less lethal weapons

Social housing Prop 1A is a major progressive victory in Seattle

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Seattle News:

Good news first! Prop 1A to fund social housing has passed with a resounding 20-point lead. Congratulations to everyone who put in so much hard work into helping this pass.

As I said on Bluesky, “House Our Neighbors and their two social housing initiatives are an inspiring example of the kind of progressive victory and progress we can achieve in Seattle without compromising our values or appeasing big business.”

On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council voted to pass the less lethal weapons legislation (which includes SPD use of blast balls). Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Joy Hollingsworth, and Cathy Moore voted no. 

Moore tried again to put some limits on mutual aid (help SPD gets from other law enforcement agencies) by requiring said mutual aid to agree to comply with Seattle’s crowd control policies–which, given the policing would be taking place in Seattle, seems eminently reasonable–but even Hollingsworth voted this amendment down. 

Reading the first sentence in PubliCola’s article about the decision is illustrative: “The Seattle City Council approved legislation yesterday that retroactively authorizes the Seattle Police Department to adopt its own policies governing how officers can use “less lethal” weapons such as pepper spray, foam-tipped bullets, and blast balls—rubber grenades that can cause serious, even life-threatening injuries when they explode.’” The bolding is mine. 

The Urbanist ran a first-person account by MJ Jurgensen (they/them), who was permanently injured by a blast ball deployed during a Seattle protest in 2020. 

Another lawsuit was filed against SPD by SPD Lt. John O’Neil, alleging discrimination and retaliation. O’Neil has experienced quite a saga for more than two years being bounced around SPD. Four of the people identified in his lawsuit were the same four women who brought their own lawsuit against SPD last year. 

The Washington Supreme Court decided that the SPD officers who attended the January 6, 2021 rally in Washington DC can be identified by name. Their names are Jacob Briskey, Jason Marchione, Alexander Everett, Caitlin Rochelle-Everett, Michael Settle, and Scotty Bach. The Everetts were fired by SPD for the part they played at the insurrection.

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office has said they will finally allow an elected municipal court judge, Judge Pooja Vaddadi, to hear criminal cases again. It has been almost a year since Natalie Walton-Anderson’s March 1 memo stating that the office would be filing a blanket affidavit of prejudice over all future criminal cases for Vaddadi. The memo cited three specific cases involving Vaddadi, about which Ashley Nerbovig wrote, “The case facts appear to deviate from the claims made by the CAO in their memo.” 

In spite of this change, not enough cases have been restored to Vaddadi for her to resume her previous role.

King County News:

The lawsuit against Burien brought by the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness had a hearing today. The lawsuit is regarding Burien’s homeless camping law.

I wrote a piece for The Urbanist about Kirkland’s new 24/7 drop-in mental health crisis center–Connections Kirkland–that opened last summer. King County announced this week that Connections Kirkland has been selected to be one of the five crisis centers supported by the crisis care levy. 

Washington State News:

The Legislative Black Caucus, which represents 14 state lawmakers, has some concerns about Governor Bob Ferguson’s $100 million police officer hiring grant program. 

Rep. Kristine Reeves, the Chair of the caucus, told The Washington State Standard, “We’ve spent the last five years trying to repair the harm done over law enforcement investments in communities where real people have been harmed, and particularly Black people have been harmed,” she said. “We want to make it clear that we are equally prepared to have hard conversations about how we prioritize community investments.”

The caucus would like to see equal investment for social services and other supportive community programs as is made into the police grants. They particularly support more investment in the Community Reinvestment Project that was originally created in 2022. 

In Praise:

I recently read If We Burn, a book by journalist Vincent Bevins, covering societal uprisings from 2010-2020, which occurred right as social media was becoming mainstream. I thought its many awards and positive reviews were very well deserved, so if you have some reading time, you might want to check it out. 

Recent Headlines:

Social housing Prop 1A is a major progressive victory in Seattle Read More »

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 »

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 »

“Prince” Diaz out, Barnes in, and the outgoing governor wants to tax the rich

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Housekeeping:

As we reach the end of 2024, I’d like to thank you for joining me for another year of local news, politics, and analysis. And a special thank you to my financial supporters on Patreon, who help to cover Notes from the Emerald City’s hosting fees. 

I’ll be taking the next two weeks off to rest, rejuvenate, and get ready for whatever 2025 brings! I hope all of you have a wonderful end to 2024. 

Seattle News:

I had two stories out in The Urbanist this week: one is an interview with Seattle City Attorney candidate Rory O’Sullivan, and the other is an analysis of the new less lethal weapon crowd control legislation being voted on by Seattle City Council next month.

