Officer Eric Walter is in the 2026 Protest Pack. Pick one up at our online store:

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Defrauded online retailers out of thousands of dollars

• In 2017 and 2018, multiple online vendors filed criminal complaints with the Mountlake Terrace Police, alleging Walter had engaged in “friendly fraud.”

• Walter ordered high-dollar items, including gold coins, watches, and motorcycle parts, then claimed the packages never arrived.

• In one case, Walter ordered $2,000 worth of gold coins, then reported his credit card stolen. He could not explain why the supposed credit card thief had the coins delivered ot his home address.

• Another gold coin seller reported that Walter claimed the box was empty on delivery, but the seller had video of each order being filled, and the UPS driver saw no signs of tampering.

• A third coin seller and a watch manufacturer claimed Walter scammed them over eBay, and eBay closed Walter’s account for suspected fraud.

• UPS’s fraud investigator closed the case as non-criminal because two lost packages weren’t enough to establish a pattern.

• The Mountlake Terrace detective also closed the case, citing this decision. The Office of Police Accountability never investigated these allegations.

Rolled his bike over a protester’s head

• On Sept. 23, 2020, a Kentucky grand jury only indicted one of three officers who fatally shot Breonna Taylor, resulting in nationwide outcry.

• That evening, demonstrators gathered in Capitol Hill to protest the decision. Seattle police declared an unlawful assembly.

• Walter was assigned to a bike unit. His bicycle got a flat tire, so he was walking it on foot.

• While police attempted to disperse a crowd, a protester, known in the community as “Trumpet Man,” laid down on the ground in front of him, and Walter walked his bicycle over the man’s face.

• Video footage of the assault went viral on social media, furthering outrage and distrust toward SPD

• The King County Sheriff’s Office investigated the case but did not recommend charges.

• The OPA sustained excessive force and unprofessionalism findings. Walter was given a seven-day suspension without pay.

Ignored a woman’s plea for help after an assault

• Walter and another officer were on duty near a mobile precinct at the Safeway on South Rainier

• A woman approached them and told him that a man on a bicycle was stalking and harassing her and her friend. She said he spat blood on her.

• The victim claimed Walter asked her to find him and bring him to her.

• Walter failed to report the incident, but said he had a vague recollection. He said he considered it a social contact because he wasn’t sure a crime had been committed.

• The Office of Police Accountability issued a training referral for failing to write a report, but found all other allegations “inconclusive” because it could not follow up with the complainant.

Hey, before you go…

Last fall, Seattle Police Sergeant Nathan Patterson threw an unlicensed street vendor down and punched him while another officer tasered him, but Patterson faced no consequences for those actions. However, he was suspended for antagonizing and threatening people who gathered to watch the arrest, according to documents and video obtained by DivestSPD.

On Sept. 29, Officer Felicia Lebron approached a man selling a handful of items on the street in Little Saigon. Lebron, a member of SPD’s homelessness policing unit, asked if he had a permit and attempted to identify him. He grabbed his things and began walking away.

Lebron followed him, telling him that he was being detained. Patterson arrived and grabbed him from behind. Before this, neither officer had issued a clear order to stop or informed him he was under arrest.

The man pushed Patterson away, while Patterson tried to hold onto his shirt. They spun around until Patterson threw him to the ground. Patterson punched the man once and kneed him in the side. He and Lebron struggled to get the man handcuffed, and a third officer, Kortney North, arrived and tasered him.

As Patterson finished cuffing the man, a few people gathered on the sidewalk, and some of them began yelling. He turned around and screamed, “You want some of this!?! Back up!”

In North’s bodycamera footage, no one can be seen approaching Patterson or attempting to interfere. The closest person is roughly 10 to 15 feet away. By this point, around five other officers had arrived and were handling the small crowd, so there was no reason for him to interact with bystanders at all.

Patterson left the arrestee handcuffed on the ground and followed a man who had heckled him. He yelled, “Be quiet! Mind your business!”

A few moments later, someone yelled that the man they arrested was “just walking,” and Patterson shot back, “No! Not just walking. You know the deal…You know we don’t do work unless we’ve got probable cause.”

Then, to no one in particular, Patterson screamed: “Shaking up that ecosystem, as they say in the biz!” It was unclear which “biz” Patterson was referring to.

The Office of Police Accountability has not issued its final report on the incident, but according to records we’ve obtained, the agency sustained findings for these comments and recommended a suspension of three to five days.

In his brief tenure, Interim Chief Andre Sayles has yet to issue any discipline, but his predecessor, Shon Barnes, previously disciplined Patterson far below the range that the OPA suggested for beating a homeless veteran in South Seattle.

The OPA recommended a 10- to 15-day suspension and a demotion, which would’ve been appropriate, considering Patterson’s long history of sustained police brutality cases and lawsuits.

Patterson was featured in our first run of DivestSPD baseball cards. They’re still available for purchase through the link below:

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Instead, former Chief Barnes gave him a one-day suspension and a “disciplinary transfer” to the West Precinct, where he now commands five officers in King Sector, covering the CID, Pioneer Square, and the southern part of the downtown commercial district.

That’s arguably a promotion — or at least a greater amount of responsibility than he had in the South Precinct.

The OPA did not sustain excess force or de-escalation allegations against Patterson, even though it had grounds. For starters, Patterson immediately escalated by closing the distance and going hands-on without using commands or at least attempting to gain voluntary compliance.

There was no exigency at the time. The man posed no imminent threat to public safety. His most severe crime was misdemeanor obstruction. The officers had no reason not to use time—a key component of de-escalation — and continue to trail him until other officers arrived, reducing the likelihood of force. He could not run without dropping everything in his hands, which he seemed fairly determined not to do.

The strikes to his abdomen were disproportionate to the offense and level of resistance. What’s more, they were unnecessary and ineffective. In the end, Patterson sent a man to the hospital for selling a handful of lightbulbs on the street.

All of this is unfortunately normal under OPA Director Bonnie Glenn. Glenn has issued findings in 84 use of force cases. To date, she’s only sustained a single force allegation.

Hey, before you go…

Shady gun violence ‘non-profit’ supports Wilson recall, dupes local news

Have you heard of the Youth Peace and Justice Foundation? What about the Uvalde Foundation for Kids? No? Does the One in Five Foundation for Kids sound familiar? Well, they all want Mayor Katie Wilson recalled—and they’re three different names that the same “organization” used in the last four years. We’re using “organization” in quotes because the non-profit is essentially one guy with a very suspect history. After the initial recall petition against Mayor Wilson was withdrawn last week, Daniel Chapin, the “organization’s” president and only employee, contacted local media to say his “organization” would support a new recall petition when it was filed. Chapin has a very clear modus operandi. He parachutes into places after a high-profile shooting, performs a publicity stunt, and raises funds. Chapin tried that here in Seattle in January after the shooting at Rainier Beach High School. Here are some examples of the Youth Peace and Justice Foundation’s past work:

• The Stockton “gang truce:” Last year, Chapin claimed to have brokered a truce between rival gangs in Stockton, California. City officials questioned whether this occurred or if Chapin was even in Stockton when this supposedly took place. Stockton has a renowned violence intervention program that includes mentors who have built rapport with gang members, and none of them had met or spoken with Chapin.

• STOPNOW Patrols: According to several local news reports, Chapin tried to organize vigilante volunteer patrols modeled on the Guardian Angels in Philadelphia, South Carolina, and other locations, but it’s unclear if any of these ever existed. There are no videos of them in any local news, and no pictures resembling a patrol on their website, except for one of Curtis Sliwa.

• School investigations: Chapin conducted highly publicized safety audits at multiple schools across the country in 2023, including East Lansing, MI, Newport News, VA, and Spokane, WA. During an interview with a local blog in East Lansing, he claimed to have been at Columbine and witnessed the shootings there, but by his own admission, he lived in California at the time. He was evasive throughout the interview and would not provide a clear headshot.

We won’t go into it too deeply here, but there’s a whole section on Chapin in a doctoral thesis on gang intervention if you want to read it. It’s pretty amusing and starts on page 29. Some of the highlights: He claimed that Elvis held him as a baby and that he was the pastor of a church in Hawaii (that doesn’t exist). Chapin also wrote a nutty self-published Amazon book titled “World Without End, Nuclear Bombs & Chunky Peanut Butter: Essays From a Modern Day Pilgrimage.” Anyone with half a brain would clock this guy for what he is, but local media outlets are so eager to breathe new life into the dead recall story that they’ll give this charlatan the respectability of a “national non-profit.”

Speaking of dodgy grifters…

UW delays vote on new codes of conduct that impact protests

A vote on free speech-chilling updates to the University of Washington code of conduct, originally planned for Sept. 9, will now be held in 2027. The proposed codes would impose collective punishment on anyone present at a protest if property destruction happens. The new codes would also make concealing one’s identity an aggravating factor in discipline — a concern, in particular, for pro-Palestine groups that face harassment and doxxing from Zionists like Canary Mission and, locally, Ari Hoffman. The university is apparently caving to pressure from the Trump Administration, which launched a civil rights investigation over “antisemitism” allegations in April. Faculty and student leaders said they only saw the final draft a few weeks before the vote was set to take place. In response to a massive backlash, administrators have extended the public comment period to December, and the Board of Regents will not vote on the new code of conduct until the 2027 winter term.

