, SPD delivered its quarterly sworn staffing, overtime, and performance metrics report to city council this week. SPD is estimating it will need an additional $6.8 million to $10 million by the end of the year to pay for all the extra police officers they are hiring. 911 call response times have gone down because last year CARE and SPD had a project to re-prioritize call types, which moved a bunch of Priority 1 call types down to Priority 2. 

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Seattle City Council votes in favor of unavoidable advertising in public spaces and weakening their own ethics code

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Seattle News:

Let’s start by talking about a couple of my recent pieces. First, I covered SPD asking to obtain StarChase GPS surveillance technology. Noteworthy in this piece is the public safety committee meeting during which this technology was discussed, in which SPD Captain James Britt said he didn’t know something that would be very difficult not to know if you were in fact in charge of the project of obtaining the StarChase technology for SPD. 

Second, I covered the recent community safety town hall led by Councilmember Rob Saka to address gun violence in the High Point, Snake Hill, and North Delridge neighborhoods. Aside from no city official advocating for investment in gun violence prevention programs in these neighborhoods, there is also an open question about why it’s been taking Seattle City Light so long to repair streetlights in High Point compared to other, wealthier neighborhoods. 

Earlier this afternoon the Council met to discuss the proposal to weaken their ethics rules and the proposal to install advertising kiosks in several Seattle neighborhoods, including downtown, Ballard, and West Seattle. 

The advertising kiosk resolution passed its committee vote 5-0 (committee members are Councilmembers Nelson, Kettle, Hollingsworth, Rivera, and Solomon). 

The ethics legislation passed its committee vote with Rivera and Solomon voting in favor, and Nelson, Kettle, and Hollingsworth abstaining. It will receive a full council vote on Tuesday, June 3 at 2pm. 

Mayor Bruce Harrell has announced his intention to confirm SPD Chief Shon Barnes in his role as police chief, at the same time as Barnes published an op-ed in The Seattle Times about “Seattle-Centric policing.” 

Meanwhile SPD has just committed to spending almost $6 million for yet another ad recruitment campaign.

DivestSPD published an important look at falling crime in Seattle in 2024 and thus far in 2025. Here is a relevant excerpt:

“Crime was way down in 2024 and continues to fall in 2025. Most folks consider that a good thing — unless they’re operating a protection racket that manufactures consent for raises by scaring the public with sensational crime stories. SPOG has been so bereft of good material that it has resorted to using “This is Seattle” to comment on incidents in other cities. According to the Seattle crime dashboard, the violent and property crime rates in 2024 were both lower than in 2018, when SPD had 400 more officers. These trends are continuing in 2025.” 

In June, Seattle will be launching a new “ambassador” program in the CID similar to that already in place in downtown, funded by $500,000 from the city and $500,000 from the Asian American Foundation over two years, with three ambassadors patrolling the area from 2-10pm.

Harrell also announced Seattle’s “summer safety strategy,” which includes limiting many park hours from 4am to 10:30pm and installing a gate at the beloved Gas Works Park, as well as increasing SPD patrols.

There is controversy over King County’s proposal to site one of the five new crisis care centers in Capitol Hill on Broadway and Union. Many residents and businesses signed a letter opposing the location. The proposal should go in front of the King County Council sometime this summer for approval. 

Earlier this year, a King County inquest was held about the SPD killing of Iosia Faletogo at the end of 2018. Howard Gale wrote that this “marked the first time in history an inquest juror found that an SPD officer engaged in criminal conduct.” He also details the biases and confusion built into the county’s inquest process. 

The Urbanist also reported that Inspector General Lisa Judge, who runs Seattle’s Office of the Inspector General, appears to have been paying for private parking with City funds. 

WA State News:

In better news: in 2024, Washington State reported the largest decline in drug overdose deaths in almost a decade, a 12% drop from 2023. Even so, nearly 3,200 Washingtonians still died from an overdose in 2024. Nationwide, overdose deaths dropped 27%. 

Governor Bob Ferguson finally signed the state’s operating budget this week. Here is a list of his vetoes, which are much less extensive than feared but do include programs like a study comparing domestic violence intervention models, an association to coordinate opioid treatment and prevention services, a nonprofit that operates a teen case management and housing connections support program, and grants to entities that provide digital navigator services, devices, and subscriptions, among many others. These changes remove $25 million from the state’s budget, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the total being spent. 

Ferguson also signed the bill that requires Washingtonians to get a permit in order to buy a gun and a bill that gives unemployment benefits to striking workers.

Ferguson signed the bill providing $100 million for a grant program to hire more police officers. It allows the grant funds to be used for other purposes besides hiring more police, including peer counselors, behavioral health co-responders, crisis intervention training, and community assistance programs. 

The legislature did not address the crowding issue at Green Hill School juvenile detention center: “While a new facility opening this year in Aberdeen could offer some relief, the failure to pass significant legislation on the issue means Green Hill is on track to continue housing dozens more people than it is designed to safely hold.” 

Brian Heywood has filed five new state-wide initiatives this spring. He wants to limit annual property tax increases to 0.5% and for all property to be valued at 50 percent of its true and fair value in money and assessed on that basis; he wants more money for homeschooling and private schools at the cost of public education; he wants to ban trans girls from school sports; and he wants to restore the parents’ bill of rights that was amended during the legislative session. What a laundry list of conservative ideas!

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New Seattle councilmembers want to weaken their ethics code as the US is sliding into authoritarianism

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Seattle News:

Well, Seattle has been buzzing with news these last two weeks! Let’s dive right in.

On April 28, SPD and the Mayor’s Office held a press conference to tout how many officers SPD has hired so far this year. The Mayor’s Office claims the number is 60, with another 160 they say are going through background checks. 

