Council passes Dan’s RV ban

This week, the city council passed Councilmember Dan Strauss' package of bills targeting RVs and people living in them. While some of the services and outreach are arguably a step forward, the legislation takes several steps back by establishing a punitive permitting system in 2027 that banishes RVs to the city’s industrial areas in true NIMBY fashion. The Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness pushed back on this system, noting that many will be unable to get a permit, and the opening of a new safe lot has been delayed for years.

Councilmembers presented the permitting system in softer language. Strauss called it “human-centered.” But this follows years of stigmatizing rhetoric. For example, at an August public safety committee meeting, Chair Bob Kettle generalized that when there are “more than five RVs together, someone is dealing drugs.” Councilmember Martiza Rivera suggested the permitting system wasn’t punitive enough, saying she worried this would “legalize” RVs that the city should remove. She failed to pass an amendment that would revoke permits based on certain criminal convictions. Strauss clarified that one safe lot is already opening and that he submitted a budget amendment to fund a second one. The backdrop of the legislation is a proposed austerity budget that squeezes funding for housing and tenant services, while growing the police budget to over half a billion dollars. At the same time, eviction filings in the county have climbed over 1,000 in March 2026 alone. The legislation takes effect at the end of April 2027, with a 90-day grace period and full implementation at the end of July.

Change to Everett homeless policy disrupts free pantry

Everett Free Pantry briefly shut down this week after the city informed the operators that it was located within a recently expanded “service facility buffer zone,” where providing aid to the homeless requires a permit. The pantry reopened Thursday. There’s no permit yet, but it’s on private property, so it’s technically exempt. The buffer zones are part of an anti-homeless and ableist policy referred to as “no sit, no lie.“ The first iteration of Everett’s “no sit, no lie” law was passed in 2021. Two years later, the city added buffer zones that restricted people from providing food, water, supplies, or services without a permit—a move clearly meant to punish mutual aid. The city council extended the buffer zones through 2027 last year. In the first two years, police gave out 156 warnings and 15 criminal charges for “buffer zone violations” against 11 people, with at least one conviction. Sitting or lying on public property in one of these “buffer zones” is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail and up to a $500 fine.

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WSP Trooper’s vehicular homicide trial pushed back again

Former Washington State Patrol Trooper Sarah Clasen will not stand trial for vehicular homicide until 2027, at the earliest. In fact, it’s looking like she might take a plea and not face trial. Clasen struck and killed 20-year-old Venezuelan immigrant Jhoser Sanchez in March 2025. She had reportedly been drinking at a Chinese restaurant famous for its “strong drinks” for four hours before the collision, and her blood alcohol content was estimated to be roughly three times the legal limit at the time. This is the fifth time the court date has been moved. The prosecutor’s office has cited “ongoing negotiations,” hinting at a possible plea deal. Clasen’s case is a perfect mirror image of the death of WSP Trooper Christopher Gadd a year before. Gadd was killed by an intoxicated driver speeding on the I-5 shoulder, and conservatives rallied around his death because the driver was an immigrant. The man who killed Gadd was given a million-dollar bail (later reduced to $100,000), held in jail until his trial date, tried in a little over a year, and sentenced to 10 years. Compare that to Clasen, who was not formally charged for four months, was released without bail on personal recognizance, and remained on the state payroll until April of this year. While we don’t know what sentence Clasen will face, it definitely won’t be a decade in prison. Though we’re often told that police are held to a higher standard, it’s clear that cops face an entirely different justice system.

KCSO deputy suspended for elbowing flight attendant

Earlier this week, we reported that King County Sheriff’s Office Detective Shawn Peckham was suspended for getting kicked off a plane in San Diego last year. Peckham, who smelled of alcohol, did not want to raise his seat during takeoff and elbowed an off-duty flight attendant in the seat next to him. The pilot ordered him removed from the plane. Peckham was rude to the officers who escorted him off the plane, telling one of them, “Don’t touch me!” In particular, he was hostile and argumentative to the Black female detective taking his statement. Peckham thought she was biased against him because she was a woman. He condescendingly referred to her as “girl” and implied that she must be new to the job (she was the ranking officer on the scene). He accused her of taking the side of the “gal” on the plane [the flight attendant] and claimed a witness to the fight, presumably also a woman of color, was not “white guy friendly.” He was suspended for two days.

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A struggle over an armrest and a few choice words led to the suspension of a King County deputy, according to disciplinary documents DivestSPD obtained.

Det. Shawn Peckham was flying home from a police conference in San Diego, and an off-duty flight attendant sat next to him. When another flight attendant asked Peckham to raise his seat, he argued that the seat was already up.

Peckham became irritable and aggressive after that. He began pushing his elbows out, taking up the entire armrest, the off-duty flight attendant said. She put her elbow behind his and explained that the other flight attendant was only doing his job. Peckham then jabbed her with his elbow. She told him, “Don’t be difficult.” He replied, “Don’t be a bitch.”

The pilot ordered him removed. San Diego Harbor Police came and escorted him off the plane. Peckham immediately identified himself as a cop: “I’m LEO [law enforcement officer].” In his report, the police officer noted a strong smell of alcohol on Peckham’s breath.

Peckham was argumentative with the police officers. When the male officer lightly placed his hand on Peckham’s back, he turned and said, “Don’t touch me!” He was particularly hostile to the female corporal, the ranking officer leading the investigation.

He called her a “girl” and insinuated that she was a rookie: “You’re probably pretty new, trying to do things by the book, and like trying to figure it out with what you been given.”

Later, when he was alone with the male officer, Peckham told him that her thinking was too “black and white” and she would never make a good detective. The officer explained that she was already a detective.

Peckham complained that he was being “victimized.” The corporal said, “I get it.” Peckham shot back: “No, you don’t get it. He gets it,” pointing to her male partner.

After they exited the plane and entered the terminal, Peckham continued to argue with the corporal about why he was removed from the plane. He said that the corporal was being “super mean” to him. As the officers attempted to interview him, he repeatedly insisted that they weren’t listening to “his side” of the story.

She told him to “be cool” and not to be a “jerk.” The corporal told him he was making things “considerably worse for himself.” He scoffed and told her, “I’ve said that a hundred times.”

At least three witnesses saw the interaction on the plane, including another King County deputy, and gave statements to the police. They all corroborated the flight attendant’s statement, except for the deputy, who claimed that Peckham said “B” instead of “bitch.”

Peckham wrote off the female witness’s account, claiming that she didn’t like police officers. When the corporal questioned how she knew that he was a police officer before he identified himself, Peckham said, “Well, she doesn’t like white guys.”

He attempted to have the plane grounded to press charges against the flight attendant, but the police eventually convinced both parties to let it go.

In his review of the incident, Peckham’s commander, Captain Tim Meyer, put his thumb on the scale in Peckham’s favor, noting that he was “contrite,” “humble,” and “did not waiver [sic] in taking full responsibility for his conduct.” Meyer added that he knew Peckham “to be professional and one who models the highest standards of conduct.”

Internal affairs detectives did not ask Peckham about his alcohol intake, so Meyer declared that issue to be “undetermined.” Nevertheless, his command found he “diminished respect” for the sheriff’s office, and Chief Cheol Kang recommended a two-day suspension.

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‘Right’-sizing the SPD

Just how many cops does the Seattle Police Department “need?” About 660 officers on patrol, according to a consultancy former Chief Shon Barnes hired. That’s about how many patrol officers SPD had in 2020, before the mass exodus of cops who got their feelings hurt by the George Floyd protests, refused to take the jab, or retired because they were getting “too old for this shit.” At a budget briefing on Thursday, city analysts cited a report by Meliora, former interim Chief Sue Rahr’s firm, which estimated that 660 was the magic number based on SPD’s call volume. Ideally, the report said, officers should spend only about 60 percent of their time responding to calls for service.

With all its new hires, SPD is on track to hit that in about a year. According to the latest roster, roughly 140 student officers are in field training, and 67 recruits are in the academy. Of course, that’s not enough for Public Safety Chair Bob Kettle, who put out a petulant press release, calling the mayor’s $68 million increase to the police budget “an ‘Unfund’ budget,” adding that it’s “as if the lessons of the ‘Defund’ era half a decade ago have not been learned.” You can almost hear his feet stamping like a big, bald baby. Kettle wants 1,400, an arbitrary number that somehow got into elected officials’ brains and stuck there long ago. It’s supposedly based on police per capita, but many cities the size of Seattle have comparable numbers of officers per capita, and they’re doing fine. As we’ve said over and over, hiring that many officers that fast comes with substantial risks. Roughly a third of officers on patrol will soon be rookies, and that can have deadly consequences. All of the officers who restrained Keenan Pearson before he died were fresh out of field training.