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Media, SPOG on full-court press to reinstate SPD hiring bonuses

The Seattle Police Department suspended its hiring bonuses on Tuesday after the program ran out of money. As we mentioned last week, the hiring bonuses are funded through salary savings. Not enough highly paid older officers retired this year, and SPD has been hiring at roughly double its normal rate, so there’s little left in the till to pay $7,500 to each new officer and $50,000 to laterals. For those who want to hire cops (not us), this would seem to be a good kind of problem, right? SPD is hiring so many cops that they can’t afford hiring bonuses. The department has already hired 108 officers this year, which is just eight shy of its record-setting hiring year in 2025 and more than SPD hired in all of 2019, its second-best year in the last decade.

Local media and the Seattle police guild have framed the loss of the bonuses in dire terms, as if it will have a huge impact on hiring while the department is “hundreds of officers short.” However, when they were originally implemented, the bonuses had a negligible effect on applications. The number of applicants only started to pick up after raises in two consecutive contracts. That fact hasn’t stopped know-nothing talk radio simpletons like Jake and Spike and Charlie Harger from raising the specter that nearby cities might poach Seattle cops. They pointed out that Bellevue is advertising a $30,000 bonus for laterals, but the starting pay for transfers is $128,000 or roughly what a rookie Seattle police officer makes after six months. A Seattle cop makes $154,000 after 4.5 years, so an officer with five years of experience would make an extra $4,000 in one year and lose $26,000 every year after that. The only cops we’ll lose to Bellevue are the ones too dumb to do third-grade math.

Hey, before you go…

Officer Joshua McMullen is one of 10 officers featured in the DivestSPD Protest Pack. You can buy it through our online store by clicking the link below.

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Knelt on a man’s neck during the 2020 protests, then berated and cursed at bystanders

• McMullen was one of the officers sent to suppress the George Floyd protests on May 30. He responded to a T-Mobile store where a 911 caller reported looting.

• Another officer pushed someone to the ground. McMullen grabbed their neck, pushed their face down, and knelt on their neck.

• McMullen then shoved a second person to the ground, using his knee to hold them against the concrete. People in the crowd called for McMullen to remove his knee from the person’s neck.

• The second officer said, “Get your knee off his neck” and physically moved McMullen’s knee.

• Using social media footage, OPA determined that McMullen placed his knee on the neck of the second person, and that this force “was neither necessary nor proportional.”

• During the investigation, the OPA found that McMullen cursed at and threatened multiple people, including a parent who was trying to get through to see their family. He told one man he would “fuck him up.”

Repeatedly punched a person who was spray-painting

• While arresting someone for tagging, McMullen shoved him against a wall and took him to the ground.

• McMullen and the man struggled. McMullen punched him in the head five times, and a second officer punched him once.

• Though McMullen claimed the man punched him “at least 4 times,” a witness officer told the OPA that he did not see the man punch either officer.

• The OPA admitted there was no evidence that the man was armed or posed a risk to officers but “felt that the entirety of [McMullen’s] force was consistent with policy”

Wrongfully stopped and frisked a Black student

• McMullen and his partner responded to a call near a high school, where witnesses reported two people had beaten someone up and brandished a weapon.

• His partner identified a student who matched the suspect’s description. McMullen handcuffed and frisked him.

• As the officers waited for a witness to identify whether this was the correct suspect, McMullen commented that he matched the description. The student said, “That’s racist, man.”

• Per SPD policy, officers must notify a supervisor when a bias claim is made. McMullen didn’t. While they continued to wait, McMullen searched the student, which is not constitutional during an investigative detention, known as a Terry stop.

• The witness arrived and did not identify the detained student as the suspect. He was released.

• The OPA found that McMullen’s search was lawful because he arguably had probable cause to arrest the student based on his physical description alone, so McMullen would be justified in searching the student incident to arrest.

• However, the OPA conceded that McMullen “did not treat [the student] as if he had been arrested.” He did not read him his rights nor did he state that he was under arrest.

• McMullen was referred for training, including counseling focused on “the importance of informing subjects whether they are being detained or under arrest.”

• The OPA also determined the bias-based policing allegation to be unfounded, as they felt it was unclear whether McMullen had heard the complaint and whether the student was describing McMullen as racist.

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Threatened and taunted someone while another officer was tasing them

• McMullen and his partner responded to an assault and grabbed the person matching the description.

• They struggled, and McMullen’s partner tased the man twice, incapacitating him. After the man fell to the ground, McMullen taunted him: “You want to fucking try again? You want to do it again? You want another ride?”

• This time McMullen’s partner used the Taser’s “drive stun” mode to inflict pain as McMullen asked, “You want to keep going? You want some more?”

• Once the officers had handcuffed the man, McMullen continued taunting, repeatedly calling the man a “stupid motherfucker” and saying, “this mother fucker does not learn”.

• While inside the officers’ cruiser, the man struggled with the handcuffs and McMullen threatened to “hog-tie” him.

• That type of restraint, and McMullen’s threat to the man, were determined by the OPA review to be “unprofessional, escalatory, and—if carried out as [McMullen] threatened—in violation of SPD policy.”

• OPA’s review sustained the finding that McMullen had acted unprofessionally.

Pushed two demonstrators down and lied about it in his force report

• On May 1, 2017, McMullen was working as a bicycle officer at the annual May Day demonstration, where the crowd had been ordered to disperse.

• These officers ordered protesters to move back, and a YouTube video showed two demonstrators remaining in place.

• McMullen was among the cops closest to the two, who fell to the ground after officers pushed with their bikes a second time. A bystander near McMullen said that he saw [McMullen] push someone to the ground with his bicycle.”

• McMullen initially reported that two had grabbed his bike and then tripped over each other as a nearby officer pepper sprayed them.

• The YouTube video contradicted his account. It showed the other officer pepper spraying a different person after the protesters had already fallen.

• The OPA director found that it was “most likely” that McMullen knocked them down.

• The OPA attributed the inconsistencies between McMullen’s account and the video evidence to “the stressful nature of the incident, differences in officer perception, the time that passed between the incident and reporting/interview, and the lack of review of video”.

• The use of force allegation was ruled “inconclusive” due to the “limitations of the video evidence,” as well as the failure to identify and interview the protesters who were knocked down.

Didn’t activate his bodycam during a case involving missing property

• McMullen had four camera violations: two sustained and two resulting in training referrals.

• In one incident, he failed to activate his bodycam footage before handcuffing a person and could not explain why.

• He emptied the contents of a confiscated bag while inside a precinct room without any cameras and failed to photograph the items removed from the bag. McMullen did not note in the report narrative that property had been taken.

• The arrestee reported missing cash, prescription medications, two bottles of alcohol, and marijuana.

• In an earlier case, McMullen repeatedly activated and deactivated his in-car video during and after a pursuit.

Hey, before you go…

One of We Heart Seattle’s most generous benefactors helped launch a pseudoscientific racist research network. Seattle resident Andrew Conru, who gifted at least $600,000 to We Heart Seattle over the last three years, made headlines in 2024 after the Guardian revealed that he supplied $1.3 million in start-up cash to a group called the Human Diversity Foundation

Now known as Polygenic Scores, the Human Diversity Foundation aims to revive and popularize racist pseudoscience by cloaking it in euphemisms and academic jargon. The founder, Danish white nationalist blogger Emil Kirkegaard, previously created an open-access journal specializing in so-called race realist material.

The group is a rogue’s gallery of folks with similar backgrounds, interests, and ideologies, including German neo-Nazi Erik Ahrens, a former teacher named Matthew Frost, and Bo Winegaard, a “race realist” professor. The foundation was back in the news recently after it was discovered that the organization played a central role in the racist dogpile that led to the suicide of Black academic Jason Arday.

When the Guardian confronted Conru, he pulled his support, saying that it had strayed from its mission of “non-partisan academic research.” Conru made his fortune creating AdultFriendFinder, an adult-themed dating website, which he sold to Penthouse for $500 million. Afterward, he more or less became a full-time philanthropist.

Conru funds many of the standard causes, such as arts and culture, but his other charitable contributions suggest he knew exactly who he was giving a $1.3 million check to. He’s given sizeable chunks of cash to the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies as well as the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.

Our 2026 Protest Pack baseball cards are now on sale through our online store:

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The value We Heart Seattle brings to its donors

Like the Human Diversity Foundation, We Heart Seattle attempts to conceal its purpose, but you don’t need to look very hard to figure out what it is. The group presents itself as a harmless civic organization trying to beautify Seattle and as a social services provider doing “boots on the ground” outreach.

But at its core, We Heart Seattle is a conservative propaganda operation that depicts the homeless as filthy, violent, drug-addicted, mentally ill criminals. The steady stream of videos showing piles of garbage, burnt foil, and needles reinforces this message.

On the rare occasion when We Heart Seattle does ostensibly help get someone “off the streets,” that, too, is conservative propaganda. The message is that the private sector can get it done better than the government. But We Heart Seattle often drops people off at a shelter or a treatment center, claims victory, and then leaves. There’s no follow-up or reporting.

The group adds another number to their website without tracking whether the person stayed housed or drug-free. Even then, the number isn’t that impressive. The group claimed to have helped 33 people get on the “pathway to housing” last year.

We Heart Seattle Director Andrea Suarez has one solution for everything: criminalization. End diversion programs. Make fentanyl possession a felony. Jail the “service resistant.” Outlaw harm reduction supplies. She also wants to implement mass surveillance. Suarez was pushing Flock Safety so hard for a while, you might have confused her for a sales rep.

