King County

The U.S. is no longer a liberal democracy

/

My reporting:

Right before my vacation, I wrote about the two WA state anti-trans initiatives that will be on the ballot this November. 

This week, I wrote about the news that Seattle and King County will be drastically downsizing the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) by taking back all their homeless provider contracts. I also wrote a bit about the new 2026 Point-in-Time Count report that shows that homelessness in the region is continuing to grow, albeit more slowly (meanwhile, unsheltered homelessness is growing more quickly).

In related news, PubliCola reported today that KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison might have been trying to avoid the public disclosure of some of her emails.

Stay tuned next week as I turn my attention to the FEPP levy and some interesting local election news. 

Other news:

Marcus Harrison Green has an insightful column out today about the news that Seattle didn’t have any homicides during the month of June. 

Once the World Cup was over, Mayor Katie Wilson did indeed turn off the surveillance cameras in the Stadium District. Their final fate is TBD depending on the all-important results of the audit she ordered earlier this year. At a rally this week, anti-surveillance activists demanded the removal of all the SPD surveillance cameras in the city. 

Speaking of surveillance, a former police officer from the Puyallup Police Department who retired in 2022 wrote an op-ed against the surveillance state and the use of Flock license plate readers in Puyallup. I think it is telling when even former police officers are speaking out against surveillance technology. 

And in Renton, the council voted to postpone their decision regarding their Flock license plate readers, which means for now, the cameras remain off.

Washington State will be on the hook for large penalty fees to the federal government (due to H.R. 1 from last year, what else?) if the state doesn’t improve its accuracy rate when dispensing food stamps. The Washington State Standard reported it could owe more than $90 million, a number that could increase due to the new SNAP work requirements, which could cause more errors as the state works to adapt.  

Yesterday, a judge ruled that the Northwest Detention Center, operated by the GEO Group, must allow Washington state Department of Health inspectors inside the facility. However, the inspectors do not need to be allowed to inspect areas of the facility operated by ICE, which immediately made me think of the recent reporting that CoreCivic sold two of its detention facilities in California to DHS in a move to avoid oversight. 

The injunctions ordered by the judge won’t go into effect for two weeks, giving the GEO Group time to appeal. 

And the U.S. lost its long-term status as a liberal democracy for the first time in over 50 years.

 “The scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times,” reads the V-Dem 2026 Democracy Report. “Within one year, the USA’s LDI score has declined by 24%; its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations.” 

Recent Headlines:

The U.S. is no longer a liberal democracy Read More »

SPD’s overtime spending has more than doubled in four years due to SPOG contract

/

Local News:

I wrote a piece last week about new data out of King County’s DCHS showing that permanent supportive housing in the area is reducing jail bookings…and I attended the opening of DESC’s newest permanent supportive housing building, Birch Grove, located in Lake City. DESC isn’t moving forward on future building projects due to federal funding uncertainties. 

Lime is going to equip their scooters in Seattle with cameras. About half of their scooters have been fitted out with cameras so far, and all of them are planned to have cameras by the end of the year. The idea is it will make scooter riders behave better, but it also ups the surveillance on Seattle streets. 

HardPressed News reported that SPD was waiting for the mayoral election results last year with the belief that if Bruce Harrell won, he’d greenlight a police drone program. 

For more than two years, the Seattle Fire Department has been using an artificial intelligence program to listen to 911 calls and decide which callers won’t receive a rapid response and instead be routed to a nurse line located in Texas. What’s really amazing about this story, broken by The Seattle Times, is that the program has had no public review, wasn’t disclosed to any 911 callers, and has no apparent mechanisms for measuring how well it’s working. It also didn’t go through a surveillance impact review process.

“SFD will be open from now on about its AI use, said Lombard, the assistant chief.” This sentence in the article carries a lot of weight. It implies SFD will be open about their AI use in the future because they got caught. Not exactly the sort of thing that builds public trust. 

DivestSPD reported that SPD Chief Shon Barnes has received 47 OPA complaints since he began his job as Chief early last year, which is a very large number. Most of the complaints appear to be nothing burgers. They sometimes have interesting timing, suggesting a possible SPOG-coordinated attack against the Chief. 

Barnes is on track to receive more OPA complaints than his predecessor, Adrian Diaz.

Seattle City Council’s public safety committee received their SPD 2026 Q1 sworn staffing, overtime, and call time report on Tuesday. SPD’s Q1 2026 actual deployable number of officers is 939, only 13 officers more than in Q1 of 2025. 

The rate of hiring, along with the slow-down of officer separations, means SPD might be on track to overspend their salary budget by $1.7 million this year. Chair Bob Kettle said he and Councilmember Dan Strauss had told SPD not to slow down their hiring to account for this potential overspend. I reached out to Strauss’s office, and he said he has no plans to introduce an item in the mid-year supplemental budget to account for the $1.7 million. 

We also got to see how expensive SPD overtime has become due to the new SPOG contract. In 2022, SPD spent $26.3 million in overtime. In 2026? Their overtime budget stands at a whopping $55.8 million. 

King County’s new Point in Time Count for 2026 came out this week, showing that the region’s homelessness numbers continue to grow, albeit not as rapidly as they did between 2022 and 2024. While the overall number of homeless people grew by 9% in the last two years, the unsheltered population of homeless people grew by 21%, highlighting the urgent need for more shelter spaces. 

Finally, The Economist, that bastion of progressive thought, published an article this week entitled “American police killings are rising, even as murder rates fall.”

From the article: “Killings by police have yet to reignite the broad outrage that followed Mr Floyd’s death, but each day, unfortunately, brings the chance of a grisly event that might. Shootings by sheriffs, who operate mostly in rural areas, have risen especially fast in recent years, countering improvements in some big cities.”

