Seattle City Attorney

Seattle Mayor’s Race Remains a Dead Heat in Polling

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Seattle and King County News:

First off, I took a closer look at the upcoming Seattle City Attorney election, with a particular focus on incumbent Ann Davison’s signature policies, for Bolts Magazine.

For The Urbanist, I wrote about the nuisance property and graffiti legislation recently passed by the Seattle City Council, as well as Council President Sara Nelson’s proposal to allocate some of a not-yet-proposed sales tax bump to pay for addiction treatment. I also gave an update on how Donald Trump’s recently passed budget reconciliation package, which includes large cuts to Medicaid (Apple Care) and SNAP, will impact Washingtonians, and how Seattle and King County are responding to the current national funding and policy threats.

We have a primary election coming up next Tuesday, August 5, which means it’s time for some new polls. The two frontrunners for Seattle Mayor, Bruce Harrell and Katie Wilson, are still statistically tied. In the Seattle City Attorney’s race, incumbent Davison is ahead, closely followed by Erika Evans. 

And a recent poll on Washington Governor Bob Ferguson’s job performance found that only 32% of voters think he’s been doing an “excellent” or “good” job during his first six months. 

We also have a new Seattle councilmember, the returning Debora Juarez, who has been appointed to fill Cathy Moore’s empty D5 seat. That seat will not be up for election until November of 2026. 

Coming up this week, we have a select budget committee meeting tomorrow morning with a possible vote on the Seattle Shield Initiative, which has picked up a whopping 17 proposed amendments. Then on Thursday morning, there will be a special public safety committee meeting to discuss the proposed expansion of CCTV cameras to three new locations, which will cost over $1 million. The updates would also allow SPD to view and record footage from SDOT traffic management cameras.

Guy Oron recently published a great piece about the ballooning settlements the City of Seattle has had to pay related to SPD actions. He includes some illustrative graphs as well, and I recommend taking a look. Overall, the City spent nearly twice the amount it had budgeted over the last ten years (2014-2024) on SPD settlements etc. The most recent figure: in 2024 the City spent $15.1 million on police litigation. 

The Urbanist has a piece from Carolyn Bick documenting the poor public record practices of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). 

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office is still refusing to allow Seattle Municipal Court (SMC) Judge Pooja Vaddadi to hear domestic violence and DUI cases. SMC Judge Damon Shadid vigorously criticized this decision in open court earlier this month.

The King County Prosecutor’s Office has paused youth felony diversion due to a limited analysis that showed a recidivism rate of 53% for youth being referred to Restorative Community Pathways for felonies. Some of these cases will instead be referred to court-supervised diversion programs, but these programs are currently lacking in capacity and also lack other benefits provided by community-based programs. An audit of Restorative Community Pathways is due later this summer. 

Last week, a meeting of Seattle’s housing and human services committee was unable to convene due to a lack of quorum after both Nelson and Councilmember Rob Saka didn’t show up. Nelson apparently gave a day’s notice about her absence, and Saka was reportedly in his office at City Hall at the time of the meeting. 

As a result, the committee was unable to vote on many appointments that would finally fill the City’s renters commission, which former committee chair Cathy Moore appears to have deliberately let languish as she pursued the idea of including landlords in a body meant to advocate for renter rights. The committee was also supposed to report on accepting $16 million in federal HUD grants. 

Neither Nelson or Saka has given much explanation for what happened. If they deliberately skipped the meeting in order to thwart the renters commission appointments, doing so would be an undemocratic act, the seriousness of which is only magnified by the active erosion of democracy right now at the federal level.

The committee’s business is now supposed to be heard at the full City Council meeting later today, when the renters commission vacancies will hopefully finally be filled. 

Recent Headlines:

Seattle Mayor’s Race Remains a Dead Heat in Polling Read More »

We’re all waiting to find out exactly how austere the new WA state budget will be

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Seattle News:

Last week I dived into the recent Seattle Auditor’s Office report on gun violence patterns in Seattle for The Urbanist.

At the public safety committee meeting on April 8, Chief Innovation Officer Andrew Myerberg presented on the search for a new Office of Police Accountability (OPA) director. The search committee consists of Councilmember Bob Kettle, SPD Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis, CPC co-chair Joel Merkel, and Lisa Daugaard, the co-executive director of PDA. The first consideration date for candidates is today, 4/25, interviews of finalists will be all day 5/16, and meetings with stakeholders (the three police accountability bodies and SPD) will be on 5/22. 