Big news this week is that Mayor Bruce Harrell fired former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz, who was removed as Chief earlier this year and given a “special assignment” within SPD, continuing to collect his generous salary. You can read about the whole sordid saga at The Stranger, PubliCola, two articles at The Seattle Times, two articles at KUOW, Cascade PBS, or you can go straight to the source and read the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation report.

Diaz had “an intimate or romantic relationship” with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, who he hired and directly supervised. Tompkins didn’t have previous law enforcement experience. A romantic card written by Tompkins featuring an Ewok was found, in which Tompkins compared Diaz to a Disney prince and talked about his kiss. 

How to express true love

Investigators also found multiple SPD employees who said Diaz often talked and bragged about having a sexual relationship with Tompkins. 

The relationship and Diaz’s denials of it violated several SPD policies. Harrell fired Diaz as a result of the investigation’s findings. 

In June, soon after he had been demoted, Diaz went on Jason Rantz’s talk show and said he was “a gay Latino man” to defuse rumors of the romantic relationship with Tompkins. Diaz is now denying allegations of the affair with Tompkins and saying the investigation was flawed.

KUOW also published an interesting piece on how they broke and developed this story.

In another SPD shake-up, SPD Deputy Chief Eric Barden, interim Chief Sue Rahr’s second in command, announced his retirement last Friday, effective immediately. Rahr said Barden is leaving after 38 years to take care of his sick mother. You might remember Barden from a controversy earlier this year when it came out he’d been accused of domestic violence and had allegedly asked a Pierce County deputy to lie about it, a move that resulted in him being placed on the Brady list for dishonest police officers. 

Rahr is appointing Assistant Chief Yvonne Underwood as acting deputy chief and will soon appoint Capt. Lori Aagard to be the acting assistant chief over professional standards.

In MORE big news, Harrell has announced the new permanent SPD Chief: Shon Barnes, the police chief of Madison, Wisconsin, who got some press this week after a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison left three dead. Barnes will need to be confirmed by the City Council before assuming leadership of SPD. You can read more about it at The Seattle Times, Cascade PBS, KUOW, and the City’s press release. 

I will note three red flags that go along with this news. First, there was no public process that went along with the selection of the new Chief. While the public process has often seemed performative to me in the past, I think not having it at all is an unfortunate step in the wrong direction. 

Second, it sounds like Barnes is a proponent of police in schools. In fact, Barnes was at one time a history teacher, and talking to the school resource officer at his school at the time played a role in his decision to enter policing. School resource officers were removed from Seattle Public Schools in 2020 in response to the George Floyd protests. 

Third, Erica Barnett of PubliCola found a 2022 article from Madison about its disparity of arrests: “Less than 7% of Madison’s population is African-American, but Blacks made up 47 percent of those arrested during the first quarter of this year.”

In other news, the CARE alternative response expansion is running behind schedule. Originally CARE was supposed to be covering the entire city by the end of the year. Now it sounds like they won’t be covering that much area until the end of June.

There is more news in the case of SPD Officer Kevin Dave, thanks to The Stranger: “On Wednesday, Seattle Police Officer Kevin Dave admitted to driving negligently when he struck and killed 23-year-old college student Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk last year. In exchange for Dave admitting to the citation, agreeing to pay a $5,000 fine, and attending driving school, the Seattle City Attorney’s Office (CAO) asked the court to waive a 90-day license suspension for Dave.”

The Office of the Inspector General released an audit this week of “Disciplinary Determinations for SPD Sworn Personnel.” PubliCola reported it found that the majority of the time, officers receiving discipline have punishments at the minimum or below of recommended punishment, due to Diaz’s decisions. The same finding was in the 2021 audit, meaning previous Chiefs leaned in a similar direction discipline-wise. It will be interesting to see if Shon Barnes bucks the trend in this regard. PubliCola reports: “The audit also found that there is still a massive backlog of 106 officer appeals awaiting arbitration, with most of those (82) still unresolved since the 2021 audit.”

Washington State News:

Governor Jay Inslee is going out with a bang by proposing a state wealth tax, a 1% annual tax on worldwide wealth of more than $100 million. Just to be clear, anyone who has more than $100 million is very, VERY rich. He is also proposing to raise taxes on businesses, with a temporary 20% tax increase on about 20,000 businesses with high revenues, followed by a 10% across-the-board business tax increase. 

Here is a flavor of the arguments in favor of the wealth tax and against the wealth tax. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this in 2025. 

Inslee’s budget also includes $5.5 million for additional security for Seattle during the World Cup in June of 2026.