Recent Headlines:

SPD’s overtime spending has more than doubled in four years due to SPOG contract Read More »

Surveillance cameras don’t prevent violence, or why I feel like a broken record

/

Seattle News:

Yesterday several elected officials – Mayor Katie Wilson, Council President Joy Hollingsworth, Councilmembers Debora Juarez, Bob Kettle, Maritza Rivera, and Dan Strauss, and Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans – along with SPD Chief Shon Barnes, held a press conference about the gun violence along Aurora Ave N. 

Mostly those named above talked about solving the problem with police and prosecutions, as well as by the strategic blocking of certain streets. Kettle touted the importance of the real time crime center and license plate readers, although there is no evidence that shows these technologies prevent violence. Interestingly, Aurora Ave N is one of the zones where CCTV cameras have been installed and operational in Seattle, and yet somehow there is still gun violence happening there. Hmm. 

Kettle also spoke of the importance of hiring more police officers. 

Evans said her office has asked for funding for a dedicated Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) prosecutor, which she says would help get guns off the streets. Her office is also aggressively pursuing businesses and properties that break chronic nuisance laws. 

Lastly, her office is working to have a dedicated, dually-deputized prosecutor in their office that will work on felony trafficking cases on Aurora in partnership with the King County Prosecutor’s office. I’m not really sure why having this prosecutor work in the Seattle City Attorney’s office (CAO) versus the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office (KCPAO) makes a difference. Traditionally CAO only prosecutes misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, while the KCPAO handles all felonies. It could be that this might improve collaboration between the offices or it might be solely an issue of money (who’s going to pay for this prosecutor’s salary). 

Evans stated unequivocally that SOAP and SODA orders do not work and that she will be pursuing other strategies. 

Not mentioned were the environmental changes made to Aurora Ave in Shoreline that seem to have helped deter violence there. Solutions such as increased social supports, a coordinated gun violence prevention strategy, and legalized sex work were also not emphasized. 

That being said (see below), Wilson is reportedly working on a gun violence prevention strategy, but unfortunately the details still haven’t been announced. 

Meanwhile, The Seattle Medium reported that Black girls represent between 44% and 52% of child sex trafficking victims in King County. 

Earlier this week, the Seattle City Council passed the one-year data center moratorium and related resolution, after which Washington AI resistance (WA-AIR) held a press conference announcing a new campaign for their People’s AI Bill of Rights, which will be a package of bills regulating AI introduced during the 2027 state legislative session. The campaign will begin with a state-wide listening tour. 

Wilson announced that the City would be turning on the CCTV cameras located in the Stadium District due to “general but credible threats to security during the games” provided to her during briefings with SPD and the FBI. Two days before the announcement, she publicly defined a credible threat in more narrow terms, that being the standard she had originally announced she was planning to use to inform her decision as to whether to turn on the cameras. To read more about it, check out the op-ed by Phil Mocek published by PubliCola.

The Seattle Auditor’s Office released a status report on implementation of their recommendations covering the time period through December 2025. Of note:

  • Re their 2024 Annual Surveillance Technology Usage Review (released in September 2025), SDOT has implemented two out of eight recommendations.
  • Re their Four Recommendations to Better Understand and Address Current Gun Violence Patterns in Seattle (released in March 2025), all four recommendations remain pending: “The Mayor’s Office reported that they have begun development of a comprehensive gun violence reduction strategy that will build on work begun by the Human Services Department and be led by the Mayor. Specifically, the Mayor’s Office has begun to assess existing gun violence reduction programs, identify gaps, and build a comprehensive strategy sponsored by the Mayor.”
  • Re their Addressing Places in Seattle Where Overdoses and Crime are Concentrated: An Evidence-Based Approach (released in July 2024), two out of eight recommendations have been completed: “The Mayor’s Office reported that components of the Downtown Activation Team’s (DAT) work, including its place-based problem-solving methodology, are moving forward under the Stabilize, Activate, and Invest (SAIL) Subcabinet. The Mayor’s Office indicated they will tailor crime and overdose strategies, and the corresponding deployment of resources, to more specifically defined and localized problems, beginning with implementation of the Phố Đẹp safety plan in Little Saigon and the expansion of the Seattle Police Department’s Neighborhood Resource Officer program to 12th & Jackson and 3rd & Pine. The Mayor’s Office also indicated that the current administration does not intend to evaluate the preceding administration’s work of the DAT and Seattle Restoration Framework, but will instead collaborate with public health, public safety, and community partners to establish agreed upon metrics for success for each location and reporting expectations.”

A quick update on an earlier item regarding the possibility of a special fire district tax: PubliCola has reported that the firefighters’ union is opposed to the idea so the Mayor’s Office isn’t pursuing it this year. This means one fewer tool to address the $175 million deficit for 2027.

In SPD lawsuit news, two gay SPD officers are suing the department alleging discrimination and being passed over for promotion. The City of Seattle is paying a $2.6 million settlement in the lawsuit of four female SPD officers alleging sexual harassment from former Chief Adrian Diaz. The Seattle Times reports that three of the four women remain employed at SPD. 

For more uplifting news, I wrote about the soil-turning and future plans for a new health center in Rainier Beach. If you want to read about community members coming together to make a difference, this is the article for you. 

Other news: 

I wrote about an inmate who died of an overdose last year while in custody at SCORE jail. I really encourage you to check this one out because the ongoing issues at SCORE are for the most part not being covered by mainstream media like The Seattle Times or the local news networks. I dove deeper into the quality of healthcare being offered by jails and prisons in general, and it’s an ugly story that has parallels to how people detained by ICE are being treated. 