This philosophy is reflected in the type of grantmakers who fund We Heart Seattle. It’s no surprise that a megamillionaire conservative who believes in eugenics would financially support a pseudo-advocacy organization that wants to lock up all the untermenschen.

The group’s second-largest donor, the Alsdorf Foundation, is headed by Andrew Alsdorf, a deputy prosecutor in Snohomish County. Alsdorf comes from a wealthy family of Chicago art collectors. Ironically, Alsdorf spends much of his time prosecuting robberies and organized retail theft, while his family has knowingly trafficked in treasures looted from the Global South for decades (and also a Picasso painting that the Nazis stole).

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Another major donor is Mary Kay McCaw, the widow of a telecom billionaire who died in a hot tub accident. McCaw has a distinctively conservative political profile. She gave to Republican King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn in the last election cycle. McCaw also donated to Recall Sawant, various anti-tax initiatives, and, of course, the deceptively named 2021 anti-homeless charter amendment Compassion Seattle.

The fact that none of We Heart Seattle’s major donors give to any other homelessness organizations is also telling. If Andrea Suarez were actually working in good faith to “save lives” and “get people off the streets,” wouldn’t We Heart Seattle attract funding from grantmakers that give to the homeless? Guess those other donors are part of the “Homelessness Industrial Complex.”

Still, We Heart Seattle’s revenue nearly hit a million dollars in the last two years, and it will probably surpass that in 2026. With low overhead and a steady supply of wealthy phrenologists, billionaire widows, and prosecutor failsons from art theft dynasties, being part of the Anti-Homeless Industrial Complex is pretty lucrative, too.

Hey, before you go…

SPD says ‘bye-bye’ to bonuses

No more bonuses for recruits—at least not for the immediate future. Citing a tight budget, Seattle police officials told local media yesterday that the department would suspend its incentives for new hires, starting in September. The money to pay the incentives comes from a pool of salary savings created when officers quit, but not enough cops are leaving. Retirement-age officers at the top of the pay scale are sticking around and racking up massive overtime (often fraudulently) on the way out to jack up their retirement benefits. The hefty raises in the 2025 police guild contract give them another reason to stay (and phone it in), since their police pensions are calculated as the average of their top five consecutive years.

Meanwhile, the department is lowering standards to hire at an unprecedented pace, and SPD is expected to exceed its hiring budget by nearly $2 million. This situation with the hiring bonuses has AM radio bottomfeeders and unemployed council presidents sounding alarms. My Northwest painted a dire picture in its headline “Seattle Police Department scraps $50K hiring bonuses Sept. 1 as staffing crisis deepens.” Calling it a staffing crisis is a stretch, to begin with. SPD is about 175 cops away from its peak levels, and it’s hiring officers faster than it can train or pay for them (they don’t have enough field training officers), so it’s hardly “deepen[ing].” SPD is on track to hire nearly as many cops as it did last year. What’s more, the added value of the bonuses is dubious. When they were first implemented, the incentives didn’t yield a significant increase in applications. The department only saw a flood of applicants after the police guild negotiated raises in 2024 and 2025. The city is already facing an estimated $175 million deficit this year, and SPD costs, including raises, back pay, and around $60 million in police settlements, account for the lion’s share of that.

DivestSPD Protest Pack now on sale

In perhaps the biggest news to come out this week (or any week in the history of weeks), DivestSPD announced the latest and greatest edition of its award-winning* baseball cards. The Protest Pack features 10 baseball cards depicting officers from the Community Response Group, the Police Outreach and Engagement Team, and SWAT. Each card summarizes the highlights from the officer’s disciplinary record and basic stats like hiring date, salary, rank, and overtime. Wait, there’s more! Every Wednesday we’ll release a companion post for each card with more details about every incident as well as videos, pictures, and documents.

Buy a pack today at our online store.

*_{DivestSPD baseball cards have never won any awards, as baseball card awards don’t exist.}

Sheriff Swank to become podcast crank

After he was run out of the Seattle police department for extremist posts, Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank said God spoke to him in a hot tub and told him to run for sheriff, so he did. Now, it appears the Lord has a new calling for Keith: podcaster. The podcast is Swank’s latest stunt in response to SB 5974, which would allow the state to remove sheriffs and police chiefs who fail to meet professional standards. No wonder a bigot like Swank is sweating. He would lose his position if any number of complaints against him to the state police certifying body resulted in his decertification. Governor Bob Ferguson signed the bill into law in April, but a group of sheriffs challenged it in court, and a Thurston County judge issued a temporary injunction. However, it may not be enough for Swank to hold onto power. Pierce County voters will decide in November whether county sheriffs will be elected, as they are currently, or appointed. At least it’s something to keep him distracted from his other project of going after state sanctuary laws.

Spokane Anti-ICE activists appeal convictions

Three activists convicted earlier this summer for their roles in an anti-ICE protest are asking the courts to throw their sentences out. Known as the Spokane 3, Jac Archer, Justice Forral, and Bajun Mavalwalla II were arrested last June for blocking an ICE vehicle from exiting a detention facility in Spokane. Six others arrested took non-cooperating plea deals, while the Spokane 3 went to trial, maintaining that they did nothing wrong. The federal charges spun mundane protest actions, such as linking arms and speaking through a bullhorn, into grandiose conspiracy charges. This trial represents Trump’s authoritarian NSPM-7 directives in practice. It follows a disturbingly familiar pattern of rushed, falsified, and exaggerated accusations, with implications for dissent across the board, running parallel to the cases against Prairieland defendants and the Minnesota 15. This week, Trump’s State Department also announced sanctions against several international organizations it deemed “foreign terrorist organizations,” including Autistici/Inventati, the maker of tech tools, including the noblogs platform commonly used by antifascists and anarchists across the United States.

Follow the Spokane 3 Support Committee to stay updated and plug in. If you are unfamiliar with the Spokane 3, The Final Straw Radio released an interview with the support committee this week as well!

DivestSPD scores another W over SPOG

The Seattle Police Officers Guild and its idiot lawyers have once again failed to stop DivestSPD’s work. Earlier this year, SPOG appealed a lawsuit over a DivestSPD records request, hoping to bypass the legislature and expand exceptions for police officers under the Public Records Act through the courts. SPOG filed a lawsuit in 2023 that sought to redact Seattle Police Detective Ashley Fitzgerald’s name from documents related to frivolous complaints. As SPOG’s lawyers acknowledged, protecting Fitzgerald’s identity was secondary. The ulterior motive of this lawsuit, however, was to establish a precedent that officers’ names would be redacted in all future cases involving four types of allegations —racism, retaliation, corruption, and dishonesty — if the misconduct was determined to be unsubstantiated.

While the King County Superior Court argued that withholding Fitzgerald’s name was justified, it declined to make what amounted to sweeping change to the PRA. SPOG appealed and lost. The court held that it would continue to decide these claims on a case-by-case basis. This is good news for us, and bad news for police guild gangsters who want to keep serious police misconduct anonymous. The SPOG contract imposes an unusually high standard of proof for so-called stigmatizing offenses. The perverse reality is that many of the most serious offenses are never sustained even with significant evidence. If SPOG had its way, these things would never come to light.

Hey, before you go…

Officer Caleb Howard should not be working for the Seattle Police Department today. In a just world, he would’ve been fired for a crime he committed early in his career. Howard assaulted a teenager — an officer’s son, no less — at a party full of police officers and kept his job. SPD saw an asset in his knack for violence and put him to good use on a newly formed anti-protest unit called the Community Response Group.

Caleb Howard is in our Protest Pack with nine other officers from SWAT, POET, and the Community Response Group. You can buy it at our store along with our 2025 DivestSPD All-Stars.

Choked another officer’s son at a backyard party

• Howard went to a party at another officer’s house, attended by multiple Seattle police officers, and consumed a massive amount of alcohol

• He attempted to ply the host’s underage daughter with alcohol and made several explicit sexual comments, including telling her that he “wished he was a hot lesbian” with her.

• Howard accused the officer’s teenage son of trying to sleep with his girlfriend and challenged him to a wrestling match.

• While they were wrestling, Howard choked and punched the teen. When his father attempted to intervene, Howard punched him.

• Howard was charged with assault and agreed to a dispositional continuance, under which his charges would be dismissed if he did not commit any crimes for two years.

• He was suspended for 30 days, the severest punishment short of termination.

Punched and hit protesters with a bike

Note: The above video is not Officer Caleb Howard’s bodyworn video and does not depict the misconduct mentioned below. We could not locate Howard’s footage, so we included this as a reference to show SPD’s response that day.

• During the 2020 George Floyd uprising, a Labor Day demonstration was held outside of the police guild headquarters, drawing hundreds of protesters demanding accountability and total abolition of police

• SPD moved in on the crowd to the tune of “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.” They claimed to be making a targeted arrest of a person with a trash bag that “smelled like gas” according to an informant (it was just trash that someone intended to throw on SPOG).

• Howard weaponized his bike by striking a protester’s shield and legs with his front wheel and punched a protester with a closed fist

• The Office of Police Accountability argued Howard’s punches were “self-defense,” and de-escalation was not an option, given the context of the protest

Conducted a dangerous, unauthorized pursuit

• Howard and others responded to a call about a stolen vehicle.

• Defying orders to end his pursuit, Howard recklessly continued chasing the vehicle through residential neighborhoods, striking a vehicle and continuing through Columbia City in heavy traffic.