Recent Headlines:

“Prince” Diaz out, Barnes in, and the outgoing governor wants to tax the rich Read More »

Seattle revisits less lethal weapons after SPD received 15,000 complaints in 2020

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Seattle News:

On Tuesday, Seattle’s public safety committee met to discuss SPD’s 30×30 initiative to hire more women officers and the new proposed less lethal weapons legislation transmitted from the Mayor’s Office. 

In the presentation and discussion about 30×30, topics discussed included providing more mentorship opportunities for women, providing places for them to pump breast milk, and providing more flexible childcare options. But what was more striking was what was not discussed, namely, the findings in last year’s 30×30 report that SPD is often a toxic working environment for women due to harassment and an old boys’ culture. Indeed, women officers said they wouldn’t recommend other women join the department.

The less lethal weapons legislation would allow SPD to use less lethal weapons when SPD officers judge there is imminent physical risk of injury to anyone or significant property damage. As written, it would allow any officers ranked lieutenant or higher to be able to authorize crowd dispersal. It removes the private right of action for people injured by crowd control weapons; while there are state and federal rights to sue, they are less robust and make taking legal action more difficult. It also allows SPD to begin using newly developed weapons and change their crowd control policy without any outside oversight.  

SPD’s current draft crowd control policy is in conflict with two pieces of legislation about less lethal weapons from 2020 and 2021; even though neither of those ordinances were able to go into effect, the City can’t submit the crowd control policy to the Court overseeing the consent decree until and unless they resolve the discrepancies. City leaders are pushing for this new legislation to be passed in the expectation that they will then finally be released from the consent decree.

Councilmember Cathy Moore expressed concerns about this new legislation, particularly about the use of blast balls and relying on SPD policy instead of having fortifying legislation. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who does not sit on the public safety committee but was attending the meeting, also expressed concerns.

Any amendments to this bill will most likely be due before the council’s winter recess, meaning by Friday, December 20. The bill will be heard in committee again on Tuesday, January 14, with a possible full council vote as early as Tuesday, January 21. 

You can read more coverage on this legislation here and here. 

Meanwhile, people are responding to Councilmember Tammy Morales’s announcement last week that she is resigning from the council effective next year. An op-ed ran in The Stranger this week, entitled Tammy Morales’s Resignation Exposes a Pattern of Institutional Abuse Against Southeast Seattle Electeds. And The South Seattle Emerald interviewed Morales: here is an interesting quote: 

“According to Morales, the silencing of District 2 constituents is disenfranchising the South End. “It’s not just anti-democratic, it’s also disenfranchising the South End. It’s one thing for me, as a duly elected member of the city’s council, to not be able to get my work done on behalf of my constituents — that’s one thing. It is also an issue, though, when community members show up in chambers and are also gaslit, which is what’s happening,” explained Morales. “There is no acknowledgment that [City Council’s] behavior, their proposals, are leading to this dissatisfaction. Instead, constituents get blamed for being misinformed or just confused or disrespectful. That is the classic definition of gaslighting — manipulating [by] not acknowledging that it was [the council’s] own behavior that led to this in the first place, and just blaming the public.””

Since the Seattle Fire Department’s new Buprenorphine Pilot Program began, 48 patients have been treated with buprenorphine.  

In the seemingly never-ending stream of legal action brought against the City related to the Seattle Police Department, SPD Lt. John O’Neill brought a tort claim against the City last week saying he’s experienced discrimination and retaliation by command staff and leaders. O’Neill was a named party in the lawsuit filed by four women SPD officers alleging gender discrimination and sexual harassment this past summer. The Seattle Times reports that “the claim says interim police Chief Sue Rahr, Deputy Chief Eric Barden and “several other members” of police leadership and of the K-9, media and crime scene investigations units were involved in or witnessed the treatment alleged by O’Neil.”

The Seattle Times had an interesting article this week about results of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s downtown activation plan, which appears to have moved many unhoused people and drug-seeking people to the Chinatown International District (CID) instead. There is speculation that folks might ultimately try to return to “the Jungle,” the greenbelts south of the CID, which were cleared out in 2016. The state later fenced off most of these greenways in an effort to remove homeless encampments. 

King County and WA State News:

The next WA state legislative session begins in January, and a few gun control efforts are being lined up now; namely, putting an excise tax on bullets and firearms, passing a permit-to-purchase bill, banning open-carry in parks and public buildings, and Governor-elect Ferguson’s idea of a gun buyback program.

In good news, gun violence in Seattle and King County is on the decline this year, following national trends. But it is still a pressing problem.