Erika Evans is turning into Ann Davison

In her first year, Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans has made good on her campaign promise to revive the community court that her predecessor, Ann Davison, killed. Rebranded as the “Connection Court,” the new community court diverts low-level, non-violent offenders to drug treatment, mental health resources, and other services. Last week, public defenders distanced themselves from the Connection Court because of its restrictive eligibility requirements and proposed 90-day jurisdiction period. If someone commits another crime in that period, they’re booted from the Connection Court and subjected to normal prosecution. Evans is also implementing harsher sentencing for repeat offenders under her new High-Priority Repeat Offenses (HiPRO) program. There’s little daylight between HiPRO and Davison’s high-utilizer initiative, which Evans criticized on the campaign trail. In a recent interview on the Seattle Channel, Evans noted, “There’s not going to be a list of folks’ names on this,” but that’s a distinction without difference.

HiPRO will single out the same populations that were on the HUI list— mostly the homeless and the mentally ill — for enhanced sentencing while denying them access to potentially life-changing services. Evans, a former prosecutor, campaigned as a “progressive” alternative to Davison, but her proposed solutions are looking increasingly carceral. She’s shaping up to be more in the mold of San Francisco’s tough-on-crime district attorney Brooke Jenkins, whom she met with three weeks ago. Evans promised to bring “some of the wisdom [Jenkins] shared with us back to Seattle.” As an aside, Jenkins faced accusations of ethics violations and prosecutorial misconduct last year that the state bar handled via, get this, diversion.

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Black SPD lieutenant preps second lawsuit

Seattle Police Lieutenant John O’Neil has filed a $3 million claim against the city, alleging that his subordinates conspired to damage his career by filing a series of frivolous complaints, and the city failed to stop them. The claim stems from a long-running feud between O’Neil and several officers in the public affairs and K9 units that devolved into OPA and EEO complaints and, ultimately, lawsuits. Four women officers filed a joint lawsuit accusing O’Neil and former Chief Adrian Diaz of sexual harassment. They were collectively awarded $2.6 million. O’Neil filed his own lawsuit claiming these women had filed an unprecedented number of retaliatory complaints— eight in one year—against him that were all determined to be unfounded. He says these complaints started with a dispute he had with problem K9 Officer Anthony Ducre and escalated when he joined the public affairs unit. The city settled that lawsuit for $200,000, but O’Neil is now saying that the city hasn’t done enough to mediate the dispute or stop the complaints. Officer Valerie Carson, one of the four plaintiffs in the $2.6 million lawsuit and a central figure in ex-Chief Diaz’s ouster, filed a fresh complaint in June claiming that O’Neil attempted to discredit the previously settled complaint and criticize the officers involved. O’Neil’s newest claim was in response to Carson’s complaint and the command’s decision to assign her to the same building as O’Neil.

ICE still has its hands in the DOL’s cookie jar

ICE is still using state licensing data to make arrests, according to a new report released by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. While the Keep Washington Working Act prohibits state agencies from sharing data with ICE for civil immigration enforcement, ICE can still access driver data through multiple pathways. Between August 2025 and October 2026, ICE agents accessed Department of Licensing data 356 times through a national querying system called Nlets to make immigration arrests. Nlets, accessible through Washington State Patrol’s ACCESS platform, can provide driver and vehicle registration information tied to license plate numbers. The use of this data for civil immigration enforcement violates the DOL’s data licensing agreement with WSP and the conditions agreed to by agencies accessing the platform. ICE agents using blocked Department of Homeland Security identifiers can submit the same query with a different set of DHS identifiers to bypass the restriction. ICE is also accessing this information through 14 data brokers with DOL contracts, including LexisNexis. LexisNexis is integrated with a nationwide network of automated license plate readers. Its contract prevents it from creating ICE search records, making oversight impossible. It’s also difficult for UWCHR to fully investigate because the information about the use of data brokers is so limited. On the bright side, the DOL has closed one pathway — its driver and plate search — but ICE agents can still access DOL data through other means for the foreseeable future. The UWCHR recommends enforcement mechanisms that allow the victims of impermissible data use to obtain court injunctions and sue for damages through a private right of action

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Sgt. Richard Bonesteel is featured in our new Protest Pack. Buy it from our online store through the link below:

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Threatened to smash a car window and pull a woman out by her hair

• Bonesteel and another officer responded to a call about two people illegally parked in a bus lane.

• The officers got their information and discovered that the passenger had an open misdemeanor warrant in Marysville.

• Bonesteel told the passenger to open the window, and she said the car battery was dead, so she couldn’t roll it down. He told her to get out of the car, and she asked why.

• Visibly angry, Bonesteel replied that she could get out or “we can talk like this through your fucking warrant, and I’m going to break the window and pull you out by your hair.”

• After she complied, he continued to berate her, telling her that she was “being difficult” and to “do as you’re told.”

• The OPA argued that Bonesteel responded unprofessionally by threatening and swearing at someone who was “neither escalated nor noncompliant.”

• When she politely asked a question, Bonesteel escalated and responded with hostility. He was given a written reprimand.

Got drunk on a date and refused to leave the woman’s house until the police were called

• Bonesteel went out on a date with a woman who lived in Edmonds.

• Afterward, he was extremely intoxicated and would not leave her property, so she called 911.

• Edmonds police arrived and drove Bonesteel to his car, but they determined Bonesteel was too drunk to drive.

• Bonesteel argued with them. Officers described him as “verbally abusive” and insulting.

• Bonesteel eventually called the woman, and she picked him up.

• The Office of Police Accountability sustained unprofessionalism allegations against Bonesteel.

• Even though the incident occurred off-duty, the OPA argued that officers are always in the public eye and were held to a “higher standard.”

Had a DV disturbance with his girlfriend at Northgate Mall

• A woman called under the assumed name “Sandra” and reported that Bonesteel was her husband.

• Sandra said that he was violent with her at home. She claimed he threw things and pushed her. She called back and recanted her statement.

• Internal investigators traced the number to a woman with a different name, whom Bonesteel identified as his ex-girlfriend.

• The name also appeared in a domestic violence disturbance incident in the parking lot of Northgate Mall.

• Bonesteel and the woman were having such a loud and intense argument that the Seattle police were called.

• The Office of Police Accountability closed the case as a “supervisor action.

Made his girlfriend so fearful for her life that her friend called the police

• Bonesteel and his girlfriend had a heated dispute inside her home in front of the woman’s child.

• She became frightened, so she moved the child out of the room and texted her friend

• During the argument, Bonesteel grabbed her by the arm and dragged her from the room.

• Her friend called the Renton police, who arrived and could not find any physical marks on the woman

• The Office of Police Accountability did not sustain findings that Bonesteel had violated any laws or policies.

Failed to de-escalate a contact with a man asleep in his car and punched him multiple times in the face

• Bonesteel and another officer found a person passed out behind the wheel of his running car.

• He approached the driver’s window and ordered him out. When Bonesteel yelled at the man, he was startled awake and revved the engine.

• Bonesteel punched him three times through the open window.

• The OPA found that the force was proportionate but argued that the officers should’ve attempted to contact the man through the PA first.

• They were given training referrals.

Taunted an Asian protester and asked if she was “born here”

• During the 2020 protests, Bonesteel and another officer kettled a group of protesters and arrested them for alleged property destruction.

• When someone challenged his probable cause, he told them to “shut up”

• While they were cuffing a woman, Bonesteel told her, “You guys are committing property destruction in my city.” She replied, “It’s my city, too.” He said: “Were you born here?”

• The woman, who was Asian, interpreted this as a “perpetual foreigner” stereotype.

• He repeatedly told her things like “no one cares” and “shut up.” He taunted her, saying, “Your friends are losing.”

• Bonesteel said his “born here” comments weren’t based on race.

• The OPA gave Bonesteel a training referral for unprofessional comments.

Hey, before you go…

Former Seattle police officer Adley Shepherd is no stranger to viral videos. Shepherd became the poster boy for police violence locally in 2014 when he slugged a handcuffed woman in the face. That incident, captured on in-car video, cost him his job. Now he’s in the spotlight again, as the unintentional breakout star of right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley’s latest opus.