• Howard ran a red light and a stop sign, nearly striking two pedestrians.

• Though OPA recommended a disciplinary range of one to three days suspension, Chief Adrian Diaz chose to issue a written reprimand—the second-lowest form of discipline.

Broke a young Black woman’s jaw

• Howard stopped a young Black woman because her physical description did not match that of the registered owner of the car.

• She drove away because she had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant and stopped up the road, then walked away from the car

• Howard and other officers came up behind her and ordered her to stop. She continued walking.

• He rushed up and arm-checked her, knocking her down. Video analysis showed her head struck the ground face-first.

• The doctor at the hospital diagnosed her with a fractured jaw.

• The OPA found Howard’s force was justified.

Tackled and punched a protest medic

• In May of 2025, there was a counter-protest against a Christian fundamentalist, anti-trans concert at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle’s predominantly queer neighborhood.

• SPD bike cops began pepper spraying, tackling, and arresting people after a counter-protester popped a decorative balloon.

• Caleb Howard tackled and repeatedly punched a medic in the head and abdomen.

• He then released the medic from a full-body grip and began punching another counter-protester.

• Body camera footage showed the medic was standing with his arms at his side before being tackled. He did not appear to commit a crime, pose a threat, resist, or attempt to escape.

• Allegations against Howard would have been sustained, but the investigation couldn’t be completed within the deadline set by the police guild contract.

Threw a Black man head-first through a glass door

• Howard was part of a team serving an arrest warrant at a vocational school

• The target ran and tossed his bag. His friend picked it up and ran inside the school.

• The officers chased him into the school and cornered him in a shop class.

• He ran down the stairs past Howard, and Howard pursued him.

• As the two approached the door, Howard grabbed the man from behind, shoving him headfirst through the glass door.

• The man sustained serious cuts to his head and neck that required hospitalization.

• Howard’s command found that the force was justified and the injury was accidental.

• There was no OPA referral.

Unconstitutionally arrested a man without a warrant

• Howard and another officer responded to a disturbance call, arriving to find a mother and son arguing over money

• The officers alleged they had enough probable cause to arrest the man involved

• Two weeks later, after reviewing body cam footage after pain was reported, a lieutenant referred the incident for OPA review because he believed the officers violated the man’s constitutional rights and SPD policy.

• The OPA argued the arrest was unconstitutional because the man was standing with his foot within the threshold of his apartment when seized.

• Because the arrest was solely based on probable cause and the arresting officers did not have an arrest warrant, they were not permitted to enter his residence.

• Howard and the other officer received training referrals and management action recommendations for these violations.

Hey, before you go…

A sergeant with the Seattle Police Department’s gang unit was suspended for four days over his daytime DUI arrest last September, according to a disciplinary report released last Friday. An off-duty Everett police officer found Sergeant Jeffrey Page “slumped” behind the wheel of his truck at an intersection in Monroe with an open container of hard seltzer in his center console and a half-empty bottle of vodka in the back seat.

According to the police report, Page’s truck did not move through “several” cycles of the traffic light, so the officer got out to check on him. He contacted Monroe police after seeing the open container in Page’s vehicle.

Page admitted to drinking at the golf course earlier and blew a 0.116 on the portable breathalyzer test. He was arrested for physical control. The court later dropped that charge, and Page pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of negligent driving. His sentence was suspended for two years, but he was ordered to submit to monitoring, attend alcohol classes and a DUI victim’s panel, and undergo an evaluation for alcoholism.

In his interview with the Office of Police Accountability, Page said that he took the plea deal so “the department could move on with their investigation and hopefully bring me back to work as soon as possible.”

The plea deal may have simplified the OPA’s investigation, but the evidence was airtight as it was. Explaining its findings, the OPA noted that “additional aspects of this incident” undermined public trust, including his “level of intoxication,” which “caused him to either fall asleep or pass out while operating his vehicle on a public road.”

This was one of two DUI-related disciplinary reports released on Friday. The other concerns an incident in which an SPD student officer ran a stop sign and crashed his motorcycle in Seattle in 2024. He was reportedly “sweating profusely” in cold weather, his skin was pale and flushed, and his pupils were dilated. He left the department before the investigation was completed.

Incidents like these are particularly embarrassing for the department as the city works to implement Vision Zero, a plan to achieve zero traffic fatalities or injuries by 2030. In 2025, the number of pedestrian deaths nearly doubled the previous year’s figure, while overall traffic deaths continue to hover at around 30. Responding to a sense of urgency about the issue, Mayor Katie Wilson signed an executive order to accelerate road safety improvements throughout the city last week.

Respondents to SPD’s public safety survey rated traffic safety as the top concern over issues such as gun violence and property crime, and fewer than 40 percent view the department as legitimate. The memory of SPD Officer Kevin Dave striking and killing Jaahnavi Kandula is still fresh in the public’s memory after Seattle got a $29 million reminder in February, when the city settled a wrongful death suit with her family.

Hired in 2004, Sergeant Jeffrey Page makes $187,408 in base pay annually. He made $35,772 in overtime in 2024, the last year for which DivestSPD has complete overtime data.

Hey, before you go…

Can there ever be enough cops? A cop says no

Folks, we called it. Immediately after the Bite of Seattle shooting, DivestSPD warned that business interests and mainstream media would capitalize on the tragedy to drum up support for more cops and increased surveillance. Of course, we can’t take too much credit for predicting the most predictable thing ever. Last week, the Seattle Times reported about the supposed understaffing at the event. The number of officers at Seattle Center had been reduced from 50 in 2025 to 39 this year on the day of the shooting. When KIRO7 asked former King County Sheriff John Urquhart if he thought 11 more police officers at the Bite of Seattle would have prevented the tragedy, Urquhart declined to speculate. Notably, officers were in the immediate vicinity — they responded in seconds — and the shooting happened in front of the SPD command center located in the Armory. He did, however, connect the reduction in officers to general SPD understaffing.

This is doubtful. According to the July 2026 roster, the Seattle police had more deployable officers on patrol than it did last year, meaning the decision to assign fewer officers wasn’t forced on command by a lack of cops. Urquhart segued into doomsaying about the dire risks of understaffing, warning that slow response times could mean a person might die before an officer arrives. But median police response times are on target, meeting SPD’s seven-minute goal. Lowering hiring standards to fill up the department with any warm body is dangerous (we know that former Chief Shon Barnes did this, and his replacement will likely continue to do so). Once they’re under the protection of the police guild contract, cops are virtually impossible to fire, so unqualified or poorly selected hires can damage communities for years if not decades.

Surprise! Sus Chamber poll finds voters support the Chamber’s sus agenda

While businesses and the media have been pushing pretty hard for more cops in the wake of the Seattle Center shootings, these efforts pale in comparison to the consent manufacturing operation unleashed this week in support of cameras. Every news outlet in town, from KOMO to KIRO, has been touting the results of a new public safety poll from the Chamber of Commerce and Challenge Seattle, which (supposedly) found that roughly three out of four Seattle voters back surveillance expansion. The Seattle Times reported that the poll showed a “near-unanimous demand” for expanding surveillance, increasing the number of cops on the streets, shutting down “open-air drug markets” and sweeping encampments within 72 hours. It’s a masterful piece of propaganda from the Chamber of Commerce, presented as definitive proof that the vast majority of voters are in lock-step with the Chamber’s public safety agenda, but are they?

The pollster used less reliable, self-selecting email and text-based polling, and the results weren’t weighted for race or income. There’s no description of how respondents were recruited, so, for all we know, it could have been a survey of 500 well-to-do white people. The questions were also highly loaded. Opponents’ concerns about civil liberties were summarized in a sentence, while the survey described in painstaking detail the supposed benefits of cameras and even cited a department-commissioned study that found Real-Time Crime Center-assisted investigations “were three times as likely to result in arrest.” The survey rebutted concerns around privacy, civil liberties, and misuse, noting that “significant privacy protections [are] in place” and reassuring respondents that video would be monitored by civilian staff, not police officers. In short, the survey got the results it was designed to get.

Anti-surveillance activists get a look at the Big Board

On Monday, members of the Community Not Cameras Coalition toured the Real-Time Crime Center, where feeds from hundreds of surveillance cameras around the city are integrated. While activists described the storage and retrieval of footage as safe and secure, they argued that “there are no technological safeguards” to prevent Axon, the manufacturer of the RTCC equipment, from pulling footage without SPD’s knowledge. Axon can also update their software at any time, but they have agreed verbally with SPD not to enable any new features by default. There’s also little oversight of RTCC analysts. A monthly spot check of 10 randomly selected searches is the only defense against abuse.

Considering that technologies are available to monitor systems like these, the omission seems either purposeful or negligent. One coalition member, Noah Williams, “expressed deep concern regarding the lack of automated anomaly detection in the system audit logs, a key mechanism of catching administrative abuse.” In addition to its critique of RTCC operations, Community Not Cameras also opposes Axon’s partnership with SPD to provide body cams, Tasers, and drone countermeasures. In the last two years, the total value of Axon contracts with the city exceeded $7.3 million. Community Not Cameras is encouraging people to sign a letter demanding that the Seattle City Council invest in violence prevention rather than surveillance technology. They’re calling for the city council to approve an amendment that redirects CCTV expansion funds to community violence interruption ambassadors and restores funding for community-based restorative justice programs. And in the 2027 budget, they’re asking for city leaders to shift surveillance spending to community violence prevention.