I also dove into last year’s King County DCHS audit with an update on what’s been found and what measures are being taken to ensure accountability and transparency as DCHS goes about their work. 

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay gave his State of the County address this week and committed to investing “nearly $5 million” in the Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention. I’m not clear on how much of this is additive, but as an important office that is perennially under-funded, this is good news. 

The City of Edmonds unanimously voted to cancel the City’s contract with Flock Safety for automated license plate readers.

Finally, Jeff Asher wrote that large police departments are beginning to grow their ranks again, after a contraction after the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020. 

Asher wrote, “The hiring environment still isn’t great for police officers, but it is far improved from where it was three or four years ago. Most medium and large police departments will likely be stuck at considerably smaller levels than they were pre-COVID, but the evidence suggests they might see slow and steady growth over the next few years.”

Recent Headlines:

Surveillance cameras don’t prevent violence, or why I feel like a broken record Read More »

PROTEC17 moves to help the CARE team do their jobs

/

Seattle and King County News:

This will be a short edition of Notes From the Emerald City, as I don’t have a lot to say about many of the recent headlines. This may well be because I am in the middle of writing a very intensive piece that is taking up most of my brain bandwidth at present, but in any case, today I’m going to keep things short and sweet. 

I’ve been covering some election news in the past few weeks. I was able to sit down and have a long conversation with Jaelynn Scott, who is running to become a Washington state representative for the 37th LD. If you’re interested in learning more details about Scott and her policy positions, this one is for you.

Also in election news, Toshiko Hasegawa and Rebecca Saldaña–both running for the District 2 seat on the King County Council–released their public safety platforms last week. I spoke with both of them, and while the platforms are similar in many ways, I tried to tease out the differences in both platforms and experience. 

And this week, environmental justice group Got Green released a report alleging that the Seattle Housing Authority’s public housing is “unsafe and unhealthy.” I read through the report and attended the rally about it so I could give you the most important details.

In the latest addition to the CARE team saga, PROTEC17, the union representing City workers, has filed an unfair labor practice against the City and SPOG saying that the section in the new SPOG contract regulating crisis response should be thrown out since the CARE workers’ union was not engaged with about their scope of work. 

The other headline I want to call to your attention is PubliCola’s recent article about the new forensic report on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), which shows their finances in pretty rough and messy shape. 

Earlier today, Erica Barnett attended the KCRHA meeting discussing the report, and I’d like to highlight some information she posted about the meeting. 

“This presentation, which sheds more light on the concerns the auditors raised, is more devastating than the audit themselves,” Barnett wrote. “What Nurse is describing is what “would be required” for stabilization—a complete overhaul of the entire organization.”

Other important details reported by Barnett: the KCRHA has a negative cash balance of $63 million as of March 2026, and addressing the issues uncovered in the report could take a year or more and cost millions of dollars. There was also no evidence found of corrective action taken by KCRHA after their negative audits from 2023 and 2024. 

 Recent Headlines:

PROTEC17 moves to help the CARE team do their jobs Read More »

What’s going on with the SPD CCTV camera near Planned Parenthood

/

Discerning readers may have noticed it’s been a bit longer than usual between updates. Unfortunately, I suffered from a lacerated finger earlier in March, and the healing has been a process. In the meantime, I was taking as much of a break as possible from typing. But I’m now on the mend, so here we are!

Seattle and King County News:

First off, we have Mayor Katie Wilson’s big announcement about her surveillance plans a couple weeks ago. I wrote about it here, as did many other outlets adding other details about NYU’s Policing Project and Axon’s contracts with ICE, among other issues. 

Wilson met with volunteers from her campaign who are against surveillance on Tuesday evening. Looking at Erica Barnett’s live posts of the event, it doesn’t appear that Wilson’s stance has changed since the town hall she did on March 27, when all but one commenter spoke against surveillance in Seattle. 

Local group Stop Surveillance City received footage from a public record request for the CCTV camera that films a Planned Parenthood in North Seattle. This is the camera Wilson said would be turned off. 

I reached out to the Mayor’s Office, and spokesperson Sage Wilson said the following:

“The cameras the mayor announced would be turned off have in fact been turned off as of March 19th, the day the mayor made the announcement. We have confirmed they are still turned off.

The point of confusion is that the PDR release contained video footage from three other cameras that are fixed, cannot be moved, and do not capture any activity at the sensitive location.”

Basically, each of the Seattle Police Department’s CCTV “cameras” is actually a cluster of five cameras: four that are fixed in a certain direction and one that can pan, tilt, and zoom (PTZ). The Mayor’s Office had the PTZ camera and the camera facing in the direction of the Planned Parenthood turned off, but not the other three fixed cameras. 

A possible problem with this approach is that the remaining cameras are still filming people and vehicles who might be going to or leaving from this Planned Parenthood location. There wouldn’t be footage of folks actually entering the building, but footage could still place them in its vicinity.

I also wrote about some public record request results I received pertaining to the siting of the new crisis care center in the old Polyclinic building in Capitol Hill. It appears that a few property and business owners located in Capitol Hill lobbied hard against the new location. One of them was developer Liz Dunn, who Capitol Hill Seattle reported sparked the new safety plan at Pike and Pine last fall. Several of the involved parties were also involved in trying to remove the bus lane in Capitol Hill last year.  

King County Assessor John Wilson is awaiting trial on two charges of violating a no-contact order obtained by his ex-fiancee. In the meantime, he has to wear an ankle monitor. Wilson has thus far refused to resign from his elected position of assessor even though the King County Council demanded his resignation last year. If nothing changes, he’ll stay in office through the end of the year. Meanwhile, all the County employees who work under him continue being forced to have him as their boss if they want to keep their jobs. 