Mayor Bruce Harrell expects to announce his hiring decision sometime in early June. As with the most recent police chief search, there is no public engagement scheduled around this hiring decision. 

There will be a special public safety committee meeting on Tuesday, April 29 to discuss Seattle’s police accountability system, including moving forward with the appointment of Eci Ameh as Executive Director of the Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC).

As has been previously reported by Guy Oron in Real Change, homeless encampment sweeps have escalated a large amount during Harrell’s tenure as mayor. And now The Seattle Times is even reporting on the story, writing, “To hide from the city’s escalating pace of encampment removals, homeless people say they are hiding deeper in the woods, where assaults, overdoses and emergencies can go unnoticed. Some say they’ve given up on setting up a tent altogether, leaving them less visible but more vulnerable to the elements and predators.”

Seattle has also lost 130 shelter spaces since 2022. Existing spaces are full (95%, which accounts for time spent in turnover). 

PubliCola reported that there have only been five SOAP orders issued since the law was passed more than seven months ago. Four of the five orders were against men who were indigent (making less than $24,000/year or showing they can’t afford an attorney). 

PubliCola also provides important context: “At a time of mass deportations and crackdowns on even legal immigrants, it’s also noteworthy that, according to public defenders, most of the men who get busted for patronizing street sex workers are immigrants. White men have more discreet ways of buying sex, and they’re more likely to be represented by private attorneys, rather than overworked public defenders.”

Meanwhile, in an Urbanist op-ed, Nathan Rouse, who is a candidate for Seattle City Attorney, comes out strong against cash bail for nonviolent misdemeanors. It’s worth reading what he has to say, and he includes many links for those interested in learning more. I’m curious what his opponents think about bail reform and whether this will be an issue on which the candidates differ. 

King County/WA State News:

My latest article is out at The Urbanist today, looking at the intersection between what’s going on with the state budget right now and how that will impact King County, with a particular focus on the bill that would have lifted the property tax revenue growth cap and the bill that would allow municipalities to raise the sales tax 0.1% as an additional “public safety” tax. 

In a letter delivered today, King County Councilmembers Girmay Zahilay and Rod Dembowski ask Executive Shannon Braddock to propose this new sales tax. Last I heard, neither councilmember had signed the letter to Ferguson asking for him to reconsider his resistance to the property tax cap lift. 

It should be an exciting few days in Olympia as this legislative session is slated to end this Sunday, April 27. A few news tidbits in the meantime: the bill to create a permit-to-purchase program for guns has been passed by both chambers and will become law if Ferguson signs it. It looks like the Senate might be creating the wealth tax “test balloon” that Ferguson indicated might be acceptable to him. And Senate Democrats have proposed a 55% cut to abortion access funding in the state, right at a time when medical agencies providing these services are under severe attack from the federal government. The House Democrats have preserved this funding, and we’ll find out soon if they prevail in this matter. 

King County’s 2024 Point in Time Count was released this week, saying 16,868 people experienced homelessness on any given night in 2024. This is 26% higher than in 2022. Homelessness continues to disproportionately affect communities of color, including Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic people. 

There are more than two people per every shelter space in King County, and in North King County, this number is much worse at 9.6 people per bed. You can read more about it at PubliCola.

Meanwhile, PubliCola also reported that the current state budget cuts funds for former Governor Jay Inslee’s right-of-way program, which resolves encampments on state-owned rights of way through extensive outreach. 

National News:

Jeff Asher, a nationally recognized crime data analyst, released an essay announcing that crime is down down down. His own words: “All we can say with certainty is that major crime — as counted by the FBI — almost certainly declined quite a lot in the first quarter of 2025. These would be record levels of decline for most crime types if they held up for the full year.”

I’ll add my usual disclaimer about taking crime data with at least some salt.

Recent Headlines:

 

We’re all waiting to find out exactly how austere the new WA state budget will be Read More »

Turmoil continues at SPD; WA State legislators search for new revenue to bridge a huge deficit

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Seattle News:

First of all, my interview with Seattle City Attorney candidate Erika Evans is now out. This race is shaping up to be very competitive, with three candidates challenging incumbent Ann Davison. I think one of the big challenges of the race will be for the three candidates, who are united in their criticism of Davison, to distinguish themselves from one another. 

I also had a piece out about SPD and an email that recently came to light. In mid-January, SPD COO Brian Maxey wrote to the head of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, calling the department “increasingly unstable” and referencing “chaos.” I also take a look at all the recent lawsuits coming out of SPD and how SPD complaint systems are potentially being weaponized.