The disgraced former cop went viral for losing his gun while guarding disgraced former TV reporter Jonathan Choe in Little Saigon. Choe was there with Shirley to falsely accuse a business of “EBT fraud.”

Toward the end of the video, Shirley narrates some events on the corner that Choe is filming. A fight breaks out, and Choe, following his World Star-brained instincts, decides to film it. Shirley claims that someone tried to attack Choe, but the video doesn’t show this. It shows a man who appears to throw something at Shepherd, then jump-cuts to Shepherd on top of him.

Someone comes up behind Shepherd and punches him in the side. At this point, Nick says that Shepherd dropped his gun. He goes into the crowd to get it back and winds up fighting multiple people. He’s eventually driven out by what Nick calls a “mob.”

It’s not a great look for Shepherd. A kinder client who respected him and his work would’ve cut that clip. After all, it’s irrelevant to the video’s purpose. But this is Choe we’re talking about here. He’s not one to miss out on 30 seconds of primo content, even if it means throwing his hired help under the bus.

This must’ve been a rock-bottom moment for Shepherd, who spent the better part of the last decade trying to get his job back with help from the police guild. He almost succeeded in 2018. An arbitrator ordered the department to reinstate Shepherd, calling the misconduct finding just but the termination excessive.

A judge reversed that decision in 2019, and an appellate court upheld the ruling in 2021. Finally, a court dismissed Shepherd’s wrongful termination lawsuit in 2023.

Now, he runs a private investigation business called Edrei Strategic Solutions (“Edrei” is Shepherd’s middle name). Edrei’s website claims that the business is based in Bellevue and features multiple stock photos of skyscrapers and fancy corporate conference rooms. However, the registered office address is Shepherd’s condo in Tacoma, and Edrei receives mail at a UPS store located inside a grimy Puyallup strip mall.

There’s lots of colorful puffery on Edrei’s page about how it’s the “premier executive security agency in the region,” with a “vetted team of professionals” that includes “former federal and local law enforcement, military special operations, defense contractors, and intel analysts.” But it’s unclear if anyone else works there. We couldn’t find any other “security professionals” on LinkedIn who listed Edrei as their employer.

Edrei aspires to a high-end clientele, advertising “vetted Close-Cover Executive Protection Specialists” for corporate and “[Ultra-High Net Worth] Clients,” but Shepherd, a Trump supporter who was at the January 6 riots, seems to attract a different type of business.

While Shepherd no doubt daydreams about talking into an earpiece while rushing Elon Musk into a private helicopter, his day-to-day reality is much more humiliating and much less glamorous. At Pride this year, Shepherd picked a fight with a person in a wheelchair while guarding a street preacher. He ended up punching two women in the head (his specialty) before being taken down by the crowd. Eventually, his former colleagues in the Seattle police intervened.

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September was a deadly month for King County police

This week, DivestSPD identified the four Seattle police officers who restrained and knelt on Keenan Pearson in September before he died: Serge Avakian, Noah Buchanan, Lorenzo Moore and Chelby Bragg. When the federal consent decree was lifted last year, the Seattle police stopped releasing the names of officers who use deadly force. Since then, there has been one in-custody death, three fatal shootings, and one non-fatal shooting. As 2027-2028 budget sessions progress, victims of police violence and their families are demanding that the city allocate $50,000 to establish an office for supporting victims of police violence. This drop in the bucket of the overall city budget would help offset the high costs grieving families face. Keenan Pearson’s family has set up a GoFundMe for funeral costs and attorney fees as they pursue accountability and justice. A vigil for Keenan will take place next Saturday, Oct. 17.

In addition to the in-custody death of Keenan Pearson and the nonfatal shooting of a Beacon Hill woman in September, there was also a fatal police shooting by Federal Way police last month. Per the King County Prosecuting Attorneys Office, September was the worst month so far in 2026 for police violence in King County, with three incidents listed. Of the nine deadly force incidents in the county this year, four were by Federal Way police and three by SPD.

Prosecutor: Deputy who stabbed a man to death was ‘justified’

Elsewhere in Washington, Clark County Prosecutor’s Office declined to file criminal charges against Deputy Bryson Layton for fatally stabbing Marc Fogle 17 times last year, deeming that deadly stabbing “justified.” A recent lawsuit by Fogle’s family alleges that Deputy Layton used an unauthorized “personal dagger“ and intentionally deactivated his body-worn camera before stabbing Fogle. The Washington State Office of Independent Investigations investigated the stabbing. Detectives traveled to the scene directly from another fatal police shooting by Kitsap County Sheriff’s and Poulsbo police that occurred just hours earlier.

Spokane cops bond over the massacre of a mentally ill man

Newly released texts show Spokane officers yukking it up an hour after the 2024 shooting of Joshua Musselman and trying to get their stories straight. The exchanges came to light through a lawsuit Musselman’s family filed earlier this year. Spokane police gunned down Musselman while he was having a mental health crisis a few days after Christmas. Musselman was standing outside his front door rolling a joint. When he bent down to pick something up, four officers opened fire. The only weapon found was an Airsoft gun. In the texts, first published by RANGE Media, the officers seemed more worried about people poking fun at their marksmanship than they were distraught about ending a person’s life. Officer Daniel Valencia texted that he was “pissed” that the “two of us shot 10 rounds each and the fucker only got shot four times.” The officers admitted they didn’t even have probable cause to arrest Musselman: “What’s the crime we were investigating yesterday? Unlawful discharge? Haha,” Valencia texted to Matthew Stewart, who replied, “Being a douche lol.” Valencia, who has killed before, used the “gun battle” they had just been in to bond with Stewart, texting that the shooting made them “Brothas for life now dogg.”

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Judge permanently blocks standards for sheriffs

A Thurston County judge ruled that parts of the new sheriff standards law were unconstitutional, making permanent a temporary injunction issued back in April. SB 5974, signed into law this year, permits the state to remove sheriffs and police chiefs who fail to meet professional standards. The law sets basic requirements for elected sheriffs that match those of ordinary sworn police officers and prohibits anyone from holding office who has a history of actions that would get state certification as a peace officer revoked.” Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank has been sweating this law since it was proposed because he’s facing possible decertification for bigoted posts he made while employed by Seattle police and since he became sheriff. Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown intends to appeal the law. Pierce County voters will also decide next month whether the sheriff remains an elected position.

One-year Chief Shon Barnes gets a new gig

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes wasted no time finding a new job. Barnes’ new employer MissionRT “advises law-enforcement agencies on leadership, technology, and organizational change.” MissionRT sells surveillance tech to federal, state and local police departments. The company’s partners include ZeroEyes, an AI software for school shootings that sent a school into lockdown over a clarinet. There’s also CAD system manufacturer Mark43 and Veritone, an AI recognition system that enables departments to circumvent bans on facial recognition, as well as Verkada, an ALPR vendor similar to Axon and Flock. Barnes isn’t the only former Seattle police chief to move into the police tech sector. After former Seattle Police chief Carmen Best resigned, she became a member of Axon’s “AI ethics board,” most of whom quit in opposition to the company’s proposed taser-equipped drones, Best was one of only three who did not.

Area cops surveil and raid Asian massage businesses

As part of a wider regional crackdown, cops in Everett, Federal Way, and Marysville are raiding and surveilling Asian massage businesses. Thirteen of the 21 massage businesses that were shut down had no criminal cases—they were shuttered for licensing reasons. Carried out under the pretext of investigating “sex trafficking,” these high-profile police raids of Asian massage businesses actually put workers at greater risk of labor exploitation, misdemeanor charges, immigration enforcement, and trafficking, according to the Massage Parlor Organizing Project. Apparently, a national nonprofit called The Network gave information to the Marysville police ahead of these raids. Founded by a former CIA agent and some military intelligence officers, The Network acts as a well-funded private intelligence service that targets massage businesses across the country using spycraft, like hidden cameras and microphones.

To support MPOP’s SafetyNotStigma anti-carceral worker protections campaign, sign their letter at tinyurl.com/SafetyNotStigma.

‘Burning building’ turns out to be just a burning couch

Last month, local police stenographers breathlessly published a story about Seattle police officers “running into a burning building” on Capitol Hill. SPD released a video edited so that we never see the fire itself—just a moderately smoky building. According to records DivestSPD obtained, the fire was contained to a couch and the immediate area around it. It wasn’t the five-alarm blaze we were expecting based on the hype from the Seattle police. The investigator estimated that the small fire, caused by either a lit cigarette or a heater, did less than $25,000 in damage. Nevertheless, the officers have already received commendations, and the department plans to honor them for heroism at the next award ceremony.