Immigration and Other Surveillance News:

I’d like to share three recent headlines about federal immigration enforcement in Washington State:

What’s going on here and how can all three of these headlines be true? 

The answer is the time frame of the data being discussed is quite important! In my piece, I was writing about the University of Washington Center for Human Rights’s data from October through December of 2025, when detentions in the state were definitely increasing. The Washington State Standard was writing about data from October 2025 through March 2026. And The Seattle Times was specifically calling out data from January and February 2026, when the national number of detentions fell. 

The Washington State Standard noted that detentions here in Washington State appeared to drop after Alex Pretti’s murder in late January. 

The Seattle Times also reported on a new data point provided by Rep. Suzan DelBene, that the Tacoma detention facility’s population has dropped and is at 919 as of Friday, April 3. This is in spite of a new contract between the GEO Group, who operates the facility, and the federal government. The contract began in late March and runs until October 27 and increased the total number of detainees the facility can house from 1,575 to 1,635. Given how bad conditions were at the old maximum, I don’t like to think how an additional 60 detainees could further deteriorate things. 

Meanwhile, the GEO Group is still doing its utmost to prevent Washington state health inspectors from getting inside the facility and conducting an inspection. 

In surveillance news, Seattle isn’t the only jurisdiction that had to shut off its license plate readers due to the new state law regulating their use. Renton had to do the same.

The UW campus is getting more security cameras installed, according to the Daily UW: “Wilson confirmed that UWPD plans to install more cameras in public areas throughout campus, but that the Montlake Cut is not planned to see new surveillance footage.” 

(Note: The Wilson in the above excerpt refers to the UWPD Chief Craig Wilson, not Seattle’s Mayor.)

The Newcastle City Council voted to terminate their contract with Flock this week due to concern over potential liability from the state’s new license plate reader bill. Newcastle is one of the King County Sheriff’s Office’s (KCSO’s) contract cities, and there is worry the City would hold liability instead of the County. This is a legal issue that would probably only impact cities who are contract cities, meaning they outsource their law enforcement services. 

WA State News:

The millionaires tax passed the state legislature and was signed by Governor Bob Ferguson, and of course I wrote all about it. 

Last week, the Washington State Supreme Court granted Brian Heywood’s request to review his case in trying to file a referendum against the millionaires tax. The Court is expected to consider the question on April 30. 

A lawsuit against the tax was filed yesterday.

Last week, Ferguson signed the new state budget, which relies on a heavy withdrawal from the rainy day fund and includes cuts, cuts, cuts. There will be another $878 million deficit to deal with during the next legislative session for 2028. Proceeds from the millionaires tax are not expected to be collected until 2029, assuming it survives all the challenges against it. 

The Stranger had a write-up this week about the importance of the Washington State Supreme Court races this year. I did include a short discussion of this race in my millionaires tax piece above, but I really can’t emphasize enough what a big deal it is that the court will have five seats (out of nine) on the ballot this year. I hope to write more about this sooner rather than later, and I encourage you to watch these races closely. 

Recent Headlines:

 

What’s going on with the SPD CCTV camera near Planned Parenthood Read More »

SPOG gets a great new contract while legal settlements related to SPD greatly increase

/

Seattle News:

First off, I spoke (well, emailed) with Mayor-elect Katie Wilson about her vision for public safety and homelessness. Wilson has said publicly, and I think rightfully so, that for her first term, she expects to be judged on public safety and homelessness, so I tried to pull back the curtain on her thinking about those topics as she prepares to tackle a difficult job.

Relatedly, Wilson announced yesterday that she intends to keep SPD Chief Shon Barnes in his position…at least for now. My guess is that she’ll be watching to see how he performs under the new administration. In the meantime, the Capitol Hill Blog did an excellent rundown of several of Barnes’s mistakes over his first several months as SPD Chief.

Seattle City Council passed the new SPOG contract on Tuesday in a 6-3 vote, with Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Eddie Lin, and Rob Saka voting against. Unlike the last couple of SPOG contracts, I didn’t expect this vote to be unanimous, but I was surprised by Saka’s decision.

As I’ve covered before, this new SPOG contract does not notably improve police accountability in Seattle, and it also continues to prevent the CARE team, who provides civilian alternative response in Seattle, from doing their jobs. Not a fine day for Seattle. 

This week the public safety committee heard a year-end report on SPD. This year, SPD has hired 159 new officers and had 65 separations, resulting in a net increase of 94 officers. As we’ve been discussed previously, crime is down across the board, not just here in Seattle but across the country. In Seattle, this includes a decrease in homicides and shots fired. 

SPD has announced a 2025 year-to-date homicide clearance rate of 83%, which they contrast with 57% in 2024 and 49% in 2023. Because homicides were down in 2025, there were 37 victims, which was 21 or 36% fewer than the previous year. In the same time period of 2024, there were 58 victims.

Let’s do a little math, shall we? 

57% cases cleared with 58 victims = 33.06 cases cleared

83% cases cleared with 37 victims = 30.71 cases cleared

Please note the above isn’t accurate because some cases have more than one victim. But it does serve to illustrate why we should take clearance rate percentage changes with a grain of salt unless we see all the data. And we should also consider where that data comes from.  