The revenue report for the end of 2024 was released this week, and it contained bad news about the JumpStart payroll expense tax, which collected $47 million less in 2024 than forecasts had predicted. It is important to note, however, that the tax still brought in more money in 2024 than it did in 2023 (by $45 million.) 

This underscores the dangers of using the JumpStart tax to backfill the general fund as opposed to using it to fund affordable housing, investments which can more easily be adjusted to match whatever revenues are produced by this more volatile funding source.  

Last week, Councilmember Cathy Moore decided to direct $1 million in City funding for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation to The More We Love, bypassing a competitive bidding process that had been expected by other providers in the region.

As PubliCola reports, “Representatives from existing Black-led groups that work with survivors said that by giving $1 million to a white-led group that has not previously held a contract to work with CSE survivors, the city is ignoring and undermining the expertise of organizations that focus on Black and brown survivors, who make up a disproportionate number of people in the commercial sex trade.”

And also, “Many of the organizational leaders who spoke to PubliCola said they felt the city had not only wasted their time but violated their trust.”

Finally, Councilmember Rob Saka’s resolution denouncing the defund movement passed a full council vote this week. Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Cathy Moore, and Dan Strauss were not present for the vote. 

In order to clear up any confusion, this ordinance was not necessary to end Seattle’s consent decree. In addition, it does not provide a complete assessment of all the reasons behind SPD’s attrition in recent years, which mirrors that of other police departments across the country. DivestSPD brought up the point that many police officers hired in the 1990s by COPS grants started reaching retirement age in the past ten years. In addition, some officers left due to Covid vaccine mandates. 

PubliCola does an excellent job covering some of what was said about this ordinance on Tuesday.

That this resolution would be a top matter of council business over the last few weeks appears to demonstrate a lack of urgency on the part of certain councilmembers when it comes to the rolling impacts of federal-level decisions made during that same time period. 

Next week I’ll be covering the latest news of local impacts due to the decisions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. This week, committees from both the King County Council and the Seattle City Council received more information about what’s happening on the ground right now. 

King County News:

As one of his last acts as King County Executive, Dow Constantine nominated Matt Sanders, who is currently acting as the interim director of the King County Department of Public Defense, to continue as the permanent director. The King County Council will vote on whether to confirm this nomination sometime in the next few months. 

SEIU 925, the union that represents public defenders and other legal professionals in the department, opposes this nomination, PubliCola reported. PubliCola writes: “Rank and file union members have expressed concerns about Sanders, saying his management style has contributed to low morale and high turnover at the agency.” 

The union prefers Snohomish County public defense department director Jason Schwartz for the position.

This week the King County Council appointed Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock to serve as acting County Executive following the departure of Dow Constantine for Sound Transit. Braddock indicated interest in AI implementation during her brief tenure as County Executive, even though this is a policy area about which she said, “I am not a technology expert. I don’t know these things.” 

Another death has been reported at the SCORE jail this week, marking at least 11 deaths that have taken place inside the jail in a 2-year period. PubliCola has been untiring in its coverage of this local deadly jail, even though “Rivera was the only one of 45 city leaders from the six cities that own SCORE who agreed to speak to PubliCola about conditions at the jail.” (Rivera is a councilmember from Renton.) 

As Andy Engelson, the reporter covering this story, told me on Bluesky, “The only time SCORE has answered questions from one of the 6 cities that own it, there were just 12 minutes for questions and no time for public comment.” 

WA State News:

Yesterday I had a piece out that covers the discussions around the state’s operating budget, which will need to be finalized before the end of the month. There are many progressive revenue options on the table for the House and Senate to discuss. Complicating matters, Governor Bob Ferguson has indicated he will veto any budget that implements the so-called “wealth tax” or that doesn’t have $100 million over two years for police hiring grants. 

Apparently state Democrats are now looking for alternate taxes to make up the difference in revenue that would have been provided by a new wealth tax. Options include other business taxes and changing the capital gains tax. Many of the taxes under discussion, however, bring in relatively small amounts of revenue compared to the wealth tax, which was estimated to provide between $2.4 and $4 billion annually beginning in fiscal year 2027. 

The state legislative session is scheduled to end on April 27.

Recent Headlines:

Turmoil continues at SPD; WA State legislators search for new revenue to bridge a huge deficit Read More »

Cities that own SCORE jail seem uninterested in accountability or improvement

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SCORE Jail:

PubliCola has continued its crucial coverage of the terrible conditions at the local SCORE jail in Des Moines. 11 people held in the jail have now died over the past two years, which is a shockingly high number. The jail has been reported to have inadequate medical care, filthy conditions, and contemptuous staff. 