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West Precinct Bike Officer Tanner Jay is featured in the DivestSPD Protest Pack. You can buy it from our online store through the link below.

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Faked a conversation with a witness to cover for his reckless driving

• Tanner Jay got a call about someone stealing from a boat in Eastlake

• Jay began traveling to Eastlake nearly 30 minutes after a phone call with the witness. He drove two to three times the speed limit, tailgating cars and crossing into oncoming traffic.

• He turned onto a narrow, poorly lit residential road with a 20 mph speed limit and continued driving at double that speed.

• A man walking along the road asked him to slow down and use his emergency lights. Jay told them he was going to a call about a man with a gun.

• Jay said sarcastically, “Do you know where I’m going? Somebody with a gun. So, I should probably go there pretty quick, yeah? OK, fantastic,” and then sped off.

• A gun had not been reported yet. Jay pulled over and called the witness back. After rehashing the same detail, the witness hung up, and Jay pretended to continue talking.

• Jay feigned hearing that the witness reported seeing a gun, but the witness is no longer audible.

• The OPA sustained unsafe driving allegations against Jay. Jay's nearly 30-minute delay in starting to travel showed he did not consider the call urgent enough to justify emergency driving.

• The OPA clearly believed Jay was being dishonest but claimed it lacked enough proof to meet the elevated standard of evidence the police guild contract established.

• Jay was reprimanded for driving too fast.

Let gas thieves leave without investigating and lied to OPA detectives

• Owner of a U-Haul lot complained that Tanner Jay allowed two people suspected of stealing gas to leave without attempting to stop them.

• The security video showed Jay’s cruiser pull up. He spoke with the two suspects as they were leaving the lot before allowing them to exit.

• Jay claimed that he was unaware of the call and only stopped through to make a “social contact,” but he took the call, downloaded the info, and headed directly to it.

• The call updates contained a detailed description of the suspects and their vehicle, but Jay released them because he said he didn’t see anything “abnormal.”

• The vehicle was also missing front and rear license plates, giving Jay a basis to detain and investigate.

• Though he remembered virtually nothing else about the call, Jay claimed that he recalled seeing dealer tags or something else that would make him think nothing was “amiss.” The security video does not capture any tags.

• The OPA initially sustained dishonesty allegations that Jay was intentionally and materially dishonest, but it walked these findings back.

• It sustained allegations that Jay failed in his duty to investigate criminal activity.

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Illegally entered a DV victim’s home, tased, and arrested him

• Seattle police officers responded to a DV call. The caller met them in the lobby and said that she and her boyfriend cut each other during a fight.

• Tanner Jay and other officers did a welfare check on her boyfriend.

• The man declined help. He had a small abrasion on his forearms but no other signs of distress.

• Eventually, officers forced their way into the apartment, ordered him to the ground, tasered him, and arrested him.

• The OPA found that the officers initially had grounds to enter the apartment under the community caretaking exception.

• However, once they verified that he appeared to be okay, they no longer had a basis to force entry, the OPA argued.

• All officers were given training referrals.

Pulled his gun on an unarmed suspect in a misdemeanor assault case

• Tanner Jay responded to a call about a fight on a street corner and spotted a man who fit the description.

• Jay called out “come here” to the man, but the man did not respond. He pulled his gun, then grabbed the man, turned him around, and pushed him against the wall.

• The OPA did not sustain findings that Jay used excessive force.

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A Seattle police officer’s creepy cat impersonation has landed him in the doghouse. Officer Vincent Fason got a 30-day suspension for weirding out an entire veterinary clinic with surprise visits, uncomfortable hugs, and a bizarre, overly familiar cat impression that involved meowing and rubbing his head on a staffer’s arm.

Fason first visited the clinic on a call about some shell casings in the parking lot last summer. Afterward, he told the staff that he would return to check in on the business. They didn’t know what that would mean.

The clinic initially welcomed Fason’s visits. At first, they were brief and sporadic, but Fason began showing up more often and sticking around longer. He stopped by several times a week and stayed for 45 minutes to an hour.

Once, in September 2025, Fason entered through the clinic’s cat door, mimicking a cat by purring and meowing. A staff member joked that they didn’t have any appointments for him, and he hissed at her. Later, he made purring sounds and rubbed his head on another staff member’s arm. According to the Office of Police Accountability report, “she froze in discomfort and found [Fason]’s act triggering due to a prior traumatic experience.”

In particular, he seemed to fixate on one clinic staff member. She said that he frequently hugged her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. On October 15, he grabbed her and pressed her bust into his chest, then told her, “You know I love you.” She told the clinic manager not to allow Fason into her office, but in a later incident, he went in anyway and poked her on the shoulder, saying, “Poke, poke, poke.”

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By October, Fason was showing up frequently, the staffer said. She recalls that he came to the clinic three times in one day to lurk in the lobby. That day, she discreetly took a photo of him sitting in the lobby, looking at his phone. Later, she told a community service officer about Fason. The CSO said that he was a little “huggy” and suggested she contact the CSO’s supervisor.

Fason claimed that he did not recall doing anything the clinic staff alleged. However, in a second interview, he admitted that he hugged the staffer three times but insisted that she initiated it each time. He denied all of the allegations. At the same time, he could not come up with a plausible motive for why four clinic staff members and the clinic’s manager would lie.

He explained his frequent visits as “business checks.” Fason said that prostitution and shootings were common in the area and that it was part of his job to check in on businesses. Fason claimed that none of the staff made an issue about his visits. The staff said that they found it difficult to confront him about the discomfort he caused because he was a police officer.

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After the hugging incident on Oct. 15, Fason was reassigned to another sector. GPS records show that he visited the next two days. On Oct. 16, he stayed for about 30 minutes, and the next day, he was there for 10 minutes, responded to a call, and returned for about 45 minutes.

The OPA sustained all allegations, noting that each incident was corroborated by multiple people and documented in text messages. Fason’s unwanted touching was unprofessional, the OPA argued, and he shirked his obligation to patrol his sector by spending an unnecessary amount of time “loafing” at one business.

Since Fason denied all of the allegations, the OPA opened a second dishonesty investigation. While the OPA has already sustained dishonesty findings in that case, the chief has not issued final discipline. The presumed penalty for dishonesty is termination under the SPOG contract. However, cops who lie are not always fired. Fason still appears on the roster, but he is on leave.

Hired in 2016, Fason makes $159,036 in base pay, and he made $56,123 in overtime in 2024, the last year for which we have overtime data.

Hey, before you go…

City overpays already overpaid cops

Mayor Katie Wilson’s balanced budget just got knocked off tilt by the last-minute discovery that the city overpaid Seattle police officers by more than $13 million. When calculating back pay under the new contracts, some goof in the department’s HR used the wrong year as a baseline, resulting in some officers getting paid as much as $32,000 extra. Of the 900 or so officers who got an unearned boost to their retroactive pay, roughly a third received more than $15,000. Because there’s no provision in the police guild contract to resolve overpayments, the city will need to haggle about clawing it back. That might take a while, and the problem won’t be fixed before the budget is finalized, so there’s a $13 million hole to be filled in the next month. The Seattle Police Officers Guild isn’t exactly known for bargaining in good faith, so they’ll likely squeeze a concession or two out of this. They’re already capitalizing on the error to hammer the city over its payroll system, Workday.

Though the payroll system wasn’t at fault here, SPOG posted a statement headlined “Our members deserve an accurate paycheck and a payroll system they can trust,” which alludes to their class action lawsuit against the city over alleged Workday underpayments. To be fair, there are some legitimate grievances with Workday — other city unions are also suing for the same reasons — but SPOG members benefit more than most from the lack of electronic overtime tracking. Seattle cops still track their overtime on paper slips. It’s easy to exploit. As we’ve reported before, sergeants sign off on subordinate officers’ overtime without verifying that they are actually working. One officer was caught stealing at least $5,000 in unearned overtime by leaving two hours early every day and claiming a full shift. His sergeants never discovered the issue. It only came to light because another officer dimed him out. The city has tried to implement electronic overtime tracking for almost a decade, but SPOG keeps getting in the way. Coincidentally, SPD overtime spending has roughly doubled in the last four years.