At the press conference, which featured a few rows of the new recruits, there appeared to be one woman recruit present, while all the others were men. As PubliCola reported, 5 of the 60 new hires in 2025 are women, while last year SPD hired 12 women. PubliCola also reported that of the 24 officers who have left so far in 2025, five of those were women, meaning a net gain of zero women officers since the beginning of the year. 

SPD still doesn’t appear to be a good place to work if you’re a woman, an issue I cover in my story about former SPD Chief of Staff Jamie Tompkins, who alleges SPD was a sexually hostile work environment. 

President of the police union SPOG, Mike Solan, isn’t happy either, saying the higher SPD hiring numbers represent a “lessening of standards.” About SPD, Jason Rantz wrote, “nearly 30% of the department is over 50 years old. Nearly 26% are 51 years old or older. At 53, depending on the length of service, officers are eligible for retirement.”

Meanwhile, two more Black SPD officers are suing the department for racial discrimination. And attorney James Bible told the Seattle Times that “there are more cases coming.”

PubliCola has been doing a huge amount of helpful reporting in the public safety space recently, including covering Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison’s new “drug prosecution alternative,” which appears to be a less good version of the community court she shut down a couple years ago; SPOG suing SPD over SPD’s inability to fulfill public records requests; and Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi filing a formal complaint with the Washington State Bar Association against Davison and former criminal division chief (and now the Mayor’s Chief Public Safety Officer) Natalie Walton-Anderson for deciding to use a procedural loophole to disqualify Vaddadi from hearing criminal cases in her courtroom.

Meanwhile, Councilmember Cathy Moore has introduced an ethics bill that would weaken the ethics rules for city councilmembers. If passed, councilmembers would no longer be required to recuse themselves if they have a possible financial conflict of interest. Instead they would be required to simply disclose the possible conflict. 

The City’s head of ethics, Wayne Barnett, supports the change. Interestingly, rumor has it that this ethics change is a precursor to Moore introducing new legislation that would gut renters rights protections that are currently in place in the city. Both Councilmember Martiza Rivera and Councilmember Mark Solomon are currently landlords who would have to recuse themselves from a vote on that legislation should the ethics rules not be changed. It is possible Moore would still have the votes to strip renters of protections just as the Trump administration is making cuts that are likely to increase the rate of homelessness in Seattle, even with the two recusals, but it would make for a tighter vote. 

Why a sitting councilmember would want to join Trump in worsening the city’s homelessness crisis in the first place is an interesting question. Why she would choose to weaken the longstanding ethics rules governing city council (in place since 1980) right when many political scientists believe the United States is moving into some form of authoritarianism is another good question. 

Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson wrote an op-ed about what a bad idea weakening the ethics rules is, and it sounds like most, if not all, current D2 city council candidates oppose the bill as well. Solomon was appointed to his position representing D2 until an election can be held this November.

Council President Sara Nelson’s Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee first took up this ethics bill on Thursday afternoon, although no vote was taken at that time.

Finally, to end on some promising news, the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) has been trying a new, less painful method of administering buprenorphine to help people addicted to fentanyl. Early results show that more than 70% of people trying this new course of treatment are making it to their second month of treatment, which is more than triple DESC’s previous numbers. More studies are needed, and cost could be a limiting factor, but this could mark a really helpful breakthrough in treating fentanyl addiction.

King County News:

Shannon Braddock is now officially the King County Executive until the elections in November, and she has rolled out a “200 Day Plan.” Top of the list is enacting the 0.1% “public safety” sales tax just approved by the state legislature and establishing an emergency reserves fund to help the county deal with continued federal shenanigans. 

At a Health, Housing, and Human Services committee meeting on Tuesday, county budget director Dwight Dively gave another of his updates on said federal shenanigans. He said one of the things we’re seeing now is an inability to move projects forward because the federal government employees and/or infrastructure no longer exist to do so. The county is also losing federal workers at various of its agencies. 

King County filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for adding “unlawful” conditions to previously approved federal grants, which has generally meant insisting the grantee follow every single one of Trump’s executive orders, many of which are probably illegal. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration in the case on Wednesday.

Also at the committee meeting was a presentation on an old 2022 report on wage theft that somehow never received a committee presentation until now,  as well as an analysis of impediments to fair housing choice. 

At the Law and Justice committee meeting on Wednesday, the committee received presentations on an audit of asset forfeitures by the King County Sheriff’s Office (summary: the the records of said asset forfeitures are a mess, the electronic system is incomplete and so the office is basically relying on paper records, and the seizure notices are both hard to understand and only offered in English.) You can read the entire report here. 

Also presented at the meeting were the Department of Public Defense’s annual report for 2024 and a briefing about the inquest program. 

WA State News:

I wrote a wrap-up piece about the Washington state legislative session in which I primarily focused on the state’s 2025-2027 operating budget, including which new taxes and which new cuts were included. Governor Bob Ferguson has until May 17 to sign or veto the budget. 

Meanwhile, Ferguson is being pressured to veto an estimated $1.86 billion of new tax revenue passed in the Democrat’s package.

The Washington state Supreme Court upheld the legislature’s ban on high capacity magazines this week. 

We also got a piece from the Washington State Standard about why police accountability didn’t have a good year in the state legislature, which basically boils down to this: because it didn’t suit the people in power to move anything. 

In the article, we receive this confusing gem: “Meanwhile, fears of rising crime have emboldened opposition to policies believed to hinder officers trying to do their jobs. In 2023, the last year with available statewide data, the state saw a significant decrease in year-over-year violent crimes after years of increases, according to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.”

So fears of rising crime, which the data shows is not happening, is what is keeping the legislature from wanting to pass police accountability legislation. Gotcha. 

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