The jail is owned and operated by six local cities–Auburn, Burien, Des Moines, Renton, SeaTac, and Tukwila–and it has contracts with many more local cities, including Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Shoreline, Kenmore, Federal Way, and more. The jail is run by an executive director who reports to an administrative board with representatives from the six cities. 

The most recent board meeting was this past Wednesday, when the executive director called PubliCola’s recent reporting “misinformation.” The board didn’t ask the executive director anything about the conditions and facts reported in the article nor showed any interest in accountability or improving conditions inside this deadly facility. 

If you live in one of the six cities that operates the jail, here is a document with talking points and contact information.

Seattle News:

I sat down last week with Seattle City Attorney candidate and current public defender Nathan Rouse, and we had a long talk about his road in deciding to run and his vision for the Seattle City Attorney’s office. 

Real Change ran an op-ed by David Stoesz this week, entitled “Facts and evidence are our greatest strength: A response to Katie Wilson.” He makes some compelling arguments, and he also provides a nugget of information I think is important to emphasize. 

While discussing how in addition to housing, some folks are also in need of wrap-around services, Stoesz says that Plymouth Housing has calculated that one year of assisted living with the highest level of service costs the same as three days at Harborview or three months at the King County Jail. (King County Councilmember Sarah Perry said at a meeting this past Tuesday that a night at the King County Jail costs $250 per night.) 

While there are plenty of other evidence-based reasons why housing first and providing services to folks is smart policy, in this time of looming governmental budget deficits, remembering the relative cost of these policies is also useful. 

The City Attorney’s Office has slightly relaxed their blanket affidavits of prejudice against sitting Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi, who is now able to oversee some criminal cases. However, the Office still filed several affidavits of prejudice against her last week for DUI and domestic violence cases, and her primary assignment remains in infractions, as she does not yet have enough criminal cases for a full courtroom calendar. 

New interim SPD Chief Shon Barnes presented to the city council’s public safety committee for the first time on Tuesday. I’ll be reporting more on that meeting soon. 

Seattle awarded $22 million through its Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) in January. Projects funded include: “Africatown Community Land Trust (completing the Africatown Plaza development), Cham Refugees Community (completing a Cham community center), Rainier Beach Action Coalition (completion of the Food Innovation Center), the Somali Health Board (assisting construction of the Somali Community Cultural Innovation Hub), and Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network.”

WA State News:

The fiscal committee cut-off for bills this legislative session is TODAY, so soon I’ll be going through a bunch of interesting bills to see if they survived. I can already tell you that the Traffic Safety for All bill has unfortunately died. 

Yesterday Governor Bob Ferguson proposed $4 billion in state budget cuts. These cuts, combined with those proposed by former Governor Jay Inslee before his departure, would add up to $7 billion of a budget gap Ferguson is now estimating will be $15 billion over the next four years. 

Part of his plan involves state workers taking one unpaid day off per month. These furloughs would begin in July and save the state $300 million. He also wants to cut funding to food banks, which, given the combination of potential federal cuts to the SNAP food assistance program and the much higher demand on food banks since the pandemic began in 2020, seems potentially disastrous. 

Ferguson says it’s still too soon to say whether he’ll support state tax increases, which seems strange, given that were his cuts to be adopted, they still only address half of the state’s four-year budget deficit. There is also no word on how he is considering dealing with any federal fund cuts. Again, Washington State received $27 billion from the federal government in fiscal year 2024. 

In Praise:

I highly recommend reading author and organizer Kelly Hayes’s most recent piece, How to be a Fighter When You Feel Like a Punching Bag. It is long so you will need to put aside some time to read it (or there is also a listening option!), but I found it incredibly valuable and think it is worth your time. 

Among other topics, it covers:

  • Agency, trauma, learned helplessness, and feeling stuck/frozen in the current onslaught
  • The impact of social media, the bubbles it often relegates us to and how that encourages despair, isolation, and misanthropy, and the necessity for trust in order to organize collective action
  • The necessity of building social skills and relationships to meet this moment, as well as the importance of community
  • A key quote in the piece from Aaron Goggans: “Every time Musk or Trump weaponizes cruelty to shock a group into compliance we have to show, not with our outrage but with our care, that another response is possible.”
  • The strategy of taking small steps of agency and thinking about what activities/routines you can add to your life that are aligned with your values and keep you more informed and connected.