Area police kill two people in two days

Police have shot and killed two people in the Puget Sound region since our last Digest. Early Sunday morning, Tacoma police officer Adrian Velasquez shot and killed 49-year-old Gerald Cowell during a domestic violence call. A neighbor saw multiple officers surround the home. They heard yelling and then about 10 gunshots. Medics arrived and pronounced the man dead. Tacoma police have disclosed very little — they have not even said whether the man was armed. The next day, SWAT officers shot a Bremerton man during an exchange of gunfire. The woman who called 911 told dispatchers that the man was inside the house, armed and potentially intoxicated. She fled before SWAT responded. Nearby residents were evacuated, and a Pierce County Sheriff’s Office drone was used to locate the man within the house. Police initially claimed that the man died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound but later amended the statement to say that he “died at the scene.” The Washington State Office of Independent Investigations is investigating both of these incidents. We will follow up with the names of the officers involved in the next two weeks.

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Surveillance expansion creeps through policy gaps

Seattle Department of Transportation cameras, which aren’t meant for “criminal enforcement purposes,” are routinely used for “criminal enforcement purposes,” according to a new city audit. An annual report released by the City Auditor’s office this week offered insight into SDOT’s CCTV access logs, costs, and data management. The Seattle Police Department accesses some of these cameras from its Real-Time Crime Center. The original surveillance impact report for SDOT’s cameras only allows them to “monitor conditions on SDOT-owned roadways,” not public sidewalks or private property. Though SPD has view-only access to SDOT feeds, the department regularly messages SDOT through Microsoft Teams to request camera angle adjustments. No documented agreement between SPD and SDOT outlines how cameras can be used, and SDOT still doesn’t have guidelines for the Real Time Crime Center in its operating procedures.

While SDOT policy explicitly states the traffic cameras “shall not be used for civil or criminal enforcement purposes,” the feeds are available to the public, and any department can access them. Moreover, SDOT’s manual specifies that traffic camera recordings must be deleted after 10 days, but most recordings were not deleted within that time frame. Clips made at the Real Time Crime Center, from live stream recordings available for 24 hours, can be stored indefinitely if they are classified as evidence. Oh, and by the way, the federal government can freely obtain all the data produced by two AI-equipped traffic studies because they’re federally funded, according to the audit.

Bob can’t get enough cops

Public Safety Chair Bob Kettle is not happy about Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed police budget. Though Wilson’s proposal increases the police budget by a whopping $68 million and funds 66 new officer positions, it caps the number of new cops SPD can hire at 1,250 officers by 2028, which is well below the 1,400 Kettle wants. He’s even floated the idea of hiring 1,800 cops, which is an even more implausible number, but that’s how many a city our size is supposed to have, he says. Here’s the rub: Seattle can’t hire that many cops at the pay rate set in the police guild contract without cutting multiple departments to the bone or raising taxes to an unimaginable degree. While it’s true that Seattle has fewer officers than most cities of the same size, it also spends more on police than most cities of the same size. For example, Boston has about 2,000 police officers, but its officers top out at about $18,000 less than Seattle cops make in their first year. And while we’re doing the per capita thing, Seattle’s crime rate has fallen to about where it was in the mid-2010s, when SPD had close to 1,400 officers. If Kettle wanted more cops, he should’ve proposed a contract that made cops cheaper to hire. Alternatively, he could call on members of Christine Gregoire’s Challenge Seattle—including Amazon, Microsoft, and some of the other richest corporations in the world—to voluntarily submit to a cop tax to cover the extra $100 million in the budget needed to pay for 1,800 cops.

The family of a man SPD shot is seeking $30 million

The family of Urban Andrew Seay, killed by Seattle Police Officer Kyle Hay on March 19, 2025, has filed a claim against the city of Seattle for $30 million. Hay shot Seay four times after Seay entered the Southwest Precinct parking lot during a mental health episode. Officers knew Seay’s identity and location because his wife called 911 to report that he was suicidal. Multiple officers surrounded Hay, and less-lethal options were available. When Hay fired, he was 35 feet away from Seay, who held only a pocket knife. The Office of Police Accountability conducted an expedited investigation, meaning they did not interview Hay. The OPA found that the shooting was justified and that Hay followed SPD’s de-escalation policy. The King County prosecutor filed no criminal charges, leaving few options but a civil case. These cases commonly play out the same way. The OPA rarely faults officers in cases where the person shot has a knife— even if that person has taken a nearly lethal dose of pills and is 20 feet away. While the OPA and later inquests almost always find these shootings justified, the city, just as often, will pay out seven figures to settle a wrongful death claim. That happened with the police shootings of Charleena Lyles and Derek Hayden.

Hey, before you go…

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Derailed a sexual assault investigation against the King County Sheriff

• Couet and another officer responded to a 911 call of a woman claiming that King County Sheriff John Urquhart sexually assaulted her 14 years earlier.

• Though the alleged victim offered evidence and named several witnesses, Couet decided to focus on her mental state instead of her assault claims.

• When he filed the report, Couet did not label it a “sexual assault.” Instead, cleared it as a “crisis intervention” and described her as “delusional.”

• Because Couet misrepresented the case, it was not routed to the sexual assault unit until later.

• OPA found that Couet abused his discretion and failed to file the report properly

• Couet was issued a written reprimand and given additional training.

Participated in a sergeant’s attempt at retaliation and didn’t report him

• Couet’s Sergeant, Frank Poblocki, had a man’s car towed, and the man called him a “bitch.” Poblocki located the man’s workplace and planned to go there later to demand an apology.

• Poblocki instructed Couet and other officers to stage near the AutoZone where the man worked while he confronted the man, apparently expecting the encounter would escalate to violence.

• Poblocki eventually left after talking to several people who advised him to stop what he was doing.

• All officers involved were accused of failing to report Poblocki’s misconduct and lying to investigators about knowing his true intentions.

• They were given training referrals.

Mismanaged a call that ended in a woman tasered

• Couet responded as a sergeant to a call about a woman in crisis throwing flaming objects off her apartment balcony.

• The woman retreated into her bathroom when the officers arrived. They entered her apartment under “community caretaking” authority to determine whether there was a fire.

• After they verified that there was no fire, the constitutional authority to be inside the apartment arguably ended.

• The woman threw a mirror out of the bathroom and slapped at the door with a belt. Officer Al-Hanaya Tasered the woman when she appeared at the door.

• The OPA found that the best course of action would’ve been to order the officers out of the department and to negotiate with and observe the woman from the apartment’s front door.

• Though he did not completely “abdicate” supervisory responsibility, Couet’s scene management “fell below standards,” the OPA argued.

• He did not assign roles to the 13 officers in the hallway, and instead of delegating the task, he left to retrieve a ballistic shield, so he was absent when force was used. Couet was issued an oral reprimand.

Defied orders and escalated a situation in Cal Anderson Park

• During a Black Lives Matter protest in Capitol Hill, Couet attempted to arrest someone for allegedly committing property damage.

• Though Couet’s supervisor instructed officers not to enter the park alone, he disobeyed orders and tried to arrest the man by himself. The crowd surrounded Couet and attempted to prevent the arrest.

• Couet pepper-sprayed three of the people who were standing or kneeling around him.

• He was accused of excessive force and failure to de-escalate. The OPA sustained neither allegation but gave him a training referral for poor decision-making.

Hey, before you go…

DivestSPD has identified the Seattle police officer who shot a woman in Beacon Hill earlier this month as junior SWAT Officer Jose Jimenez. He nonfatally shot the woman, who was experiencing a mental health crisis, inside her apartment while attempting to arrest her for domestic violence assault.

On Sept. 18, officers were dispatched to a domestic violence incident at around 8 a.m. and found a man with an injury to his face, according to a Seattle Police Department release. The woman retreated into her apartment, and police received a judicial warrant to enter hours later.

A team consisting of Jimenez, another SWAT officer, and several patrol officers entered the apartment around noon. The woman was inside the bedroom with the door closed. Though SPD claimed the woman was “barricaded,” the apartment door was cracked open and her bedroom was unlocked. Officers briefly tried to speak with her from the living room, but there appeared to be a language barrier.

A video SPD released shows Jimenez and the second SWAT officer moving to the hallway outside of the bedroom. The woman opened the door partially, and the officers began ordering her to show her hands. She waved her phone in her left hand, but her right hand was concealed behind the door.

Jimenez appeared to push the door open. The woman swung a tire iron at him, and he fired one round. Jimenez continued pushing into the room before K9 Officer Anthony Ducre, who was standing behind him, grabbed his vest and pulled him back out.