There is a lack of detox beds for teenagers in Washington State. There is currently no law guaranteeing youth have access to detox programs. As a result of this dearth, many kids end up trying to detox at home with their families instead. The Seattle Times found there are currently only two detox beds for youths available state-wide.

Recent Headlines:

Seattle revisits less lethal weapons after SPD received 15,000 complaints in 2020 Read More »

More ghost cops found in Seattle’s budget as Council wonders how their “new crimes” will impact expenses

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Seattle News:

On Monday, the budget committee heard issue identification presentations from their Central Staff on SPD (memo), the CARE department (memo), SFD, and LAW (memo), which in addition to the City Attorney’s Office also included issues related to the Seattle Municipal Court (SMC). 

SPD:

It turns out there are more ghost cop positions than SPD’s Executive Director of Budget and Finance Angela Socci admitted to in SPD’s budget presentation a few weeks ago. Who would have thought! A reminder that SPD Captain James Britt also gave extremely misleading statements a few months ago about SPD’s current real time crime center, saying it had never been operational when there is proof it was being used back in 2020. 

Central Staff identified 35 additional ghost cop positions in the proposed budget, which account for an additional $6.5 million per year. In the proposal, SPD has 1076 FTE funded for sworn officers, but based on their hiring and separation estimates won’t be able to get past 1041 FTE. 

Per Greg Doss from Central Staff, 154 FTE from SPD were immediately not funded, 23 FTE were unfunded to put $4.3 million back into the General Fund, and 23 FTE were unfunded to provide $4.3 million for more SPD overtime. This is how the 1076 number was reached.

SPD is also receiving an additional $10 million in overtime for “emphasis patrols” in 2025, but that amount is not yet included in the 2026 budget. Doss suggested Council might want to spend the newly found $6.5 million on providing $10 million in additional overtime in 2026. 

No mention was made of the $1.5 million for hiring bonuses that Socci had indicated in the previous SPD presentation was also being funded by salary savings. 

Council President Sara Nelson said the council has “created a few new crimes” and wondered why overtime wasn’t projected to go up even further as a result. 

The parking enforcement officers (PEO) also have 19-20 vacant positions (out of a total 104). One suggestion was to use some (or all?) of this salary savings to fund two new training positions to help streamline the PEO hiring and training process. 

Council also discussed SPD’s 30×30 initiative, which has a goal to hire more women officers at SPD. There will be a more detailed presentation on this initiative at the end of the year after budget season is over. Possible measures being discussed are more flexible work schedules and flexible round-the-clock child care. 

Councilmember Robert Kettle took the opportunity to once again blame the previous council for current staffing at SPD.

CARE:

Central Staff explained that the CARE dual dispatch has been difficult to implement because the CARE team is designed to respond to Priority 3 and 4 calls, but they have been located in places with a large call load of Priority 1 and 2 calls. This means officers aren’t available to be on the scene for the lower level calls, preventing CARE from doing anything but sitting around and waiting for them, often for so long that they are no longer needed once SPD arrives. 

Thus far CARE has only been dispatched less than twice per month. They are more often requested as a secondary response, often to provide transport. 

However, starting on October 8, CARE made operational changes to proactively drive around and respond to “quasi-medical calls,” increasing their activity. However, Health One will soon begin responding to behavioral health calls so there is some confusion as to the distinction between Health One and the CARE team.

The CARE team has been limited to the dual dispatch model due to the SPOG contract. 

Another policy consideration was related to data collection by CARE, which isn’t as robust as hoped, at least partly because the team is being dispatched so infrequently. The council is considering a state of legislative intent (SLI) to have CARE develop more robust data collection.

A new Seattle Restoration Director position is also being added to CARE. This person, who has already been hired, is coordinating the work done by the Downtown Activation Team (DAT) and might have a much expanded role in future to help re-envision 911 response in the city with the potential for many different services/people to be dispatchable. 

Kettle said the City needs to take SPD from being so central to its public safety response. He mentioned the roles that public health and public services have to play in public safety overall,

LAW and SMC:

LAW is worried because they will potentially be losing two civil attorney positions and one criminal attorney position in 2025. In addition to keeping that criminal attorney, they’d like to hire an additional “floating prosecutor.” 

Central Staff also identified that additional funding for implementation of new policies enacted in 2024 such as SOAP, SODA, the new street racing ordinance, the re-criminalization of prostitution loitering, and the new SCORE jail contract, has not been included in Harrell’s proposed budget. 

SMC has said they will probably need an additional $196,000 in 2025 and $520,000 in 2026 to transport defendants to and from the SCORE jail. Otherwise they would need to spend even more money for a new judicial department that could manage all the virtual hearings for those housed at SCORE. 