Publicola reported on SPD’s parking enforcement officers (PEOs), whose labor contract with the City is in mediation and who are currently staging a “work slowdown.” Long-time readers will remember that the PEOs were moved from SPD to SDOT in 2020 in one of the only ways in which SPD was “defunded.” While the defunding of that move might not have been particularly meaningful, given the money was simply moved from one department to another for the same purpose, the switch in attitudes of PEOs might have been a true improvement. However, PEOs were moved back to SPD in 2023 in a win for SPD, which tends to want to retain as many functions (and as large a budget) as possible. PubliCola reminded me that the move back was intended to improve hiring and retention, which surprise, surprise, hasn’t panned out. 

PubliCola also reported that SPD has far overrun its overtime budget this year, another circumstance that should come as no surprise to long-time readers. 

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report in August on claims and lawsuits involving SPD, covering a period from 2019-2023. A few key takeaways:

  • Between 2014 and 2023, 172 lawsuits were filed involving SPD. Police action (61%) and police negligence involving the fleet (19%) were the most common. According to the report, fleet claims are “for incidents involving SPD vehicles, such as minor vehicle collisions or allegations of SPD drivers failing to operate a vehicle with due care for the safety of the public.”
  • Between 2021 and 2023, the City paid about $13 million in settlements involving SPD. In contrast, between 2014 and 2020, the City paid about $6 million in settlements involving SPD. 

Surveillance news:

Mountlake Terrace canceled their contract with Flock Safety for license plate readers, and Olympia suspended their Flock contract. 

Spokane has been using their Flock license plate readers to surveil protesters, which you might recall was another group of folks civil rights organizations and concerned citizens pointed out would be targeted and harmed by increased surveillance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has found many agencies across the country have been using similar surveillance on protesters.  

A Wisconsin sheriff’s department is using incredibly vague search terms while searching the Flock license plate reader database, a move that is likely to continue to spread as law enforcement agencies attempt to evade transparency around how they’re using these surveillance tools. 

The ACLU is pushing a new bill in the state legislature this year that would regulate the use of license plate readers in the state. I’ll be writing more about this bill, probably in January. 

A clarification: I’ve seen an increase lately in folks referring to “Flock cameras” to mean any kind of surveillance camera. Seattle, for example, does not have a contract for any Flock cameras, although it does have license plate readers and CCTV cameras. So when in doubt about what kind of camera, it’s always okay to simply say “surveillance camera” instead of specifying the brand name. 

King County and Washington State news:

The King County office of the ombuds has taken over the investigation of grants given by King County’s Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) to several community organizations for four different youth programs. The investigation began after an audit earlier this year.

Crisis Connections, the crisis care center in Kirkland, remains underutilized a year after opening. Their involuntary commitment unit is often full (which isn’t a required part of a King County crisis care center), but the center has served close to 4,000 unique patients in a bit over a year, while King County estimated each center should be able to serve 14,000 unique patients per year. 

Connections recently received the grant to run the crisis care center in Capitol Hill, and The Seattle Times reports they were one of three providers who applied to do so. 

At the state level, lawmakers are gearing up for next year’s legislative session in Olympia. In addition to the license plate reader bill referenced above, lawmakers are bringing forward a bill to ban face coverings for law enforcement officers. The federal government is suing California over a similar law, and if the federal government should succeed in their suit, the Washington law in question would only apply to state and local law enforcement, rendering it much less useful. 

As Washington State faces a budget deficit, Governor Bob Ferguson has said his upcoming budget proposal will balance that deficit with cuts instead of new revenue. But that declaration hasn’t stopped other lawmakers from making their own progressive revenue proposals:

  • Rep. Shaun Scott (D-43, Seattle) has proposed progressive revenue similar to Seattle’s JumpStart payroll tax, which is estimated to bring in over $2 billion per year. Scott wants to spend the funds on education, health care, and human service programs (planning for upcoming federal cuts in spending). 
  • Scott is also proposing to end a tax break for big banks in order to invest in the state’s wildfire mitigation fund, which was cut 50% earlier this year.
  • Rep. Julia Reed (D-36, Seattle) has proposed removing a tax rate cap on big tech companies in order to fund more higher education investments. 
  • Democrat lawmakers are interested in making changes to a new retail sales tax to reduce its impact on school districts. Republicans want to repeal the tax altogether. 
  • I’m hearing more and more rumblings about a state income tax. Here is the latest rumbling, in which House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon is quoted as saying an income tax isn’t something lawmakers should “shy away” from. 

Recent Headlines:

SPOG gets a great new contract while legal settlements related to SPD greatly increase Read More »

Will Katie Wilson be a Sea Change for Seattle?

/

Election News:

It feels like for the last week, it’s been all Seattle mayoral election, all the time! But it looks like Katie Wilson squeaked out the win in what is likely to be a sea change for Seattle. 

In other Seattle election results, Alexis Mercedes Rinck handily won reelection as a councilmember, and Dionne Foster beat incumbent Sara Nelson as the other city-wide councilmember. Eddie Lin beat Adonis Ducksworth for the D2 council seat. 

For Seattle City Attorney, Erika Evans beat Republican incumbent Ann Davison. I chatted with Evans on the phone a few days after the election, and we discussed her vision for the office. 

The new (and much larger) Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy passed, as did the B&O tax restructure championed by Rinck. The spending plan for the FEPP dollars will be decided next year, including whether any of those dollars will go to police in schools, so that will be something that bears watching.

In King County, Girmay Zahilay will take over as King County Executive, beating out Claudia Balducci, who will remain on the King County Council. Zahilay is vacating a seat on the council, so look for a replacement to be appointed soon. Otherwise, on the King County Council, it was an election for the incumbents, with the open seat in District 5 going to Steffanie Fain. 

I also want to give a shout-out to Burien! Their progressive slate of councilmember candidates all won their races.