Violence intervention—but make it carceral

Speaking of violence prevention, one of the more productive things to come out of the Bite of Seattle shootings has been a renewed interest in alternative methods to reduce shootings and homicides, but the devil is in the details, as they say. Councilmember Maritza Rivera, a landlord and one of the more conservative members of the city council, is proposing a $417,000 two-year consultancy with the National Network for Safe Communities focused on reducing gun violence using the Group Violence Intervention strategy. The basic pitch coming from the NNSC research center is this: a small fragment of the population, responsible for about half of gun violence, can be identified and then receive both outreach and deterrence through community members working with social services professionals and police to offer support, guidance, and information on the consequences of criminal activity.

This model has gained traction recently, following its massive, highly publicized success in Baltimore, which posted its lowest homicide numbers since the 1970s this year. There’s a lot to like about NNSC’s model, including its emphasis on mentorship and social services, but it has one major flaw: police are an integral pillar of its deterrence strategy. Police are heavily involved in “notifications” and “call-ins” where gang members are brought in and warned about what will happen if they continue to be involved in illegal activity. Reminiscent of “scared straight” programs, these stick-and-carrot interventions can break down community trust. Other forms of non-police community violence interruption, like hospital-based interventions and fellowship models, are more effective.

Hey, before you go…

A Seattle police officer continued to contact a dispatcher after she filed a formal complaint against him and his captain ordered him to stop, an internal investigation found. The woman alleged that Officer Simone Minichiello made unwanted sexual advances on her during an outing last November.

Starting in October 2025, Minichiello and the dispatcher began exchanging messages over Instagram and text. Though these conversations started casually, Minichiello increasingly showed his attraction toward the woman, complimenting her appearance and “expressing his desire for more intimate encounters.”

The Office of Police Accountability notes that she “did not reciprocate [his] advances with equal excitement” but responded with “likes” and “flirtatious emojis.” Minichiello claimed to have an open marriage, whereas the dispatcher said that her husband was only okay with her having platonic friends. She told him she was loyal to her husband and was seeking a close male friend she could trust for advice and emotional support.

Eventually, on Nov. 10, she agreed to meet him after work. They went to a bar, where she said he tried to pressure her to drink, but she refused. Afterward, he took her to a secluded park and “proposed intimacy,” according to the report. Minichiello claimed that going to the park was her idea. Then he took her to a business's parking lot and raised the question again, she said. She suggested they play pool.

At the pool hall, he continued to pressure her to drink, she said. He put his hand behind her head and tried to pull her in for a kiss, but she pushed him away. After they finished the game, he drove her home and continued to come on to her for the entire ride, she said. Minichiello denied this.

The dispatcher texted Minichiello to discuss her feelings about the evening, clarifying her boundaries by saying that she didn’t want “anything outside of hugs and stuff.” Minichiello promised to “tone it down” but added that “he would never quit, even if she rejected him all night.”

Later, he sent her an Instagram reel captioned, “men will ruin ur life and then send you an ig reel.” She blocked him and filed a complaint. Minichiello’s captain ordered him not to contact her, but he texted her one more time after that to say he had “no hard feelings.”

The OPA did not find that Minichiello acted unprofessionally or violated the law. Explaining its decision, the OPA cited what it called “mixed signals” and the fact that she did not “clearly or consistently reject” his advances.

The OPA paraphrased Minichiello’s words: “She had never said, ‘Yes’ but never said, ‘No.’” Therefore, the OPA argued that Minichiello “could have reasonably inferred that some form of intimacy might have been permissible.”

Ultimately, the OPA sustained only insubordination allegations against Minichiello, and he was issued a written reprimand, the second-lowest form of discipline.

Hired in 2019, Simone Minichiello makes $159,036 base pay annually and reported $32,721 overtime in 2024, the last year for which we have complete records.

Hey, before you go…

ICE goons attack

After months of mostly nibbling around Seattle’s edges, immigration agents finally took a big bite over the weekend. On Saturday and Sunday, Seattle residents captured footage of ICE agents abducting community members from neighborhoods in the heart of Seattle, including Pioneer Square, First Hill, Capitol Hill, Chinatown/International District, and University District. These recent raids are part of an alarming nationwide trend. For the past three consecutive months, ICE has set new arrest records. Recent reports found that ICE arrests hit an all-time high in July, totaling 51,000, surpassing the previous monthly records set in June and May. The federal government attributed the record number of arrests to the thousands of new agents who joined the agency during its hiring spree. It’s a troubling sign of what’s to come, as the Trump Administration transitions from large-scale deployments to a quieter, subtler program of mass deportation that relies on hit-and-run tactics.

Outlook for Police State, Inc. bullish

Speaking of record numbers, police and surveillance equipment manufacturer Axon is reaping historic windfalls as it continues to corner the cop tech market. According to the company’s latest earnings report, it posted a whopping 30 percent revenue increase for 10 consecutive quarters. Tasers and body cameras, Axon’s bread-and-butter, are already used by most departments, so the company is constantly looking for sources of growth, including drones and AI. Activists have made Flock Safety’s brand toxic, prompting many cities and counties to switch their license-plate reader contracts to Axon. The World Cup was another huge boon for the company. It picked up tens of millions in state, local, and federal sales for its Dedrone platform, which generated $100 million in revenue for Q2. As we reported previously, police departments spent at least $16 million on drone countermeasures in the Seattle area alone. Though Axon is based in Arizona, it has a strong footprint in Seattle, with around 200 employees at its local office. In addition to providing all of SPD’s Tasers and body cameras, Axon also supplies the city’s Real-Time Crime Center platform. The city’s payments to Axon total about $3.6 million annually. Unsurprisingly, Axon has its hands in local politics. The central figure in the brouhaha about gun violence in Aurora earlier this year was Axon executive Jake Wallack, an Aurora resident. He was out front, calling for the National Guard and, of course, more Axon cameras.

Big biz supports big panopticon

Big businesses are seizing on the tragedy at Seattle Center two weeks ago to push for expanded CCTV camera surveillance. After the Bite of Seattle shooting, a group of event-related businesses, including the Space Needle, Seattle Storm, and Climate Pledge Arena, called on Mayor Katie Wilson to reactivate 22 cameras near the stadium and surrounding neighborhoods. These cameras are shut off while the city conducts an audit into their safety, efficacy, and impact on privacy. Mayor Wilson faced backlash from activist groups like Community Not Cameras and Stop Surveillance City for waffling on campaign promises to halt, or at the very least, slow the expansion of camera systems. The audit is Wilson’s (somewhat clumsy) attempt to thread the needle between demands from the two sides of the controversy. Still, businesses and the police are pressuring the mayor to bring the cameras back before the audit is completed.

City Council does a good thing?

Finally, some good news. Last Tuesday, city council amended its supplemental budget to reallocate funds earmarked for CCTV camera expansion and shift them to violence interruption programs. As we’ve pointed out over and over, violence interruption is an actual solution to gun violence. It’s achieved miraculous results in so-called murder capitals, like Baltimore and St. Louis. The installation of cameras in Capitol Hill and neighborhoods around Garfield High School is on hold until NYU’s Policing Project completes its audit of the technology, so this money is just sitting there. The funds will instead be directed towards funding on-the-ground treatment for substance use and employing Community Violence Interruption ambassadors. It’s not a lot—just $250,000—but it’s a start. Future funding for these projects will be taken over by King County and integrated into their broad plans around the developing Crisis Care Center.

Hey, before you go…

A cop with a violent history will face no punishment for tackling a protest medic and punching them repeatedly during the Seattle police response to a protest in Cal Anderson Park last May, according to a preliminary report DivestSPD obtained.

Though the Office of Police Accountability found that Officer Caleb Howard’s force was excessive, it could not discipline Howard due to provisions in the old police guild contract.

On May 24, 2025, a fundamentalist Christian group called MayDay USA hosted an anti-trans concert titled “Don’t Mess With Our Kids” in Cal Anderson Park, located in the heart of the historically gay Capitol Hill neighborhood. Hundreds of people gathered to counterprotest the event.

Howard was a bike officer assigned to the Community Response Group, SPD’s euphemistically named anti-protest unit. The CRG rode into the park to arrest some protesters who had cut loose a few balloons from one of the Christian group’s booths, but they fled.

CRG chased the protesters into a crowd that turned hostile and began yelling at them. Howard dismounted his bike and ran through the crowd, where he spotted a protest medic wearing all black, standing next to another protester on the ground being arrested.

Howard tackled them from behind and immediately began punching them in the head and abdomen. Then, he suddenly jumped to another protester and started punching him.

The video footage contradicted every justification for force that Howard wrote in his report. He claimed that the medic was pushing the other officer while he was making an arrest, but the video showed them standing upright with their arms at their side. The medic did not “appear to commit a crime, pose a threat, resist, or attempt to escape,” the OPA wrote.

Howard wrote that the medic was resisting and grabbing at him. However, the video showed them consistently taking a defensive position. He also tried to claim that the medic kicked at him. Though the video does not show the medic’s legs, the OPA concluded that it was unlikely to have happened.

Only a couple of seconds passed between the tackle and the punches, so it was improbable that the behavior Howard alleged could “have occurred in any meaningful way during this brief period.” Also, Howard was positioned around the medic’s midsection, so they wouldn’t have been positioned to kick him.