Kettle said he is worried about the health of the “criminal justice system.”

Other Seattle News:

The city council also received the updated revenue forecast for 2025, which was mixed. JumpStart and REET revenue looks like it will be slightly up, but General Fund revenues will be down by around $20 million (driven by lower sales and B&O taxes), a further gap for the city council to fill. 

This week the new police officer training academy in Arlington celebrated a soft opening. The facility is expected to be open fully by 2025 and could speed up training times for police officers.

The results of the gender-based violence prevention services investment passed in the 2024 budget have finally been announced. 

The Stranger drills down deeper on the new less lethal weapons legislation being proposed by Harrell, including a lift on the blast ball ban. You can read some of the justification being presented for this proposal in my consent decree article from last week. 

A Washington state defense attorney, John Sheeran, has been indicted for allegedly smuggling drugs into the King County Jail. Drugs he is accused of smuggling include methamphetamine, ketamine, buprenorphine, and THC. He was the defense attorney who initially represented Ed Troyer, the Sheriff of Pierce County, in the suit regarding the Black newspaper carrier. Troyer is not running for reelection this year.  

The Seattle Student Union is asking for more money in the Seattle budget for student mental health services and also wants a student advisory council to be established to have a larger voice in how any money is spent. 

Other Stories:

Austin Field writes about the new public defender caseload standards that are currently being considered by the state Supreme Court. He argues that public defenders are the main line of defense against law enforcement vigilantism. He writes: “To be clear, reducing public defender workloads isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats or even prosecutors versus defenders—some prosecutors acknowledge the need for better public defense. This caseload fight is about democracy versus authoritarianism.”

You can provide public comment to the Court about this matter here. 

Meanwhile, a Washington state watchdog office recently published a report finding that prisoners in solitary confinement in Washington state aren’t receiving basic quality-of-life care and are subject to “dehumanizing and traumatizing” restraint practices. 

Unsurprisingly the Washington Department of Corrections argues that they need more money to make progress on their goals related to solitary confinement. 

The Washington State Standard reports:

 “But Seevers, with Disability Rights Washington, said that there are several easy policy changes that the agency can make to reduce solitary confinement without additional funding, such as raising the standard of proof for infractions, as people are often put in solitary confinement while awaiting a decision on disciplinary action. “DOC has demonstrated that they’re not going to make changes unless there’s a legislative mandate for them to do so,” Seevers said.” 

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Seattle City Council considers undoing more of the work of their predecessors

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This time their focus is on the JumpStart spending plan, participatory budgeting, and less lethal weapon legislation.

Seattle News:

First off, this week Judge James Robart held his annual hearing to determine the status of Seattle’s consent decree. I wrote about it in detail here. Of note, the Mayor’s Office just transmitted new legislation to the City Council that would replace the less lethal weapons ordinances passed in 2020 and 2021 in response to SPD’s violence during the George Floyd protests. 

This new legislation would remove the personal right of action from people harmed from less lethal weapons, allow mutual aid partners (law enforcement agencies other than SPD who come into Seattle to help out) to use less lethal weapons, and leave it up to the discretion of SPD policy as to which particular less lethal weapons they can use. It complies with the state law about the proper use of tear gas and adds a few additional restrictions. 

During the consent decree hearing, Judge Robart praised the OIG, their work, and their independence. But a recent article in The Urbanist questioned that very independence, as an OIG-planned audit on policies of use of SPD mutual aid was ultimately downgraded to a short review.

This week the Seattle City Council has started their budget issue identification meetings. You can look at presentations about JumpStart, HSD (memo), the Unified Care Team, and Participatory Budgeting (memo), among others. Presentations on SPD, the CARE team, Seattle Fire Department (SFD), and the City Attorney’s Office (LAW) will be given on Monday.

I’ll be writing more about the newly proposed JumpStart legislation soon, but in a nutshell, the new legislation would add the General Fund as an approved use of JumpStart funds (along with the original purposes of affordable housing, Green New Deal, equitable development, and small business, and newly added student mental health). Further, the legislation would do away with any percentage mandates for each category. In practice, what this means is that in future, the Mayor and/or Council could use 100% of JumpStart dollars for General Fund purposes.

For participatory budgeting, the public voted on six different projects that are to receive $27.3 million worth of funding. During this budgeting season, the Council needs to pass legislation to implement the program and allow the funds to be appropriated to the relevant departments. Otherwise, the projects won’t go forward as planned.  