You might also want to check out my colleague Ryan Packer’s article about 6 election bellweathers, which include a city council race in Bellevue in which incumbent Conrad Lee has finally been unseated after… 32 years.  

Seattle News:

I wrote an article about Mayor Bruce Harrell’s response to the threat of escalating ICE enforcement and the possibility of President Donald Trump sending the National Guard to Seattle. I discuss Harrell’s proposed law enforcement mask ban and Rinck’s proposed Statement of Legislative Intent that will require the Seattle Police Department to report on their implementation plan for the two executive orders. 

This is a tough one because looking around the country, it looks like the most impactful/successful resistance to ICE is coming directly from the streets. So far, responses from city and state governments have been less productive. 

Budget Chair Dan Strauss announced his 2026 budget balancing package. There was enough money for him to provide funding for each councilmember to address at least some of their priorities. The councilmembers will be voting on amendments to the balancing package this Friday, November 14. The amendments have not been released to the public as of publication of this newsletter, giving very little time for review.

The final budget vote is expected to be on Friday, November 21. 

There’s been a shakeup at SPD, with Chief Shon Barnes firing two of his top civilian command staff members: Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey and General Counsel Rebecca Boatright. It is unclear if the Mayor’s Office was involved in this decision in any way. This might mark a preference to move away from civilianization at SPD, a position that would certainly make the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) happy. 

Barnes also named Captain Jim Britt as the new commander of the East Precinct. Britt was formerly in charge of SPD’s real time crime center, and I haven’t yet heard who will be taking his place in such a highly technical role. 

It looks like it might not be just SPD that has a problem mistreating their women employees. The Seattle Fire Department’s (SFD) former head of human resources, Sarah Lee, has filed a $2.5 million claim against the department. Lee, who was fired in September, says she was let go in retaliation for standing up to workplace misconduct and discrimination against women in the department. Her claim contains details of 14 different allegations.

The Seattle Times wrote, “Lee’s filing speaks of a department that broadly mistreats women.”

Lastly, this afternoon, city council voted to confirm Bonnie Glenn as the new director of the Office of Police Accountability OPA). This is a bit surprising as in the past, the public has been able to hear from finalist candidates for the OPA director position and submit their questions to potentially be answered. This time there’s been no public engagement that I’m aware of and the appointment is simply being rushed through. 

However, the appointment of Glenn is only for a one-year term (until the end of 2026) to complete the term of former director Gino Betts. Wilson will be able to select her own candidate if she so chooses for a term beginning in 2027. 

My journalist colleague Glen Stellmacher has some direct and concerning experience with Glenn in her role as the interim OPA director. He says he had to file a bar complaint against Glenn before she would begin an investigation about an SPD intelligence officer who “knowingly lied to investigators about SPD’s use of informants during the 2020 protests.”

King County and WA State News:

King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda has a few interesting addendums to the 2026-2027 county budget that made it into the budget striker. One proviso will require the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO) to provide data on reoffending rates for youth subject to traditional prosecution. This data will allow a more meaningful analysis of the recidivism rates for youth participating in diversion programs. 

Mosqueda has a second proviso that will require the creation of a master list of surveillance technology being used by any King County department. She is interested in such a list as her office works to develop a surveillance technology ordinance for the county. 

On the state level, the Senate Democratic Caucus is discussing the idea of a “millionaires tax.” The proposal being discussed would levy a 9.9% tax on adjusted gross income over $1 million. The Democrats would have to pass this new tax during an election year, however, and Governor Bob Ferguson has proven to be resistant thus far to passing progressive taxes, having quashed the much-discussed wealth tax earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Senator June Robinson, the Democrat’s chief budget writer, has told her colleagues not to put in any new requests for funding for 2026. Since Ferguson approved the state’s budget in the spring, revenue forecasts have been grim and there is likely to be a large shortfall to deal with in the short legislative session this winter. 

Ferguson will submit his budget proposal in December in advance of the legislative session in January.

I do have an article coming out very soon (maybe tomorrow morning?) with more about license plate surveillance being used for immigration enforcement across Washington state, a recent Public Records Act lawsuit, and more, so keep an eye out for that. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Will Katie Wilson be a Sea Change for Seattle? Read More »

City Council begins budget gymnastics as alternative response in Seattle takes another blow from the new SPOG contract

/

My Recent Stories:

First up, we have my Urbanist story documenting the saga of King County’s pre-filing youth diversion program Restorative Community Pathways, which King County Executive Shannon Braddock is planning to replace with a new program. I’ve been following this story for some months and was just waiting for the Impact Justice evaluation to be released before writing it up. However, it turned out to be so complex that I think this is the longest story to date I’ve published at The Urbanist. I haven’t seen this covered in this depth at any other outlet thus far, and I hope you’ll take the time to have a read. 

Last week the new SPOG contract was announced, and I combed through it so you don’t have to. Several aspects of this new contract surprised me, but perhaps most of all, I was surprised it wasn’t more favorable for the City, given the timing of its release only two weeks before the mayoral election. The continued hindrance of the SPOG contract on the CARE alternative response team’s ability to do their jobs is particularly noteworthy. 

Finally, I wrote about the recent King County Department of Public Defense report on Seattle’s 2023 drug criminalization ordinance and the folks being brought into the criminal legal system as a direct result of it. I also provide an update on the SODA order numbers. 

Seattle News:

In Seattle, much of the news is either budget or election related. 

The fall revenue forecast came out, and it was better than anticipated (certainly better than I thought it would be!) However, given all the recent tech layoffs and federal government worker furloughs, as well as the potential for the AI investment bubble to burst and continued uncertainty around tariffs, I do wonder if the adopted forecast might end up being a little rosier than what we’ll actually see in 2026. But I certainly hope to be wrong! 