I hope you all find this piece to be as inspiring and helpful as I did. 

Recent Headlines:

Cities that own SCORE jail seem uninterested in accountability or improvement Read More »

Big business goes hard against social housing funding in Seattle

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Seattle News:

First off, we have an election on Tuesday, February 11, which is very soon! Recent polling shows Prop 1A (which funds social housing) and Prop 1B (which takes some JumpStart money and puts it towards something that isn’t actually social housing) being very close. The Northwest Progressive poll shows 33% of Seattleites prefer option 1A, while 31% prefer 1B. 

A large amount of money has recently been spent to push 1B. As Real Change reports, “The campaign is largely sponsored by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and its membership, which includes many of the region’s largest businesses.” This includes a sizable donation from Amazon. These are the same donors who donated heavily to our current mayor and many current city councilmembers, and who are known for their failed attempt to buy the City Council elections in 2019. Mailers are being sent by the campaign against 1A that feature statements that frankly are lies. 

Here is a list of recent articles about these social housing propositions:

The same poll also features ratings for our local elected officials up for election this November:

  • Mayor Bruce Harrell: 36% viewed favorably, 52% viewed unfavorably
  • City Attorney Ann Davison: 31% viewed favorably, 31% unfavorably
  • Council President Sara Nelson: 24% viewed favorably, 44% unfavorably
  • Councilmember Alexis Rinck: 30% viewed favorably, 25% unfavorably

The poll also included ratings of job performance for all the Seattle councilmembers, none of whom fared particularly well. Only Rinck and Nelson had ratings over 20% approval, although in most cases those who were unsure made up 50% of those polled. 

Meanwhile, 46% of likely Seattle November voters said they would support a Democratic challenger for Seattle City Attorney running against Davison, while only 32% said they’d vote to reelect her. 

Speaking of Davison, she has a new challenger for Seattle City Attorney in Nathan Rouse, who currently works as a King County public defender. I’m hoping to sit down for an interview with Rouse soon, and one of my top goals will be to help folks differentiate between Rouse and Rory O’Sullivan, who announced his candidacy for the position last year. 

If you want to go ahead and hear more from O’Sullivan right now, he published an op-ed this week about his ideas about how the Seattle City Attorney could combat “the harm and chaos caused by Trump.” 

In other Sara Nelson news, her office released a campaign message without doing their proofreading first.

After The Seattle Times published an article about how the new SODA laws passed by City Council last year are not being used (it’s been invoked a single time since it went into effect in October), Nelson took to Twitter with a statement that appears to blame SPD for not implementing her pet legislation. 

King County News:

King County Executive Dow Constantine released an executive order this week that will streamline and simplify the county’s inquests related to law enforcement-caused deaths.

King County appears to be engaged in an interesting political strategy to try to encourage the state legislature to raise the cap on property tax increases for municipalities. King County is currently facing a $150 million budget deficit for 2026-2027, which the county will have to address this fall during budget season. The budget proposal recently  released by Constantine cuts over $85 million from the criminal legal system, which is unsurprising given what a large portion of King County’s discretionary spending goes to public safety. But cuts to other departments could be equally crippling. 

Particularly hard hit in Constantine’s proposal would be the King County Sheriff’s Office with a $30.2 million cut and the Department of Community and Human Services with a $25.2 million cut. The Department of Public Health would receive a $17.6 million cut, and the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and the Superior Court would both receive $15.5 million cuts. 

HB 1334, which would raise the property tax cap for municipalities, receives its first hearing in the House Committee on Finance on Tuesday. 

WA State News:

Washington State’s spending to settle lawsuits and tort claims that allege negligence or misconduct of state agencies has been rising rapidly. The state paid out $281 million in fiscal year 2024 and $223 million in fiscal year 2023. Before that, the average annual cost was $123 million. A lot of the additional cost comes from suits against the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families that runs the state’s child welfare investigations and foster care system. 

New governor Bob Ferguson is even less accessible to the press than his predecessor Jay Inslee. Since assuming his new role about a month ago, he hasn’t held the traditional weekly press conference. His office has also been lax about notifying the press about the Governor’s upcoming public appearances. 

Lastly, The Urbanist ran an op-ed this week warning that the election for a Washington State Supreme Court judge last year, in which Sal Mungia only narrowly beat Dave Larson, a dark money-backed conservative, might presage a future in which dark money wins out and puts conservative judges preferred by wealthy backers on the bench in 2027 and 2029. The piece also has some suggestions about how to avoid this outcome. 