No attempt to negotiate

As DivestSPD pointed out in our analysis of the shooting, Jimenez and other officers at the very least violated the department’s deescalation policy. As defined in the force policy drafted under the federal consent decree, deescalation means to use time, distance, and shielding to minimize the likelihood of force.

At the time, it was not urgent to take the woman into custody. She was alone inside the apartment and not a threat to anyone other than herself. They could’ve used the time to definitively establish what language she spoke and brought in an interpreter. According to call data, two negotiators were on the scene, as well as at least one member of SPD’s crisis response team and a community service officer. Notably, no members of the CARE team were involved.

None of those resources were used.

Instead, officers closed the distance in five minutes without formulating a plan or assigning less-lethal roles. They only discussed using Tasers at the last minute, shortly before the woman opened her door. At that point, the only options were the rifles Jimenez and the other SWAT officer carried in their hands.

A new SWAT officer with a history of escalation

Hired in 2019, Jimenez has only been a full-fledged officer for less than six years. He completed his probationary period during the George Floyd protests and worked in the East Precinct before being reassigned to the Community Response Group, a so-called problem-oriented policing and anti-protest unit. In 2026, he was reassigned again to the SWAT team.

According to SPD force records, Jimenez tends to use relatively high levels of force. Nearly half of his reportable force in his career has been Type 2, meaning Tasers, pepper spray, and other forms of force that cause more than “transient pain.”

Jimenez averages about two complaints for excessive force annually, and internal investigators found policy violations in several of these incidents:

• Jimenez and another officer grappled with a homeless woman while arresting her for trespassing on a property to urinate. During the struggle, her breasts were exposed in front of several onlookers. The Office of Police Accountability noted that there was no reason for Jimenez to immediately go “hands-on” and engage in “prolonged physical interaction that drew bystanders to the scene.” The agency faulted Jimenez for not slowing down, talking to her longer, and waiting for more officers. Jimenez received a training referral.

• During the 2020 protests, Jimenez and another officer pepper-sprayed protesters and pelted them with blast balls from behind as they were walking away. The OPA found that the protesters were “not actively threatening or causing harm to officers at the time.” Jimenez was reprimanded. He was one of the few officers to face discipline for force from that period.

• During the May Day protests in 2021, Jimenez swatted away a cellphone on a selfie stick. The OPA sustained allegations against Jimenez for violating the protester’s right to film, but he was not disciplined for this incident.

• In 2022, Jimenez shoved an elderly woman. She was attempting to approach her husband, who was being arrested on the ground. Another officer had the situation under control, but Jimenez intervened, pushing her forcefully. This escalated the small crowd that had gathered nearby. Jimenez was, again, given a training referral.

Aside from his record of escalation and high levels of force, Jimenez is unusual in other ways. Namely, he’s much younger and less experienced than a typical SWAT team member. More than two-thirds of the SWAT team were hired before 2010. Typically, officers accumulate nearly a decade of experience before they’re assigned to the unit.

The shooting is currently under investigation by the King County Independent Force Investigation Team, or IFIT-KC. Jimenez makes $159,036 in base pay plus overtime.

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Official stories about SPD’s violent week are falling apart

The Seattle Police Department had an extraordinarily violent week recently, with an in-custody death and a non-fatal shooting six days later. The official stories about both incidents are crumbling. Outside investigators initially reported that Keenan Pearson died suddenly of an unknown medical emergency while handcuffed on Sept. 12. But DivestSPD interviewed a witness who saw four officers kneeling on Pearson shortly before he died. The witness said that the man stopped moving and responding while the officers were still on top of him. This contradicts police claims that he lost consciousness minutes later, while a medic was evaluating him. Days later, SWAT officers shot and critically injured a woman in a Beacon Hill apartment. Police stenographers played up a false narrative that there was an “exchange” of gunfire. This unraveled when SPD released the video, showing SWAT officers making a series of unforced errors.

Officers made only a minimal effort to overcome a language barrier. Instead of finding an interpreter and negotiating with the woman from a safe distance, officers moved into the hallway outside her bedroom door. When she opened the door, one SWAT officer further escalated the situation by pushing the door open. She swung a tire iron at him, and he shot her. SPD’s press release hyped the danger, describing the woman as “barricaded” and noting that the officer who shot her was injured. However, she was in an unlocked bedroom in an unlocked apartment. In the video, the tire iron doesn’t appear to strike the officer, and he doesn’t look hurt in the slightest. Thankfully, she survived, but somebody has to answer for this.

SPD wins this budget season and the next and the next

Seattle budget season has begun. The big winner is, of course, the police department. The loser? Everyone else, including firefighters, who are facing a $7 million trim. Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal includes a nearly 14 percent bump for the police, while other departments will see cuts of up to eight percent. Wilson is increasing police funding by an even larger percentage than Harrell did on average throughout his four-year term. In the coming weeks, pro-cop city council members like Bob Kettle, Rob Saka, Debra Juarez, and Martiza Rivera will no doubt try to funnel even more money to SPD, as they haggle over the finer points of the city budget.

The cops’ big lesson from the Bite of Seattle: Give cops more money

Seattle police are continuing to milk the Bite of Seattle shootings for more stuff and more staff. At the public safety committee, the department gave another presentation on the shootings. SPD’s overall recommendations included “preauthorizing drone protocol“ for “mass casualty incidents and active-suspect scenarios.” They maintained that SPD’s response to the mass shooting was fine, that any errors were because of other departments, and that they need more staffing and gear, per usual. They patted themselves on the back for “stopp[ing] the threat in seconds” and having “one shooter in custody within 20–30 seconds.” (Unfortunately, it was the 15-year-old shooter that didn’t hit anyone, and the third, who probably did, is in the wind). As always, it comes down to money. The presentation concludes by saying, “The instincts were right. Now resource the rest of the response the same way.” It’s the only department in the city getting a double-digit increase next year, and they still have their hand out.

Big Dan’s RV bills are rolling forward

This week, the public safety committee advanced a package of bills designed to push RVs out of residential neighborhoods. Councilmember Dan Strauss, who represents some of the city’s most rabid NIMBY freaks, is behind this legislation, which goes after visible poverty through a punitive permitting process based on a one-time RV census. The permit requires RVs to park in “industrial zones” while limiting parking elsewhere in the city to two hours. When Councilmember Dionne Foster proposed an amendment to allow possible future counts, Strauss argued it would encourage people from other states to bring their RVs to live here. At the last meeting, Strauss said this bill was “not intended” to target people living in RVs, but that it is “no longer appropriate” for RVs to park on city streets. With these platitudes, Strauss is trying to convey that this is a compassionate approach rather than an outright parking ban like other cities—but a slower bureaucratic ban is still a ban. The bill goes to full council in October and would take effect next summer if approved.

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A rare Council W is marred by a typical Council L

In a rare W, City Council passed legislation banning algorithmic price fixing at grocery stores (nice!). Unfortunately, Council President Joy Hollingsworth’s carve-out amendment for “loss prevention” surveillance also passed. The ongoing media panic over “organized retail theft” continues to drive massive expansions in police tech. Hollingsworth said this amendment wasn’t targeting desperate mothers stealing diapers. No, it was aimed at a hypothetical organized crime ring stealing from grocery stores, a nuance not shared by retail stores with their own state-of-the-art forensics labs.

KSCO pursuit ends in a crash—again.

KIRO reports that, once again, a King County Sheriff’s Office pursuit ended with a rollover crash this week in South Seattle. Crashes like this are still regularly occurring at the department, which started using StarChase GPS launchers in 2025. These GPS trackers that fire from the front of police vehicles are sold as an alternative to dangerous chases like this. Seattle police circumvented a mandated Surveillance Impact Report to implement StarChase GPS in the past year. Late last year, King County killed someone in a vehicle pursuit. Deputies crashed again in January, and another chase involving a horse trailer resulted in a crash in May.

Hey, before you go…

Seattle police were restraining Keenan Pearson immediately before he died, an eyewitness to last Saturday’s in-custody death said. SeattleU law student Le’Jayah Washington was at the R-Day Block Party in Georgetown and saw it unfold.

According to a press release from the King County independent investigation team, known as IFIT-KC, Seattle police officers were holding Pearson and calling for medical aid. Washington said that a man had assaulted Pearson in a bar called 9lb. Hammer, and security had ejected both of them.

Though Pearson was part of the disturbance, he was not under arrest or in handcuffs initially and was leaning against the pushbar of an officer’s cruiser.