That being said, the Seattle City Council has very little money to play with in terms of allocating spending to their own priorities in the 2026 budget, and we see this tension very starkly in all the new spending proposed by councilmembers’ proposed amendments this week. Councilmembers are suggesting spending many millions more than are available, which will mean either most of these amendments will be jettisoned or other cuts in the budget will have to be made. 

We’ll have to wait and see which amendments make it into Budget Chair Dan Strauss’s balancing package when he releases it next Wednesday. You can view the full agendas for previous budget meetings, including lists of the proposed amendments, here, here, and here. You can also find the agenda for the October 17 meeting, which included Central Staff issue considerations for SPD, SFD, CARE, and HSD.

Councilmembers are proposing budget additions of almost $3 million to SPD and $21.7 million to HSD, as well as several million to the fire department to expand Health One, among other priorities. Councilmember Bob Kettle has proposed moving LEAD, Co-LEAD, and We Deliver Care contracts from HSD directly to the CARE department, which involves a financial transfer between the two city departments. 

Councilmembers have also requested some reporting, including three reports I’d really like to see: one that would require SPD to report on federal immigration enforcement policies (co-sponsored by every councilmember except Council President Sara Nelson); one that would require SPD ​​to provide quarterly reports on staffing, overtime, and performance metrics; and one that would require IT to provide a series of reports on the City’s investments in and uses of AI. 

Also noteworthy, as reporting from PubliCola discussed, is a whopping 30% increase in the Office of Economic Development’s (OED) budget proposed by Mayor Bruce Harrell. An interesting facet of this is that the director of OED has donated to Harrell’s reelection campaign and sent an email soliciting city workers’ personal email addresses, which he gave to Harrell’s campaign manager. 

In other news, King County’s “Health Through Housing’s” Sharyn Grayson House, a 35-unit supportive housing unit in Capitol Hill run by the Lavender Rights Project with support from Chief Seattle Club, is ready to receive residents. 

Worth reading is an opinion piece in Real Change by Marigold Green, who is both a sex worker and a sex trafficking survivor who breaks down the City of Seattle’s recently announced awards for funding for sex trafficking prevention, which Green says has anti-sex-work implications. 

Surveillance News:

Last week, the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights published a report about Flock Safety’s surveillance privacy gaps in Washington State, including license plate reader data shared with U.S. Border Patrol/ICE. Local cities found to be sharing data with Border Patrol included Auburn and Renton. The report’s release triggered several Washington police departments to “change” their surveillance programs, per The Seattle Times. 

On a personal note, one of my surveillance articles for The Urbanist was mentioned in the report, and I’m glad to see awareness of these surveillance issues continue to grow, as is evinced by Rachel Maddow speaking about federal surveillance via cell phone for several minutes on MSNBC on Monday. 

Recent Headlines:

City Council begins budget gymnastics as alternative response in Seattle takes another blow from the new SPOG contract Read More »

The City of Seattle is watching you

/

Surveillance News:

First off, I’ll share my piece on Seattle’s surveillance expansion. City Council passed the legislation to implement this expansion on a 7-2 vote on Tuesday. Yesterday I heard about a website that some concerned citizens put up with a good round-up of media coverage of the vote.

Lavender Rights Project, Seattle Pride, and the Seattle DSA have made social media posts against the expansion. Lavender Rights Project wrote, “Lavender Rights Project is located directly within the zone of this projected surveillance expansion. Yet no impact analysis was conducted, nor was robust effort made to engage with our staff, or the communities we represent–those who will be most affected by these decisions. This disregard highlights exactly whose safety is prioritized, and whose lives are put at risk.”

This flier was also spotted in Capitol Hill:

In other surveillance news, DivestSPD found that state and federal law enforcement officers are sharing license plate data on obscure Seattle police email lists. 

The Intercept reported on how the company Fusus connected City of Seattle officials, including Claudia Gross-Shader from the Auditor’s Office, to a man, Marshall Freeman, who they introduced as the deputy chief administrative officer of the Atlanta Police Department. What Fusus neglected to tell the City was that Freeman is a member of their board and owns a small share of the company. The City didn’t find out until recently; in the meantime, Seattle bought Fusus’s real-time crime center software for an estimated price of $1.8 million. 

The kicker? “Gross-Shader also noted that the city had not seen research demonstrating the ability of Fusus’s technology to play a significant role in reducing retail theft, the issue that originally brought her to look into the company.”

Flock Safety, known for its extensive nationwide network of license plate readers, has rolled out a new feature that analyzes driving patterns to determine “suspicious” behavior and flag people as potential participants in organized crime. The ACLU writes about several reasons why this is concerning.

Forest Park, a city in Illinois, gave U.S. Customs and Border Patrol access to their license plate data. This example is noteworthy because Forest Park doesn’t use Flock Safety license plate readers, which have been garnering a lot of press recently. Their license plate readers are provided by Motorola Solutions, showing the dangers of this technology aren’t a matter of a single problematic vendor. 

Finally, Waymo self-driving cars are now being tested in the Seattle area. I know self-driving cars are a controversial issue and there are many big fans of the technology out there, but I would be remiss not to point out the surveillance capabilities of these vehicles, with LAPD and other police departments obtaining surveillance footage from these cars and using it as evidence. You can read 404 Media’s reporting about that here.  

Seattle News:

Earlier this month, I wrote about the opening of the new post-overdose stabilization ORCA center across from the King County courthouse. DESC, the organization that runs the new center, is also pioneering a different medicine treatment protocol for opioid addiction that thus far seems to be easier for people to tolerate. 