You can read my live tweets of this meeting here. Councilmembers expressed concerns that the chosen projects do not obviously benefit Black communities as much as they think they should. They expressed particular confusion over the presence of the CARE alternative response team expansion as one of the projects, apparently forgetting that one of the reasons advocates originally wanted alternative 911 response was to limit the interactions of BIPOC community members with the police, especially given SPD’s history of biased policing. 

On the other hand, some councilmembers expressed the need to fulfill commitments made to community since 2020. To go back now on projects that the community voted on in a City-approved process would be quite a bold decision that would likely lead to the erosion of community trust. 

However, councilmembers did ask about the possibility of only funding some of the projects voted for by community. Budget Chair Strauss suggested the possibility of adding funds to include more dollars for projects that would benefit communities of color. 

During the HSD presentation, councilmembers had some questions about the $2 million allocated for commercial sexual exploitation interventions. There was a suggestion that the 5 proposed new staff positions within HSD to support survivors and interventions was perhaps too many, although having one position to coordinate the work could be of value. There was interest in instead giving a larger proportion of the money to community-based organizations.

Councilmembers also had a lot of questions about the $4.25 million investment in school-based violence intervention services, the proposal for which originated with the Mayor’s Office’s plans for the $20 million for student mental health passed last year through a tiny increase to the JumpStart tax. A lot of details about these services remain to be decided by HSD, which gave certain councilmembers some pause, even while they all agreed that gun violence in schools is an issue of utmost importance. 

There was also some confusion about the difference between this new program and the Seattle Community Safety Initiative (SCSI) that began in 2020. One of the key differences between the two programs is that the SCSI is community and neighborhood based, while the new program is school-based, with violence intervention specialists and case managers imbedded within 11 chosen target schools. Another key difference is that the focus of the SCSI is more towards response, while the focus of the new school program is more about prevention and interruption, meaning the goal is to stop the violence before it happens whenever possible.

King County News:

King County is also going through their budget cycle. While they usually pass a biennium budget, this time around they are passing a budget for the single year of 2025. 

This week they held their second budget panel on public safety, where the King County Sheriff Office (KCSO) gave a presentation about their budget priorities. KCSO now has 71 vacancies, down from a high of 120 vacancies in the summer of 2022. 

The committee then went through a list of several questions they had from last week’s meeting. You can download the informational packet about various budget questions they were considering here. 

One issue that stood out was that the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD) is planning a gap analysis to better understand the gaps of service faced by juveniles having longer stays in the youth jail. The youth jail was originally designed to be for short term detention only, but the recent trend has been for youth to experience much longer stays at the site. However, this DAJD analysis isn’t due until later next year to be addressed in the 2026-2027 budget, even though these kids have already been suffering and this problem has already been identified for some time. Councilmember Jorge Baròn said he would work with the DAJD to try to move up that timeline because as it stands, any actual action to improve the situation wouldn’t take place until well into 2026. 

Also being considered is the increased funding need of the Department of Public Defense (DPD) given the bar association’s newly adopted standards for public defenders that is reducing the caseloads of attorneys. This drop of allowable caseloads will mean the need for more attorneys to cover the same number of cases. 

The Stranger recently interviewed newly appointed interim director of the DPD, Matt Sanders, who talks about the current public defender crisis in the state of Washington and how you can weigh in as the state Supreme Court considers the matter. 

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Seattle City Council considers undoing more of the work of their predecessors Read More »

The Seattle City Attorney Has Been Busy

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Personal News:

I had a novel come out this week! My Stars Shine Darkly is a YA science fiction novel and a dystopian romance. 

Book cover of My Stars Shine Darkly by Amy Sundberg, showing a teenage girl in a fancy dress and a golden Venetian mask

“In a story awash with Shakespearean intrigue and hijinks, join our intrepid heroine as she struggles against the dystopian patriarchy of her world.”

You can purchase it here or request it from your local library.

Seattle News:

Soon after I hit publish on my issue last Friday, the news dropped that the Seattle City Attorney’s Office would be filing an affidavit of prejudice on Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi on all criminal cases going forward. I dug more deeply into the issue with my story at the Urbanist. Perhaps most concerning is how this decision undermines the independence of the court from other branches of government.

Meanwhile the court is also in turmoil because of the rollout of a new case management system this week that has been bumpy at best. As The Seattle Times reports: “Court hearings have been exceedingly slow. Where it previously took a half a day to work through first appearances, when a judge sets bail, it’s now taking a full day, meaning some people are spending longer in jail than they otherwise would.”

Yesterday at the State of Downtown event hosted by the Downtown Seattle Association, City Attorney Ann Davison said she “supports setting a limit on the number of times a person is allowed to overdose in public before they’re arrested and booked into jail.” While this law would supposedly only go into effect if a person refused treatment after an overdose, in practice treatment is often unavailable.