Pearson had fallen while security was ejecting him from the bar and was lying in the street when officers found him. There’s conflicting information. Per IFIT-KC, officers said Pearson was having trouble standing on his own. At the same time, on a radio call, an officer on the scene implied that he did not believe that Pearson’s injuries were serious and that medics may only be needed to “check his vitals.”

At 8:20 pm, a Seattle police officer relayed to dispatch that he was “alert and conscious.” Shortly thereafter, Washington said Pearson began saying “Ow” and touching his side.

He stepped forward off of the pushbar and fell to the ground. The IFIT-KC release said he fell and rolled, but Washington described his movements as actively “rocking” rather than collapsing and rolling.

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A group of four to five officers turned him on his abdomen and began handcuffing him, Washington said. The IFIT-KC statement insinuated that this was for his own protection because he was “rolling across the roadway.” However, Washington said that he was never in any danger. The street was closed due to the festival.

Washington said that the officers were on top of him for around three minutes until he stopped moving and responding. She said one of them was kneeling on his neck.

They rolled him onto his side into the “recovery position,” then sat him up, but he no longer appeared to be sitting up on his own. Washington said he seemed to be slumped against an officer’s leg.

Paramedics arrived at around 8:27 pm. Washington said she saw the medics check his pulse and begin chest compressions almost immediately. According to IFIT-KC, Pearson lost consciousness five minutes after EMTs arrived during their patient evaluation.

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Washington said she was in shock and that IFIT-KC’s investigators didn’t seem interested in talking to witnesses. “I didn’t see them interacting with anyone, for real,” she said.

She waited over two hours before finally speaking to a Washington State Patrol detective.

The King County Medical Examiner has completed Pearson’s autopsy, but the cause and manner of death are still pending, as the medical examiner awaits a toxicology report.

Earlier this year, a 27-year-old man named Leon Davis died in Federal Way police custody. In July, the medical examiner determined that his death was caused by “prolonged restraint.” Seven officers held Davis down for nearly 25 minutes, and he had blunt force injuries to his neck, head, face, and wrists. His family is suing the city for $50 million.

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Mayor Wilson’s gun violence plan: More of the same

Mayor Wilson rolled out her gun violence package this week, and it’s “meh.” The plan includes some modest new investments in stuff like after-school programs, but it mostly just “sustains” what the city is already doing, including youth jobs programs, extreme risk protective orders, mental health counseling, and so on. It’s cool that the mayor has been gracious enough to “sustain” all that stuff, and not cut those programs to pay for more cops (yet). One noteworthy change is that the city will transfer violence intervention programs to the CARE Department, which operates 911 dispatch. Whether that’s good or bad is TBD. It sounds good. We’ll see. The mayor and the city council have both proposed partnerships with different think tanks to study gun violence. The city council’s right wing is calling for a $400,000 contract with the National Network for Safe Communities to do a two-year evaluation, while Mayor Wilson wants to partner with the Center for Gun Violence Solutions to set up “Violence Reduction Councils” to examine each homicide and formulate a systemic response. As we noted in the Digest previously, the police play a stronger role in the NNSC’s strategy, whereas the Center for Gun Violence Solutions looks at gun violence from a public health lens.

As a sop to the Chamber of Commerce and Challenge Seattle, Wilson pledged expanded patrols and operations that “target dealers preying on people in crisis.” This is the same failed policing strategy Bruce Harrell pursued. More boots on the ground and arrests of small-time drug dealers in Little Saigon haven’t stopped the dealing there. A heightened police presence in Belltown didn’t prevent the murders a few weeks ago. Dozens of police stationed in Seattle Center didn’t stop the mass shooting at the Bite of Seattle. We need a new tack, and that means we can’t keep throwing good money after bad. Baltimore spent $17 million on the violence intervention program that reduced murders to 1970s levels. Seattle is spending less than a third of that. Meanwhile, hitting SPD’s hiring target will mean adding nearly $50 million to the city budget. If the mayor and city council are serious about community violence intervention, they have to fund it. That means shifting money from cops to a public safety strategy that actually works.

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Man who died in SPD custody last Saturday identified

The county medical examiner has identified a man who died in Seattle police custody last Saturday in Georgetown as Keenan Pearson, but his cause and manner of death are still pending. According to a release from the King County Independent Force Investigation Team, Seattle police encountered Pearson on Airport Way at around 8:17 pm while responding to a call about a disturbance. The release described Pearson as being unable to “clearly speak or care for himself.” Officers requested aid from the fire department and had him sit on the cruiser’s push bar. When the officers contacted dispatch at 8:20 pm, they said Pearson was “alert and conscious” and that he possibly just needed to have his vitals checked. He was not restrained at first, but at some point, he collapsed and rolled into the streets, and the officers handcuffed him for an unexplained reason, according to the press release. Around 8:35 pm, he lost consciousness, and fire department medics unsuccessfully attempted to revive him. We still know very little about what happened in the 18 minutes between the initial contact and when the man died. Radios were mostly silent for that whole time. It’s unclear if officers had their bodycams activated. Seattle police are not required to record voluntary “social contacts,” and officers may not have regarded it as a detention initially. Investigators have not released the names of the officers, but we’re working on getting those.

Thurston deputy fired for not investigating DV of woman who went missing

Thurston County Sheriff’s Office terminated a deputy for not investigating domestic violence against a woman who disappeared days later. In July, the woman called to report that her partner assaulted and threatened her. The deputy did not investigate or write a report. He also falsified his call log, writing “spoke with [involved party] who stated no assault, no property damage, no threats.” When the woman went missing two days later, investigating detectives reviewed his bodycam footage and noticed the discrepancy between what she said and what he wrote. The woman was found unharmed the next day. The sheriff’s office launched an internal investigation, and he was fired on Sept. 15. An investigation that finished in two months and ended in termination would be absolutely unheard of at the Seattle Police Department. SPD officers have gotten slaps on the wrist for not investigating domestic violence, and it takes at least two years to fire a cop for committing domestic violence (we’ve got three on leave for DV right now). Of course, you absolutely don’t “have to hand it” to Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders for being such a strict disciplinarian. It has a lot more to do with the relative strength of the Seattle Police Officers Guild and their contract. Thurston County only needs “probable cause” that misconduct has been committed, but the SPOG contract mandates an “elevated standard of review” for so-called stigmatizing offenses. The sheriff’s department did not name the officer, and DivestSPD did not have his name at press time, but, again, we’re on it.

Family of man deputy stabbed to death sues for $27 million

The family of the truck driver stabbed 17 times by a Clark County deputy during a drunk driving arrest is suing the county for $27 million. Last May, Deputy Bryson Layton stabbed Marc Fogle in the back inside a Washington State Patrol breath-test room. As Layton was attempting to handcuff Fogle, he grabbed Layton’s arm. There was a struggle. Layton radioed that the man was reaching for his gun, and he told Fogle that he would get shot. Fogle told him, “That’s what I want. I’m not looking to shoot you. I want you to shoot me.” Layton’s bodycam was intentionally deactivated immediately before he stabbed Fogle with an “unauthorized dagger” multiple times. Fogle’s family is alleging that Layton escalated the situation and did not attempt to use his Taser before brutally stabbing Fogle to death. They’re also claiming that responding deputies misused their body cameras by muting their microphones.

Hey, before you go…

Hired in the late 1990s, Lt. Larry Longley is a shining example of a cop from the bad old days of the Seattle Police Department. It’s hard to picture this, but imagine how wild Seattle cops ran in the oughts, when they didn’t even have our meager, ineffective accountability system in place. Not even a joke. Keith Swank, now the unhinged sheriff of Pierce County, ran SPD internal investigations back then. That’s how bad it was.

Seattle police could, and did, get away with anything. That was the soil that nurtured Lt. Longley. Violence, lawsuits and racism marked Longley’s early career. He was eventually taken off the streets and made a hostage negotiator — an odd choice for a man with his temper. Longley was promoted to lieutenant. Now, he heads the Police Outreach and Engagement Team — again, another strange command decision — and he’s mostly charged with collecting intelligence on protesters under the guise of doing “outreach.” His day job is overseeing the training unit. A guy with this record is the one molding SPD’s new recruits.

Lt. Larry Longley is one of 10 officers featured in DivestSPD’s 2026 Protest Pack. Buy it today at our online store 👇

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Beat and falsely arrested Isaac Ocak

• While on patrol a few days after Christmas, Longley investigated a vehicle left running outside a department store.