Lastly, the fact that Howard left the medic and began punching another protester showed that he did not consider them a threat. If they had genuinely been assaultive, Howard would have arrested them.

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The OPA sustained allegations that Howard used unnecessary force and failed to report his hard tackle, which he characterized as a “controlled takedown.” The department could not discipline Howard under the terms of the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract in effect at the time.

Under the contract, the 180-day investigation timeline for force complaints began once the sergeant submitted the complaint to the chain of command. The medic submitted this complaint in 2026 after the 180-day timeline had passed. This has resulted in several sustained force complaints going unpunished in the last few years.

Though the Office of the Inspector General’s Sentinel Event Review of the May 24 protests faulted the department for its aggressive tactics and failure to communicate with counterdemonstrators, the OPA was incredibly lenient toward individual officers.

Of the many complaints filed, the OPA only sustained one. Officer Brian Muoio was reprimanded for slamming into a protester with his bike. A different officer, Matthew Clark, was given retraining for shooting a protester in the back with a pepperball gun several times as he ran away.

The OPA initially sustained allegations for another violent incident, which occurred at the same time as Howard was punching the medic. DivestSPD flagged bodycamera footage showing Sgt. David Adams punch a protester eight times. The OPA found some of the punches excessive but walked its findings back under pressure from SPD command.

Another far more serious allegation—that Adams used force against a handcuffed prisoner—was ignored altogether, but the OPA opened a new investigation after DivestSPD filed a complaint. It is still ongoing.

This violent incident was far from Howard’s first. Early in his career, Howard got severely intoxicated at a party hosted by Officer Brandon Dorr, who also works in the CRG unit. He attempted to ply Dorr’s underage daughter with alcohol and sexually harassed her.

Then, Howard challenged Dorr’s teenage son to a wrestling match, choked him, and punched him while accusing him of sleeping with his girlfriend. When Dorr attempted to intervene, Howard punched him in the face.

He avoided jail time through an agreement with the prosecutor and was suspended for 30 days.

Caleb Howard’s baseball card will be featured in our brand-new Protest Pack. It goes on sale next week. Sign up here to get notified

Hey, before you go…

The Seattle Police Department fired a public records employee for arbitrarily pushing back deadlines, lying to requestors, and allowing 911 audio records to be destroyed, according to a recently released disciplinary report. Hired in 1999, the employee was terminated after a manager in the department’s public records unit audited her work and found multiple examples of gross mismanagement and negligence.

Last September, after the employee complained about her high workload, the unit reassigned several of her requests to other records staff. One of them raised multiple issues with her supervisor.

The manager reviewed two requests for bodycam footage and found that she had repeatedly extended the deadlines. She told the requestors that she was waiting for the video specialist to review them for redactions. This was a lie. She had never submitted the video to the specialist.

This had happened in at least two dozen similar requests for video. In 22 requests, she also failed to preserve 911 audio recordings, which are deleted after 90 days, according to SPD’s retention schedule. Only two recordings were salvaged after the manager stepped in.

In total, the manager found 60 requests with serious issues. In her interview with the Office of Police Accountability, the employee blamed most of her issues on her high workload. Though she had been with the department for 26 years, four of which were in the public records unit, she claimed to be unaware of the 90-day retention schedule for 911 audio.

Though the employee was fired, this could still be a costly issue for the city, which has had to pay out several lawsuits over police records. In March, the city paid the Seattle Times $160,000 to settle its lawsuit over the practice of grouping multiple requests by a single requestor. The city settled two lawsuits by independent reporter Glen Stellmacher for a combined $200,000 in legal fees and penalties. Those lawsuits involved the destruction of text messages and other records.

The Public Records Act allows for penalties of up to $100 for each day a record was withheld “unreasonably.” Considering the number of requests and the length of the delays, the City of Seattle could be liable for a seven-figure settlement.

Hey, before you go…

City to consult consultants about gun violence

At a press conference yesterday about the city’s response to the Bite of Seattle shootings, Mayor Katie Wilson said a lot of the right things, but what the city will actually do remains to be seen. In her characteristically technocratic fashion, Wilson reassured the media that her office will “partner” with an “expert in gun violence reduction.” She added that the city is “in communication with” some big-name criminal justice policy think tanks, including the National Network for Safe Communities and the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. No doubt, these institutions and experts have lots of “evidence-based solutions” for gun violence that would work, but let’s be real: this is Seattle. They’ll convene a panel that will write a white paper. We’ll have several hearings and then bring in more consultants to study the study. In a few years—if we’re lucky—the city will finally “stand up” a husk of the original proposal. That’s what happened the last time we “partnered” with NICJR. The think tank recommended offloading 50 percent of call types to a non-police response. Today, the anemic CARE team, hamstrung by the police contract, handles less than 1 percent of calls. Police alternatives and violence interruption work, folks. Sadly, the “Seattle process” does not.

State trooper faces stalking, other DV charges

CN: Stalking, DV

Sergeant James Arnold, a Washington State Patrol trooper based in Everett, has been charged with felony stalking and other DV charges after he stalked and harassed his ex, a Snohomish County Sheriff’s Deputy, for months. His vehicle’s GPS showed that Arnold repeatedly violated a protective order by driving his patrol vehicle past her home. He allegedly threatened to shoot her dog, advocated violence against the homeless and drug users, and said he wanted “to shoot and/or stab people and/or open fire in public establishments.” Released on bail last week, Arnold is set to go on trial in October, and the state certifying body has initiated decertification proceedings against him. While consequences like these are rare, this type of behavior is common among police officers. DivestSPD reported in April that Pedro Martos, another WSP trooper, was terminated for using his patrol vehicle to stalk his ex. Nationwide, there are more and more cases of police using databases, cameras, and ALPRs to harass women.

Cops Protect ‘Make Heaven Crowded’ Event

Multiple local police agencies were on hand to guard Erika Kirk’s ominously named event at Pursuit Church’s Kirkland location on July 24th. The Kirkland police were joined by cops from Redmond, Bellevue, and the King County Sheriff’s Office, including KSCO’s “dialogue unit”. The Seattle police weren’t on scene for this particular event (in uniform, at least), but the department is cozy with Eastside evangelicals. The Blue Hero Project frequently delivers treats to SPD precincts. It’s run by Reach Church Kirkland’s Family Pastor Diane Hwang and her husband, Davin, a Kirkland police officer. SPD has guarded quite a few religious events, especially over the past year. Other past christofascist and TERF events local cops have defended include the transphobic hate rally at Cal Anderson Park last summer, where SPD brutalized protestors and community members alongside Washington State Patrol, who was called in for backup. A few days later, SPD turned out in numbers to protect Pursuit Church’s unpermitted rally at City Hall and got City Hall. When religious fanatic Sean Feucht hosted a rally at Gasworks Park a few months later, KCSO’s Dialogue Unit, SPD’s POET unit, as well as Burien and Covington police were on hand.

Fatal KCSO shooting in Seatac ruled a “suicide”

CN: suicide mention

A fatal King County Sheriff’s Office shooting on July 20 that started as a response to a traffic collision was ruled a suicide by the county medical examiner, while MyNorthwest still reports that a KSCO deputy “allegedly fired shots”. Renton police are investigating as part of the Valley Independent Investigation Team.

Inquest clears Seattle cops of 2019 killing

In May 2019, Seattle police officers Ryan Beecroft and Christopher Myers shot and killed Ryan Smith in Queen Anne. Over his career, Officer Myers has shot three people. An inquest into the fatal shooting of Ryan Smith took place earlier this month over a very quick span of only three days. Per Kiro 7, “Smith’s mother, said her son had a substance abuse problem and dealt with depression. She claims police should have recognized that and tried to engage her son through dialogue.” The Office of Police Accountability had previously declared the killing “lawful and proper” while King County classified it as a homicide in May 2024. According to the final interrogatories of the inquest, six jurors deemed that both Beecroft and Myers met the “good faith” standard of Washington State’s deadly force law and that the deadly force was “necessary.” The “good faith” standard was “clarified” just a few months before Smith’s death. In a compromise, the very high “malice” standard was removed, and “good faith” was left in the law after I-940 was passed. Seven years later, we’re seeing the limits of that reform. Last year, the city settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Smith’s mother for nearly $1 million.

Hey, before you go…

A Kent police K9 officer lost control of his dog, who attacked a bystander for more than a minute in March, according to records obtained by DivestSPD. Officer Ethan Tudor tried punching K9 Frank repeatedly, but the dog would not release its bite. The dog ultimately let the man go after another officer hit it in the teeth with a flashlight.

Tudor was one of several Kent police officers who responded to a call on March 18 at the AMC Theater about a man and a woman in their 20s harassing people. A witness told officers that the male suspect was last seen headed south away from the theater on 1st Ave. Other officers were en route to the intersection of E Smith and 1st Avenue, where the suspect was ultimately arrested.

According to his report, Tudor decided to walk with K9 Frank toward the location where the suspect likely was. They were operating in a “standby capacity in case the suspect attempted to flee towards the transit center or circle back north on 1st Ave S.”

The K9 team was walking east on W Temperance when they came across a man who had just left the theater. K9 Frank rushed the man, and Tudor lost his grip on the leash “due to the rain and wet weather,” he claimed.

Screaming “No, No, No,” Tudor trailed after K9 Frank as he bit into the man’s arm. The man frantically repeated, “I didn’t do nothing,” and Tudor replied, “I know.”