Recent Headlines:

Big business goes hard against social housing funding in Seattle 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 »

How the democratic process in Seattle is being undermined by the City Attorney’s Office

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There hasn’t been a huge amount of news as we all recover from the long weekend, but let’s look at what we’ve got this week.

Seattle News:

This weekend there was follow-up on a story I wrote last March about Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi. If you remember, the City Attorney’s Office (CAO) announced they would file an affidavit of prejudice against Vaddadi on all criminal cases going forward. Six months later, this tactic to prevent Vaddadi from hearing criminal cases is ongoing. 

Now Judge Vaddadi, recently returned from maternity leave, has published an op-ed in The Stranger sharing her perspective on this unprecedented step on the part of Davison. 

In her own words: “This behavior has a significantly negative impact on the Court and our democratic process. If prosecutors can effectively nullify a sitting judge this way, we do not have real elections. To my knowledge, this is the first time in Washington history that a prosecutor has made it so a particular judge will never hear any criminal cases.”

Vaddadi claims every detail named in the memo written by then-Criminal Division Chief Natalie Walton-Anderson, who now works for the Mayor’s Office as the Director of Public Safety, is false, and many of its false claims, even were they true, do not reflect the bias of which Vaddadi has been accused. Neither Vaddadi nor any reporter has been able to obtain the details for the cases cited in the memo. Vaddadi is blunt in her op-ed: “The CAO has failed to provide any evidence of this case simply because it does not exist.”

The memo in question was circulated only a few weeks after Vaddadi had disqualified a prosecuting attorney from a case due to a “potential ethics and evidentiary issue,” the only decision made by Vaddadi that the city has appealed. Her decision was later held up by the Superior Court. 

As budget season quickly approaches, it is also relevant to point out that not only do these blanket affidavits undermine the democratic process of electing judges in Seattle, they are also costing the city additional money, as it now needs to hire pro tem judges to cover the cases Vaddadi is not able to hear. 

In other news, Seattle kids returned to school on Wednesday, and there is a report that on the first day of school, an SPD officer sat in Garfield’s parking lot most of the day. Two security guards were also observed patrolling, and some members of Community Passageways were present at lunchtime. 

King County News:

Following the King County Council’s vote last week to support a non-binding motion to keep its youth jail (The Judge Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center) open, The Stranger reported on how Councilmember Girmay Zahilay’s vote in favor of this motion seems to contradict his 2019 platform to “dismantle our current youth prison model.” The article speculates that Zahilay might have chosen to vote in this way due to a desire to become the next King County Executive; if he’s preparing for a run next year, he might benefit from distancing himself from the “radical” left. 

However, Zahilay  told The Stranger that his position on youth incarceration hasn’t actually changed that much, and that the community groups that helped him develop his platform back in 2019 were in favor of his amendments to the recent motion, which was originally put forward by Councilmember Reagan Dunn. 

Current Executive Dow Constantine, on the other hand, is sticking with his decision made in 2020 to work towards closing the youth jail. He told The Stranger, “The youth justice system does not produce the outcomes we all want, which are safe communities and healthy kids.”

As the narrative of increasing youth crime begins to spread both locally and elsewhere in the nation, The Stranger provides an important counterpoint by looking at local case referral numbers: juvenile crime at present seems about on par with pre-pandemic numbers. Bookings into the youth jail are now also about on par with pre-pandemic numbers. Both these numbers had dropped in 2020 due to the pandemic.

The main difference between pre-pandemic and now appears to be that youth are more likely to be using guns, which is a strong argument in favor of investing more heavily in the County’s  gun violence prevention programs that are perennially underfunded. 

King County’s budget season begins at the same time as Seattle’s, with Constantine’s proposed budget dropping on September 24 and council budget briefings beginning on September 25. 

While King County usually does a biennial budget, for this budget cycle they will only be preparing a budget for 2025 in order to avoid budget season overlapping with elections for county offices. Voters recently approved elections at the county level to move to even years, which means those elected for office in 2023 and 2025 will only serve three-year terms. Four-year terms will resume beginning for those elected in 2026. 

Recent Headlines:

 

How the democratic process in Seattle is being undermined by the City Attorney’s Office 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.” 

Recent Headlines:

The Seattle City Attorney Has Been Busy Read More »

Community Outcry against King County’s Potential SCORE Jail Contract

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King County Jail News:

On Tuesday morning, a 58-year-old woman died in the King County Jail. She had been booked into the jail on Friday with a charge of burglary. We don’t yet know her cause of death. 