The City Attorney’s Office also announced they would be charging SPD Officer Kevin Dave, the officer who struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula, with what amounts to a traffic ticket. Publicola reported that Dave received a hiring bonus of $15k after being hired in November of 2019: “Dave was previously an officer in Tucson, Arizona, but was fired from that previous position in 2013 after failing to meet minimum standards during his 18-month probation period.”

Daniel Auderer, the SPOG vice president who got caught in a recording laughing at Kandula’s death, was scheduled to have his disciplinary hearing with Chief Diaz this past Tuesday. Auderer has not yet had his pre-termination or “Loudermill” hearing, which would be required before he could be fired.

In other news, Publicola reported that SPD is continuing to operate under a crowd control policy that is against the law. SPD ignored the city’s new less-lethal weapons law (passed in 2021) for a few years before finally submitting a proposal in December 2023:

“Accompanying the policy: A memo from SPD denouncing their own proposal as “dangerous” and unworkable and asking the court to instead approve the department’s existing “interim” crowd control policy, which does not ban or substantially restrict the use of a single less-lethal weapon.”

The article goes on to state, “Antonio Oftelie, the court monitor overseeing the consent decree, told PubliCola that his office and the DOJ have decided to step back and see if SPD, working with the mayor and new city council, can come up with a policy in the first quarter of this year that complies with the consent decree and is something all sides can live with.”

One example of SPD ignoring the new law was back in February when they dispersed a Pro-Palestine rally with pepper balls, which wouldn’t have been available for use if SPD had a policy in line with the existing legislation.

Mayor Harrell announced a new contract with the Coalition of City Unions with the following specifications:

“The proposed contracts include a 5% Annual Wage Increase (AWI) retroactively applied for 2023 and a 4.5% AWI for 2024, totaling a two-year 9.7% adjustment. The 2025 AWI will be based on a two-year average of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue-area with a 2% floor and a 4% cap. The 2026 AWI will be calculated similarly but then be increased by 1% with a 3% floor and a 5% cap.”

The contract has already been approved by union members and will now go for a final vote before City Council. It is currently unclear to me whether this increase in wages has already been calculated into the city’s looming deficit for 2025. According to Publicola, city departments are preparing plans to lay off employees (while already operating under a hiring freeze).

King County News:

This week Executive Constantine announced a five-prong strategy for addressing the fentanyl crisis and preventing overdoses. The five prongs are as follows:

  1. Treatment: launching a 24/7 buprenorphine prescribing line; increasing staffing for both the youth and adult mobile crisis programs; hiring 6 new community navigators to connect people with treatment
  2. Behavioral health beds: partnering with Pioneer Health Services to open 16-bed residential treatment program for people with both mental health and substance abuse disorders; re-opening a 24/7 SUD sobering center; opening post-overdose recovery center
  3. Overdose reversal meds and fentanyl testing: distributing more naloxone kits and test strips; testing drug samples; increasing number of fire depts providing leave-behind naloxone
  4. Behavioral health workforce: adding 100 apprenticeships statewide with half in King County
  5. Reduce disproportionality in overdose: investing $2 million in disproportionately impacted populations

KUOW reported that no new money is being allocated for this project, and “when exactly any of this will happen is unknown. Neither Executive Constantine nor anyone else at the press conference would specify a timeline. Clint Jordan of Pioneer Human Services, however, did comment on when a 16-bed residential treatment program could open.

“We’re targeting a six month open,” Jordan said. “I think that puts us in October, November, somewhere in there.””

WA State Legislature News:

Initiative 2113, which changes the state-wide policy on vehicular pursuits, was passed in the state legislature on Monday. Unlike the reform on pursuits passed in 2021 and then weakened in 2023, this initiative doesn’t restrict pursuit based on type of violation in any way. Opponents say this change will almost certainly cause collateral damage, likely leading to more deaths and injuries. As Publicola reported, “Going back to 2015, Morris found that of 379 people killed by police in Washington state, 26 percent involved vehicular pursuits. Of the 32 deaths in Washington caused by collisions during pursuits, more than half were bystanders, passengers, or officers.”

Crosscut reported on two new gun control laws that are likely to make it through this year’s legislative session: one on reporting stolen guns and another on gun dealer security measures. 

Speaking of, this year’s legislative session is officially over. The WA State Standard reported that “Republicans had a pretty good year” and “big progressive priorities flared out.” 