The man continued crying out in pain as Tudor tried to pull Frank off by the collar. Another officer ran up and grabbed the man by the arm. Tudor yelled “aus,” the German command for “let go,” and punched the dog three times in the head. The other officer used a flashlight to pry open Frank’s jaws, and Tudor fell to the ground clasping Frank by the collar.

The man was transported to the hospital to receive treatment for deep lacerations.

Problem Dog, Problem Handler or Both?

This incident raises questions about K9 Frank’s training, Officer Tudor’s fitness as a handler, and the Kent Police Department’s policies and practices regarding K9 use.

For starters, Tudor’s decision to deploy Frank was dubious. The K9 team added little value to the operation relative to the risk of an unintentional bite. At around 10:20 pm, foot traffic around the theater was sparse but significant, as a movie had just ended.

Multiple cruisers were in the vicinity. Downtown Kent mostly consists of businesses, which were closed at the time, leaving few places to hide. The nearest residential or wooded areas were almost half a mile away.

Kent police officers could (and did) easily contain and arrest the harassment suspect without the help of a K9. In fact, they were arresting him at the exact moment Tudor was struggling to regain control of Frank.

Tudor had Frank on a 30-foot leash. Though Tudor claimed to be “on standby” and merely walking Frank to a position to intercept the suspect, should he decide to flee, the dog behaved as if it were tracking.

Handlers are trained to orient their dogs toward a suspect’s scent at the place last seen. Tudor did not do so. Apparently, the trail was contaminated, and Frank followed the first scent he found, leading him directly to the man he attacked.

Serious control problems don’t just appear overnight. Tudor and Frank are a relatively new team. They were certified a little over a year before this incident. In that short time, Frank had an unusually high number of bites.

According to records from the Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission, Tudor reported five bites before this incident, which is about how many bites the entire Seattle police K9 unit averages each year

Frank’s control issues bear a disturbing resemblance to those of Seattle police K9 Jedi, who had a similar incident early in his career with handler Anthony Ducre. Jedi broke free and attacked a handcuffed suspect. The Office of Police Accountability recorded that Jedi ignored Ducre’s release commands in at least two more instances. Later, Jedi attacked a woman in Tukwila during a training exercise.

Jedi was so resistant to verbal commands that the K9 unit equipped him with a shock collar. He was wearing the collar on the day that Ducre ordered him to bite a naked man in crisis armed with a knife and a machete. Jedi continued to bite despite the remote shocks and was fatally stabbed.

KPD is investigating the incident at the AMC theater, per the WACJTC. Officer Ethan Tudor is not currently on administrative leave. He made $167,601 last year.

Hey, before you go…

Content note: This post contains descriptions of domestic violence throughout.

Seattle Police Officer Marlon Williams-Booth was arrested in late May for allegedly trapping his wife in a room, grabbing her by the hair, throwing her to the ground, and pressing the frame of a gun to her neck, according to a police report DivestSPD recently obtained.

On the evening of May 28, Thurston County deputies were dispatched to Williams-Booth’s home in Yelm for a welfare check. He had called a sergeant at the Seattle Police Department and told him that his wife pulled a gun on him. Dispatchers described him as “frantic” and “crying.”

Deputies spoke to Williams-Booth, who was hostile and apparently drunk. One deputy noted that his thoughts seemed disorganized, and he bounced from one subject to another.

Williams-Booth “quickly divulged” that he was a Seattle police officer. He was suspicious and repeatedly accused the two deputies of reaching for their firearms. Aside from repeating over and over that his wife had pulled a gun on him, Williams-Booth would not describe what had happened earlier.

According to the report, he was aggressive and clenched his fist while he talked. The deputies left and took a statement from Williams-Booth’s wife at a hotel.

The incident

The alleged assault occurred on a Friday. She said that tensions had been mounting the entire week since an incident on Monday, when one of their three boys, whose ages range from 3 to 10, poked another one on his behind with a finger and made a farting noise. Williams-Booth called this “sexual assault,” but his wife described it as “innocent.”

His wife had been contemplating a separation and told him on the night of the altercation that she was leaving him. At Williams-Booth’s insistence, she always carried her firearm when she left the house. She was grabbing her laptop from the home office when he came in and blocked the only exit.

He asked her if she was carrying, and she patted the belly holster where her 9mm pistol was kept. Then, she said, Williams-Booth lunged at her and pinned her up against the wall. He pulled the gun from the holster, grabbed her by the hair, and took her to the ground.

While they were on the ground, Williams-Booth had the frame of the gun pressed against the side of her throat. It had a loaded magazine but not a round in the chamber. She tried to take her phone from her purse to call 911, and the two struggled over the purse until the strap ripped. Eventually, she double-kicked him in the chest and escaped out the window, leaving behind her weapon and purse.

A Thurston County detective investigated the incident and found the evidence was consistent with his wife’s account. The detective found clumps of hair where the struggle occurred. Her purse strap was ripped, as she described. His wife had injuries on her lip and nose.

The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office developed probable cause to arrest Williams-Booth for misdemeanor domestic violence assault and unlawful imprisonment.

Arrest

SPD command accompanied Thurston County deputies to take Williams-Booth into custody. On the way to jail, he continued to repeat his claim that his wife was in “crisis” and pulled a gun on him.

Alluding to his recent counterterrorism training for the World Cup, he said that he was doing all these trainings where people were jumping out and shooting at him. “Now I[’m] react[ing] to a woman in crisis, who’s my wife, tr[ying] to pull a gun out on me and rack one.”

He continued ranting, claiming to be “one of the elite heroes of downtown Seattle.” Williams-Booth told the arresting deputy, “You have no idea how many people at gunpoint I’ve killed… people that have confronted…how many people have shot at me.”

According to SPD records, Williams-Booth has never fired his weapon on duty or been fired upon.

He also blamed Sgt. Hoang, the sergeant he originally reported the incident to, for misinforming dispatch. “He doesn’t speak English. Literally, my sergeant has a language barrier.”

Williams-Booth’s wife filed for divorce a week after this incident. The petition merely asks for custody and an equitable distribution of assets. She did not request a protective order.

This is only the latest in a series of recent domestic violence incidents involving Seattle police officers or recruits:

• Recruit Clayton Whitby was terminated after he reportedly threatened to punch his wife and lied to investigators.

• Probationary Officer John Nguyen was terminated after a violent incident with his brother-in-law.

• Officer Jonathan Goodwin was arrested and placed on paid leave after allegedly pushing his girlfriend down the stairs.

• Richard Norris fired his weapon inside the house next to his wife.

Marlon Williams-Booth makes $146,557 base pay annually, excluding overtime.

Hey, before you go…

Adam Smith Just Loves Funding Occupations

Local war hawk Adam Smith has long supported sending aid to the Israeli military (insincere posturing notwithstanding). Now, he wants to fund another occupation force: the Seattle Police Department. The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee was in Little Saigon last week to announce that he has requested federal money for the Seattle police to provide “critical assistance in the neighborhood," meaning emphasis patrols — c’mon please, just one more emphasis patrol, bro. It wasn’t Smith's only foray into local politics in recent days. The Bellevue City Council passed a residential protest buffer zone on Smith's behalf in response to frequent anti-war protests outside his home. In the past, the ninth district congressman voiced his annoyance with what he dubbed “totalitarian protesters,” calling for them to be arrested. When asked what he considered proper protester behavior, he literally said they should stand quietly and leave when asked. He even had the gall to invoke the Civil Rights movement. Those folks were famous for moving when they were told to.

City Spent $567k Per Downed Drone at the World Cup

There are still three more games left in the World Cup, but we already know who the big winner will be: manufacturers of police tech. In the run-up to the event, police departments campaigned for all sorts of surveillance and weapons they could keep permanently after the games ended, including CCTV cameras, robot dogs, drones, and drone countermeasures. Dedrone, a drone mitigation platform, is the latest cash cow for Axon, which is quickly cornering the cop tech market. Axon produces SPD’s Real-Time Crime Center, CCTVs, tasers, and 85 percent of the nation’s body cameras. It’s also snatching up an increasing number of ALPR contracts from its competitor, Flock, which has become toxic in the past year due to growing outrage over its use by ICE.

Here’s a snapshot of just a few local expenditures on drone mitigation: The King County Sheriff’s Office got $11.5 million from the passage of the Safe Skies Act (a total of $500 million in federal funding), which mostly went to three Dedrone trailers. Renton spent around $3 million on one Dedrone trailer, which they purchased along with Axon AI translation-equipped bodycams. The Seattle police spent $2 million for “drone identification & mitigation,” but that didn’t include any gear purchase. The Guardian reported that a whopping 29 drones were seized in Seattle. Without knowing the total spent just on drone mitigation by regional agencies, that is already a baseline of about $568,965 spent per drone seized in Seattle.