Last week, Seattle’s long-lasting consent decree finally came to an end. Mayor Bruce Harrell also announced he expects to finish negotiating a new contract with SPOG by the end of the year, about which he is very optimistic. We’ll see what he trades away to keep the CARE responders in existence. 

Harrell announced that as of the first day of school, the City has now hired more than 40 additional mental and behavioral health professionals across Seattle Public Schools (SPS) middle and high schools, for a total of over 60 mental health staff. You can read the press release about safety measures at SPS here.

Speaking of SPS, there will be a key board meeting on Wednesday, September 17 at 4:15pm where school board members are expected to vote on a pilot bringing a police officer back into Garfield High School.

Today Harrell announced $1.7 million in awards to expand services for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). Organizations that received awards are the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, the Seattle Indian Health Board, Real Escape from the Sex Trade (REST), and Consejo Counseling and Referral Service. Notably absent from the list is one of former Councilmember Cathy Moore’s favorite providers, The More We Love.

King County and Washington State news:

This week, the King County Council voted in favor of moving forward the process of buying and opening a crisis care center in Capitol Hill. 

Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu announced her retirement at the end of the year. Governor Bob Ferguson will appoint a replacement to serve until an election next year, where candidates will run to finish Yu’s term, which goes until the end of 2028. 

Washington Supreme Court justices are required to retire the year they turn 75 years old. Associate Chief Justice Charles Johnson will be turning 75 in 2026, and Justice Barbara Madsen will be turning 75 in 2027. With three Supreme Court seats up for grabs in the next few years, these upcoming judicial elections will shape the future of Washington state. 

Recent Headlines:

The City of Seattle is watching you Read More »

SPOG President says DC is a “blueprint” of Trump’s future public safety actions across the nation

/

Surveillance News:

Seattle’s public safety committee passed its surveillance expansion proposal out of committee before the council’s summer recess. We are expecting a final vote on the proposal on Tuesday, September 9 at 2pm. As usual, public comment will be heard at the beginning of this meeting. 

I went onto Hacks & Wonks to discuss this surveillance expansion further, as well as how it ties into the greater federal surveillance expansion, so keep an eye out for that episode later this week. 

For now, I’ll give you a little preview. President Donald Trump announced the federal takeover of the Washington DC police department the day before the Seattle committee vote on the surveillance expansion was taken. Reporting shows that there is now most likely federal control over DC’s real time crime center. Right now that surveillance can help the feds with their immigration crackdown in DC, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this surveillance data can be used to accomplish, particularly for a federal government that is rapidly moving into authoritarianism. That Seattle might somehow be uniquely immune to this attempt is wishful thinking at best.

Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) President Mike Solan recently had the D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton on his podcast to discuss the situation in DC. Pemberton said the police in DC welcome the intervention by the feds, and Solan clearly supported Trump’s actions in this regard as well. 

Solan said, “Pay attention to what’s happening in the District of Columbia because it is the blueprint of what you’re going to see nationwide when it comes to the Trump administration’s public safety actions.”

Solan is elected by a majority of SPD’s rank and file to represent them.

In Seattle, CCTV security footage (private cameras in this case, as opposed to the cameras owned by SPD) led to the incorrect arrest of an innocent man for an arson in Wallingford. He was held in jail for a month before his case was resolved. His defense attorneys called the SPD’s actions in this case a “rushed and racist misidentification.”

In other surveillance news, it turns out US Customs and Border Patrol has had direct access to Flock Safety’s license plate reader database through a “federal pilot program.” Flock says it has now paused all federal pilots. 

Over at Cascade PBS, Nate Sanford is doing a deep dive on local governments’ usage of ChatGPT. The two stories focus on Bellingham and Everett, as they responded more quickly to public record requests than other cities such as Seattle.

Seattle News:

A new pilot bringing a police officer back to Garfield High School might be beginning soon. The school board is expected to vote on the issue at their September 17 meeting. 

Mayor Bruce Harrell provided the necessary letter of support that allows the crisis care center in Capitol Hill to move forward. 

SPOG has donated $350 to Ann Davison’s reelection campaign for Seattle City Attorney. New reporting at PubliCola says that Davison has failed to live up to her campaign promises made when she first ran back in 2021. 

Real Change reported that SPD spent almost twice as much on legal settlements as had been budgeted between 2014 and 2024. The amount SPD has gone over budget has increased a great deal since 2020. 

DivestSPD reported that almost 400 SPD officers made more than $200,000 in 2024. 76 officers made more than $300,000. 

King County News:

King County is significantly expanding its youth mobile crisis teams from two teams up to nine. 

Candidate for King County Executive (and current Councilmember) Claudia Balducci said she’s planning to introduce a measure to use part of the county’s recently passed 0.1% public safety sales tax bump in order to create a retail crimes task force. Kroger recently decided to shut down a Fred Meyer in Kent (and also one in Lake City), a decision that some people are attributing to shoplifting. Balducci’s opponent Girmay Zahilay, along with UFCW 3000 (the grocery workers union), question whether this is really the primary reason for the store closures.

The King County council passed the county’s public safety sales tax, which is a regressive tax that hits poorer people harder, in order to deal with the county’s upcoming budget deficit. However, there might be a bit of money left over from the tax, and a big question during the county’s budget season will be how this extra money will be spent. King County’s public health programs and clinics, as well as its behavioral health services, are expected to be hard hit financially by federal policy changes. One possible use of any extra dollars could be bridging some of these new and expected funding gaps.

Recent Headlines: 

SPOG President says DC is a “blueprint” of Trump’s future public safety actions across the nation Read More »