On Tuesday afternoon, the King County Council met to discuss, amongst other things, the $3.5m SCORE contract that would allow them to transfer 50 people (to start) from the King County Jail to the SCORE facility in Des Moines. While this is being sold as a “short-term” solution to run until the end of 2024, there is already discussion of expanding the number of inmates transferred to SCORE. 33 people gave public comment asking the CMs to vote no on this new contract. There have been several lawsuits brought against SCORE by family members of people who died in the jail, alleging the facility failed to provide adequate medical care. Being transferred to SCORE might also impact the quality of inmates’ defenses. You can see my live tweets of the CMs’ discussion here. 

At the briefing, CM McDermott stated that booking restrictions haven’t changed and asked for the reason for the growth of the King County Jail population in 2022. Analyst Leah Krekel-Zoppi said that pre-pandemic, the average daily population of the jail was 1900, which dropped to 1300 due to the pandemic. The average daily population now is 1500-1600. She refused to answer the CM’s question about why it’s higher now.

One possible explanation for this increase is, as Erica C. Barnett suggests, the Seattle City Attorney’s High Utilizer program, which skirts the current jail booking restrictions for misdemeanors: “In January and February 2022, before the high utilizer initiative went into effect,  the average daily population at the downtown jail was 910; for the same period this year, it was 1,220. The increase is the result of a complex mix of factors, but jailing 142 people for low-level misdemeanors is undoubtedly among them.” She also found that on average, each one of these “high utilizers” served 117 days in jail in 2022, so they each spent significant time in the jail.

Another possible factor is people in the jail waiting for competency services. As Ashely Nervobig reports: “A February 7 report from the King County Prosecutor’s office showed about 80 people waiting for competency restoration services, with the state failing to provide treatment to some of the people in the jail for more than a year, according to Casey McNerthney, spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.” 

Other possible factors for the difference in the jail population between 2021 and 2022 include an increase in SPD arrest reports–there were 10,601 such reports in 2022 versus 9165 in 2021–and the possibility the police are overcharging; that is, the practice of either adding charges or using a higher initial charge when such charges may not be able to be proven. This practice would be another way of getting around the King County Jail’s current booking restrictions. 

CM Zahilay asked two questions that remained outstanding and that the CMs resolved to discuss during their (confidential) executive session: 

  1. There is ambiguity over which type of booking restrictions can be mandated by a County Executive. Some say these restrictions can only apply to misdemeanor charges, but there are also some counties in Washington that may have restrictions relating to certain felonies.
  2. Is the County legally allowed to pay people’s bail? In the past (pre-pandemic) King County gave a $400k contract to the Northwest Bail Fund, but it’s not clear if any of this money was ever directly used to pay bail. It sounds like it was used to fund wraparound services that helped people qualify for bail. Data from that program showed the number of people able to post bail increased significantly during its adoption in 2019-2020. CMs were very interested to learn how many people are housed in King County’s jails because of being unable to pay bail.

If the CMs do not approve this new contract with SCORE, it would be incumbent upon them to decrease the population of the King County Jail in other ways, hence the importance of the above questions. The Shut Down King County Jail coalition is asking for the CMs to do exactly this and reduce the jail population by ceasing imprisonment of those experiencing mental health crises and stopping imposing bail, which has the impact of holding poor people in this facility while those with more resources are allowed to go free. However, some CMs signaled more interest in putting additional definitions and limitations around the SCORE contract as opposed to searching for ways to decrease the County’s jailed population in any meaningful way. 

The vote on this legislation was delayed until the next King County Council meeting on Tuesday, March 28. In the meantime, you may write or call your King County CMs and/or plan to give public comment on the 28th.

Seattle News:

SPD detective Cookie Bouldin has filed a $10m tort claim against SPD, claiming racial and gender discrimination and retaliation for whistleblowing. She says she has faced gender and racial discrimination for the entirety of her 40-year career, which began in 1980, when she was one of only two Black female officers in SPD. She is known for reaching out to communities of color and running a youth chess club, both of which she says have made her a target. The claim states: “​​She notes that the hostile work environment she has been subjected to has increased dramatically in recent years.”