He Shot the Wall (And The Wall Won)

As DivestSPD reported earlier this week, King County Sheriff’s Office pilot Alex Paul had a little oopsy-daisy at his desk in April. He claimed that he was trying to transfer his gun from his desk to his side holster, and it went off (he had a literal “desk pop.”) The bullet fired through the wall and into the bathroom across the hall. No one was hit, and no critical infrastructure was damaged. The sheriff’s office did conduct an internal affairs investigation. Paul was given “performance-related training,” consisting of a short chat with his sergeant. Coincidentally, this occurred on the anniversary of Seattle Police Officer Robert West shooting the wall of the North Precinct, which we also covered:

The Cop Cup Comes to a Close

The World Cup is finally over, for Seattle anyway, so downtown is no longer crawling with quite so many regional cops. There are far too many of the locals already! The morning after the final match, Mayor Katie Wilson claimed to have "turned off" the stadium district cameras. A “pause” was in effect before the World Cup, but Wilson enabled them, citing "general but credible threat.” But before you get too excited, per The Burner, the cameras are only turned "off" through an Ethernet switch. Wilson claims that fully unplugging them would cost too much for the box trucks needed to do so. Not sure what box trucks run these days, but it's definitely less than the $355,000 diverted from JumpStart housing to pay for the stadium cameras alone or the cost of whatever panopticon expansion that SPD and the City Council propose next. They can turn these cameras back on just as fast as they turned them off. This is once again setting a very low bar, like when Wilson shut down a single camera — one of 310 CCTVs — this spring. You do not under any circumstances "gotta hand it to her."

Hey, before you go…

A King County Sheriff’s Office helicopter pilot fired his gun through the wall of the department’s hangar in Renton in April, according to disciplinary documents. After a cursory investigation, Deputy Alex Paul was given “performance-related training.”

On April 7, Paul was working out on the fitness equipment at the KCSO Air Support Unit’s hangar at Boeing Field. He had placed his personal Glock 19 in the drawer of his desk beforehand. After showering, he tried to retrieve it from his desk.

In a written statement, Paul claimed he “somehow” lost his grip. As he attempted to regain control, his finger hit the trigger, and he “experienced a negligent discharge,” according to the statement.

The bullet hit the wall above Paul’s desk, traveled across the entryway hall, passed through the bathroom door, and lodged below a paper towel holder. Paul was alone inside the hangar at the time.

An Air Support Unit sergeant wrote a perfunctory report about the incident, mirroring Paul’s written statement almost verbatim, including his grammatical errors like “reacted to maintaining control.”

Since no one was hurt and no “sensitive” areas of the hangar were hit, the case was approved for “expedited” review, with the consent of the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight, KCSO’s civilian accountability body. The case was closed one month later.

Apparently, the OLEO and Paul’s commanders believed there was nothing to investigate, but his account of what happened is at odds with the evidence.

Paul claimed he “somehow” fumbled the gun while pulling it out of the drawer. However, the bullet hole above his desk and the bullet’s trajectory are consistent with someone aiming, not accidentally firing while reacting “to maintaining control [sic].”

Previously, we reported on a Seattle police officer who shot a wall at the North Precinct (coincidentally, also on April 7 but in 2025). That officer was practicing his draw when his finger hit the trigger.

The Seattle officer was suspended for three days and given 10 hours of retraining. Paul was given “performance-related training.” It consisted of brief verbal counseling and an excerpt from the KCSO manual on gun safety.

Among other things, the manual says deputies shall “not use their firearms as a hitting tool.”

Maybe he was using the butt of his Glock to hammer nails or crack walnuts?

Hey, before you go…

In June, a city analyst presented a quarterly report showing that the Seattle Police Department is on track to hire more cops than it can afford under its current budget. After several years of lackluster hiring, it seems that SPD’s cup is finally running over.

Local media outlets are breathlessly reporting on this “hiring surge,” but few seem to question exactly how it came about or what the consequences might be. The closest that anyone has come was Fox 13’s Hana Kim.

Last August, Kim asked Chief Shon Barnes if the department’s hiring standards had been lowered to hire more officers. She claimed to have heard this from “several” police sources.

Barnes brushed the question off, saying, “With over 4,000 applications…and we take only a hundred people. What does that tell you about the…quality of people that we are taking?”

Without context, that sounds pretty convincing. Kim seemed satisfied enough to move on. However, when you compare those numbers to SPD’s hiring practices in the past decade or so, they represent an alarming drop in quality.

The sheer volume of officers hired is unprecedented, which makes it suspect. In a typical year, SPD hires between 80 and 105 officers. In 2025, the department hired 165 officers out of around 4,400 applications.

It hired only 84 the previous year, with around 400 fewer applicants. In other words, 10 percent more applications yielded nearly 100 percent more hires. On its face, that is evidence of drastically lower standards.

Moreover, when the department receives more applications, it tends to become more selective. Under Barnes, SPD is much less discriminating.

For example, Sue Rahr hired about 2 percent of applicants. In 2013 and 2014, the only other years with a comparable amount of applications, the department hired an almost identical number of officers.

In Barnes’s first year, SPD hired at a rate of almost 4 percent. That’s similar to 2019, when SPD was desperate to increase its ranks because the city was projecting a large cohort of 1990s hires would soon retire.

It’s also a year when we have concrete examples of SPD relaxing its hiring standards. In 2019, the department hired a French-Canadian high school dropout who was running a real estate scam with his wife. The same year, it hired a former Tucson police officer with a “checkered history” and a suspended license who would go on to run over a college student while driving nearly three times the speed limit.

Though Barnes claimed all of his recruits are of the “highest caliber,” a few have already been sacked for serious misconduct. One was fired for cheating using AI glasses. Another was terminated for threatening to punch his wife and lying about it.

In his rush to get SPD to “full strength” in two years, Barnes is hiring 50 to 70 officers who wouldn’t pass the department’s very low bar under normal circumstances.

To put that into sharp relief: He’s hiring 50 to 70 Kevin Daves a year.

Hey, before you go…

Unhinged Detransitioners Chased Out of Pride

On Saturday afternoon, during the Pride celebration, a group of about 50 people confronted a pair of right-wing detransitioners who were accompanied by a grab bag of chud streamers, according to the Capitol Hill Seattle blog. The two had been lurking around Cal Anderson Park all week, antagonizing trans people for content, and things finally came to a head over the weekend. A man approached and struck the streamers’ cameras with a baseball bat, then ran away. Seattle police fired a foam-tipped round at him, and he surrendered. One of the detransitioners, Hendrix Moise, is a Michigan-based lawyer who built her practice helping trans people change their legal names before she did a heel turn, became rabidly anti-trans, and started making posts about “trans genocide.”

Mayor Wilson Tries ‘New’ Crime Strategy on 12th and Jackson

Mayor Katie Wilson announced a “new approach to crime” at 12th and Jackson. It’s hard to tell what exactly is “new” about it. The plan calls for an increased police presence, which is nearly indiscernible from the emphasis patrols under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan. These expensive operations nabbed a few small-time drug dealers (mostly users selling to support their habits) and didn’t disrupt drug activity on the corner. Supposedly, the “new” part will be $1.1 million in one-time funding for a suite of support services, including overdose prevention and outreach. However, that much money doesn’t buy a lot in this city.

Wilson’s announcement included right-wing talking points too—phrases like “open-air drug sale,” which you hear constantly from KOMO news types While Wilson’s announcement about the expansion of police presence did concede that “we know we can’t arrest our way out of these problems”, back in April, the Public Safety Committee heard updates on the LEAD diversion program, where it was noted that pre-arrest diversions were down 41 percent in the last two years, while arrests were up 47 percent. SPD’s Chief Operating Officer Sarah Smith claimed that it was due to staffing and that more cops will mean more diversions (so... by magic?). Bookmark this for when their next diversion numbers don’t magically improve and actually get worse.

Overtime Spending Is Too Damn High

Cut to the most recent Public Safety Committee Meeting. SPD gave a presentation on sworn staffing and massive Q1 overtime spending (which pays for these “emphasis patrols” among other things), saying they will need $1.7M in additional funding, or they “may have to slow hiring to stay within their budget.” This presentation was also bookended by concerning discussions of potential satellite precinct(s) in the north end, because burning half a billion dollars on SPD isn’t enough already. But wow, a whole million dollars on supportive services!

J6 Cop Got 18 Months Paid Vacation, Insists He Was a “Victim”

Seattle Police Officer Jason Marchione, one of six SPD officers who attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in 2021, is suing the City of Seattle. Marchione alleges that the Office of Police Accountability targeted him for his political beliefs. He ran into a parked car in Bellevue and made false statements about the collision before he knew that Bellevue police had video of the incident. Marchione got nearly 18 months paid vacation while the case dragged on, and was only suspended for 30 days, so he came out way ahead. Not to mention, he got to keep his job. The OPA initially sustained dishonesty findings, which is an automatic termination. Evergreen reminder that SPD had more cops in attendance at J6 than any other, including at least three former officers. All six officers were (officially) named last year after a judge lifted the injunction. Of course, DivestSPD had them figured out in 2021. No big deal.

BREAKING: Right-wing Media Shocked That Cops Lie

Earlier this month, SPD, along with the feds, engaged in security theater under the guise of “outreach” along Aurora. In their subsequent blotter post, SPD boasted about six arrests. However, five of those were “misattributed” and actually took place at an operation in West Seattle. KIRO radio host and police stenographer Charlie Harger was shocked to learn SPD’s narrative that they had published without question—as they always do—turned out to be false. With all the gravitas of a very serious radio hack, Harger said, “there’s no soft way to say this: Seattle Police gave the public information that wasn’t true, and every media outlet that trusted them repeated it on their behalf.” The SPD blotter has now been updated to include a correction. Unsurprisingly, Harger is already back to dutifully repeating “organized retail theft” crime panic narratives and other copaganda. That brief moment of clarity didn’t stick, it seems.

Hey, before you go…