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The Seattle City Attorney Has Been Busy Read More »

SPD Responsible for 1 out of 10 Killings in Seattle, Data Scientist Says

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Seattle News

First up, I wrote an article for The Urbanist about the proposed drug legislation being voted on in Seattle next week. If you’d like to email your councilmembers and/or give public comment at the City Council meeting next Tuesday June 5, you can find a quick email submission here, and scripts here and here. It looks like the vote will be a close one.

Late last week, City Attorney Davison informed the Seattle Municipal Court she will no longer be participating in their community court, effectively shutting it down. Those people on the High Utilizers Initiative list were already barred from using community court, which was a court for people who had committed certain low-level crimes. This step is likely to significantly add to the caseload of the City Attorney’s prosecutors. It will be interesting to see how the office’s case clearance rate, rate of dismissals, and attrition rate will be impacted by this change in the months to come. CM Lewis has been vocal in defense of community court, tweeting, “Misinformation about Seattle Community Court success rates is circling in the media, so let’s get a few things straight. Approximately 75% of people who enter Community Court complete the program, and 80% of them go on to commit no new criminal law violations.” 

It has come to light that during the 2020 George Floyd protests, SPD called for help from at least 23 different law enforcement agencies. Officers from these agencies were not ruled by SPD policy relating to use of force, reporting, and accountability, and used weapons such as “Stinger” rubber pellet blast grenades, 12-gauge beanbag “shotgun” rounds, military style SAF smoke, HC smoke, and Aerial Flash-Bang devices. As Glen Stellmacher reports:

“If SPD holds a backdoor policy that allows for the use of these weapons, that policy is not available to the public, nor are the conditions for the use of these specific weapons. If SPD solely relied on communication with these agencies to prevent the use of certain types of weapons, that dialogue appeared chaotic and indecisive.”

There were at least 547 uses of force by these other agencies during the 2020 protests, and it doesn’t look like any of them were investigated by the OPA. The OIG is performing an audit about SPD use of “mutual aid,” but no results of this audit have yet been made available to the public. It also appears that SPD orchestrated their infamous Proud Boy “ruse” because they didn’t know how to deal with crowd control without their mutual aid partners.

Meanwhile, Seattle has spent a whopping $20.1 million on outside legal fees for four lawsuits related to the 2020 protests.

The 2020 protests are also haunting Bob Ferguson, who launched an exploratory campaign for governor at the beginning of May. He announced the endorsement of former SPD Chief Carmen Best on Twitter this week. His base in Seattle didn’t take kindly to this news, as Best admitted to deleting text messages and was in charge of SPD during the tear gassing of Seattle neighborhoods during the 2020 protests. 

On the Consent Decree

This week, Judge Robart held a hearing in response to the DOJ and City of Seattle’s request for reduced oversight and an imminent end to the consent decree that has been in place for over eleven years. While it is unclear when the judge will issue a ruling, he signaled he will be rewriting parts of the proposed order but that overall he is proud of the work SPD has done under the consent decree. Not everyone agrees with this assessment:

“Ultimately, Seattle’s experience shows consent decrees to be a trap — one that results in more expensive police departments, but which leaves untouched the violence at the heart of policing. Consent decrees first offer communities validation for the harm police have caused them, along with a promise of someone else coming in and “fixing” the police. In practice, they cut off community voices, inflate police budgets at the expense of everything else, and legitimize the very police force that continues to harm the community.” 

Meanwhile, data scientist Dr. Sherry Towers wrote to the judge before the hearing to share some alarming findings, saying, “During my examination of police shooting and homicide data from 2015 to 2021[*] in my research, I found that the rates of police killings per homicide in Seattle were significantly higher than in other areas of the US (nationwide around 3% to 4% of all homicides were due to police killings, whereas in Seattle during that time period that number was 11%, well over twice the national average – to put this in perspective, one out of ten people killed in Seattle since 2015 was killed by a police officer).” 

She went on to say, “I found that by all measures I examined, fatal police violence and racial disparities in police shootings became worse after the consent decree, both in total number and per homicide.  In addition, significantly more police officers were involved in each shooting incident after the consent decree (2.5 on average), compared to before (1.5 on average), and police shootings became significantly more likely to be fatal.” 

Finally, a particular wrinkle of police union contract bargaining was discussed at the hearing. In general, if the negotiations between the City and the police union reach an impasse, the next step is to go to interest arbitration. However, the only issues that are allowed to go to interest arbitration are those that were included in the list of contract issues to be bargained that is created at the start of negotiations. So if a new issue comes up in the middle of negotiation, that can’t be forced into interest arbitration. This had huge implications for the 2017 police accountability ordinance, which hadn’t been included on the list of contract issues for the SPOG contract that was approved in 2018. 

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