In an analysis of Ann Davison’s first year as Seattle City Attorney, Guy Oron writes:

“​​The King County Department of Public Defense (DPD) has denounced the CAO’s approach to prosecution during Davison’s tenure, setting up a Twitter account at @CourtWatchSMC called “Seattle Municipal Court Watch” to monitor cases when the CAO has filed charges against poor residents and people experiencing mental health illnesses. Notable cases that the DPD has highlighted include prosecution of people for stealing paper towels, selling cigarettes without proper licensing, sleeping under a tarp in a business parking lot and staying in a building slated for demolition to stay warm. These selected anecdotes seem to align with the data, which shows that the vast majority of SMC defendants rely on public defense.”

Election News:

King County Executive Dow Constantine has announced he will not be running for governor in 2024. This was after the Northwest Progressive Institute released poll results showing Attorney General Bob Ferguson as the leading Democratic candidate in a potential 2024 governor’s race, assuming current Governor Inslee chooses not to run for a fourth term. Bob Ferguson polled at 21%, whereas another possible Democratic candidate, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, polled at 7%.

Recent Headlines:

Community Outcry against King County’s Potential SCORE Jail Contract Read More »

The Exodus of Inmates from the King County Jail Continues

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We’ll start off this week by looking at Chloe Cockburn’s recent reporting on the current landscape of policing in the United States. Police have already killed hundreds of people in 2023 (220 to be precise, and keep in mind we’re only two and a half months into the year). That figure is up 6% since 2021. 

She also reminds us of a Gallup poll conducted at the end of April-early May of 2022, saying:

“If you were just going by media commentators you would have thought that support for reforms had completely collapsed in the face of rising concerns about crime. On the contrary:  45% of Americans in 2022 supported eliminating police enforcement of nonviolent crimes, and 44% supported eliminating police unions. Moreover, 15% of Americans support eliminating police departments entirely, while Black Americans support this at the rate of 21%.”

I bring this up because I know some of you are disheartened by recent developments in the Washington state legislature. It is important to remember in spite of what the media might be saying, there is still an appetite in the United States for taking a different avenue to public safety that is more equitable and less harmful. The work being done in this space matters.

Seattle News:

This past Tuesday Seattle’s Public Safety and Human Services committee discussed the Seattle City Attorney’s Q4 2022 report. In Q4, the City Attorney’s Office received 2,740 referrals from SPD. For pre-pandemic comparison, the SPD gave 3,529 referrals in Q4 of 2018 and 3,724 referrals in Q4 of 2019. These referrals were all misdemeanors, as the City Attorney’s Office doesn’t deal with felony charges. 

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office also announced a 50% decrease in their case backlog over the course of 2022. The office filed 1,323 cases and declined 3,336 cases in Q4. Many of those declined cases were part of the aforementioned backlog. The office also took the opportunity during their presentation to discuss the difficulties recruiting and retaining prosecuting attorneys given their relatively low salaries compared to salaries of prosecutors in other cities.

At the State of Downtown event on Tuesday, Mayor Harrell said he wants to change significant laws to improve public safety, but he declined to give any details on what those laws might be. Stay tuned!

King County News:

Erica C. Barnett reports that this past weekend 50 inmates were moved from the King County Jail to the Maleng Regional Justice Center (MRJC)  in Kent. The MRJC is also suffering from insufficient staffing. According to the Department of Adult & Juvenile Detention, most of the people who were moved are facing misdemeanor or non-violent felony charges.

If you remember the plan discussed by the King County Law & Justice committee last week to move 50 additional inmates to SCORE in Des Moines, the Public Defenders’ Union is now trying to get an amendment added to that legislation that would codify the Department of Public Defense’s visitation needs and require some reporting. This legislation is due to be voted on by the full King County Council next week. 

Meanwhile, the Bellevue City Council approved funding for teams to provide public safety on public transit including the light rail. I’ve heard this new transit unit will consist of 7 armed officers who will patrol light rail stations and transit hubs. A community forum to discuss this new, already funded unit was held this past Tuesday evening.

Washington State News:

Taija PerryCook had a very informative article on the new 988 system in Crosscut. My takeaways:

  • Crisis Connections, which answers King County’s 988 calls, has experienced a 25-30% increase in calls since 988 launched last July. 
  • Before 988, Crisis Connection answered around 40% of calls within 30 seconds. Now they are able to answer 90% or more within 30 seconds.
  • 95% of calls are resolved over the phone. Fewer than 2% of 988 calls end up involving the police or EMS. 
  • For the 5% of calls not able to be resolved over the phone, speed of that response is critical. There is currently a bill in the state legislature that would increase funding for rapid-response teams. This bill was passed in the House and is now being considered in the Senate.

Recent Headlines:

 

The Exodus of Inmates from the King County Jail Continues Read More »