• When the owner, Isaac Ocak, returned, he explained that he ran inside to make a return.

• The officers detained him and ordered him to stand with his hands on the hood of a patrol car. The man lifted his hands to gesture but never moved away from the car.

• After telling him to keep his hands on the car, multiple officers forced the man’s upper body down onto the hood while Longley applied the first handcuff.

• The man asked, “What am I being handcuffed for?” moments before Longley grabbed his face with one hand, using the other to punch him in the head twice. Longley and three other officers forced the man onto the ground.

• The man was accused of biting Longley’s finger and booked for assaulting an officer, but charges were dismissed two years later.

• Seattle police internal affairs closed the investigation into Longley before issuing findings, but Ocak sued the department in 2013. The case was settled for $70,000.

Made racist jokes and terrorized a group of Black youth

• Longley and another officer, Jeffrey Thompson, were dispatched to a call about a fight in South Park between some teenagers and young adults.

• Audio from the vehicle’s dash cam captured Longley and Thompson making jokes that referenced anti-Black stereotypes. They joked about the teens smoking crack and fighting over a 13-year-old girl with “multiple baby daddies.”

• One of the officers also mentioned how his flashlight could break someone’s rib. When they arrived on the scene, no one there was fighting or engaging in any criminal activity, but the officers ordered everyone to “get on your fucking knees.”

• A young man arrested in connection to the fight filed a complaint describing being beaten by Longley.

• The excessive use of force complaint was determined unfounded after OPA review, resulting in no known consequences for the officers.

Punched a 13-year-old girl in the stomach

• Longley identified a 13-year-old who was violating the terms of her release from jail and chased after her, throwing her to the ground

• It wasn’t the first time he had interacted with the girl, as her complaint would allege that Longley had used excessive force against her in 2009. She claimed he made disparaging remarks at that time and again, at her residence, just a few days before the 2010 incident.

• The girl said Longley punched her in the stomach and used his knee to hold her head against the ground, leaving her with an injured ankle and causing her to urinate from shock.

• A visible bruise showed where the girl claimed Longley had punched her.

• The girl’s mother submitted a complaint, including the accounts of juvenile detention staff who saw her shortly after the incident. Staff verified that she had urinated on herself.

• After review, internal affairs determined Longley acted within policy.

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Injured a woman and didn’t contact a supervisor

• While trying to arrest someone for a warrant, Longley chased after them and shoved them down onto their knees, causing an injury.

• Longley failed to notify a supervisor of the reportable force

• According to the OPA, Longley “was aware of several pieces of information all indicating the possibility the subject had been injured as a result of his use of force”.

• Upon review, the OPA found that Longley did not violate the use of force reporting policy as it existed at the time because he “thoroughly documented everything in his use of force statement”.

• The OPA referred Longley for training, ordering him to always contact a supervisor when use of force results in injury.

Hey, before you go…

Lt. Matthew Didier is in trouble for telling officers, “We’re here to fuck people up,” at a rally last May, but just how much trouble remains to be seen. Though the Office of Police Accountability sustained findings in July, the department still hasn’t issued discipline.

Didier made these comments during a counterprotest against religious fundamentalists in Cal Anderson Park on May 24, 2025. About 50 minutes before he said this, Didier had led the Seattle police’s anti-protest unit into the park to arrest a man for tampering with the fundamentalists’ balloons.

The alleged balloon vandal got away (possibly cackling like the Joker as he fled). The bike-mounted cops made several arrests on cover charges like obstruction. Afterward, Didier and his squad regrouped.

He told officers, “We’re about to put in some fucking work, but we’re going in this time with our guns blazing and all our pieces in place.”

Shortly after he said this, Didier said: “We’re past talking to people. We’re here to fuck people up.”

Didier implied that the unit was taking a soft approach, but now the gloves were off. However, they weren’t doing much “talking” just minutes earlier.

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The first raid into the park was a violent, chaotic spectacle. An officer rammed a man with his bike, launching him 10 feet. Another tackled a protest medic, beat them, then turned to another protester and punched them several times. A sergeant hammered a man in the head eight times with his fists.

In other words, they had already “fuck[ed] people up.” Nevertheless, they didn’t catch the protesters they were trying to arrest, and that apparently hurt Didier’s pride.

In the past, the OPA has been lenient on officers who make statements like this outside of the public view, but Didier’s bodycam footage was presented last fall to the Office of the Inspector General’s sentinel event review, and one of the panel’s non-police participants leaked the comments to a certain beloved local police watchdog.

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Seattle police policy forbids cops from doing anything that “undermines public trust,” and Didier’s comments definitely embarrassed the department.

According to documents from the Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission, the OPA recommended disciplinary options ranging from an oral reprimand to a two-day suspension. We don’t really know what kind of disciplinarian interim Chief Andre Sayles is, but he’ll almost certainly pick one of the lighter punishments.

Didier has already been transferred to the Harbor Patrol. It’s like SPD’s Island of Misfit Toys, where fuckups, killers, and cops accused of planting evidence are temporarily banished and rehabilitated.

Whether that’s a punishment or not depends on how much Didier likes the sea — and how well he can swim.

Hey, before you go…

GTA Everett

Yesterday, in Everett, several police cruisers were totaled in a chaotic morning chase involving a stolen 18-wheeler. The pursuit started in a Safeway parking lot and ended in the semi-rural Silver Lake neighborhood after the driver rolled to a stop in someone’s yard. The only injuries were minor, but it could’ve been a lot worse. The roads in the neighborhood are extremely narrow—one lane in each direction—and there’s no shoulder. The rig hit several cars, and a police cruiser struck a bystander’s vehicle during the pursuit. Everett’s pursuit policy says that a pursuit is justified if the “safety risks of failing to apprehend or identify the person are…greater than the safety risks of the vehicular pursuit under the circumstances.”

Whatever safety risks an inexperienced, joyriding truck thief poses are magnified tenfold when a bunch of police officers are chasing them. What’s more, officers were firing 40mm foam-tipped rounds and pepperballs at him while he was driving, according to a department release. This pursuit would be prohibited in most large cities, and it would’ve been disallowed under the pursuit law that megamillionaire oligarch Brian Heywood overturned. Everett has Flock Cameras and drones, which are often pitched as alternatives to risky pursuits like this, so why play Smokey and the Bandit?

Have you ordered a pack of our DivestSPD baseball cards, yet? Why not? All the cool kids have. You want to be cool, don’t you? They’re available through our online store below. 👇

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Dueling gun violence strategies

After a bloody weekend in Belltown, everyone is coming in hot with ideas to fix gun violence in Seattle. The public safety committee passed a resolution this week by Councilmember Maritza Rivera that “intends to commit” to a two-year partnership with the National Network for Safer Communities at the John Jay College, with a price tag of $418,000. NNSC’s model, known as Group Violence Intervention, adopts a stick-and-carrot approach, combining the carrot of services, jobs, and mentorships for high-risk groups with the stick of policing. On KUOW’s Soundside podcast, Mayor Katie Wilson said the resolution called for a “premature, very large investment in an out-of-state organization,” adding that it was not a time for “grandstanding and politicking.”

Former Governor Christine Gregoire’s Challenge Seattle, a group of large business executives, put out its own public safety plan, calling for cops, cops, and more cops. They’re demanding a crackdown on drug markets, more patrols in high-crime areas, and lower 911 response times. At the public safety committee meeting, Chair Bob Kettle unsurprisingly echoed this view. He said that “low staffing” at SPD was a contributing factor to recent gun violence in Belltown—one of the best-staffed areas in the whole city. It’s also one of the neighborhoods already inundated with CCTVs, which have not been subject to Mayor Wilson’s “pause,” even as misinformed surveillance proponents at public comment have tried to suggest otherwise. The resolution will go to full council on Sept. 15.

911 has used undisclosed AI for years

During a presentation at the public safety committee on Tuesday, fire department officials mentioned that it had been using an artificial intelligence agent called Corti since December 2023, but it had not publicly disclosed this until it was made public around June of this year. SFD Chief Harold Scoggins claims that the dispatchers are still making decisions, but that the Corti AI agent screens for “words that the caller is using, the pace, the tone, the tenor of the caller.” It then displays a suggestion to the dispatcher, who can decide to send the call to the nurse line or not. Corti AI was implemented without going through a surveillance impact report required for any technology that “observes, monitors, or collects data about individuals”, but SFD claims that isn’t required because it “doesn’t store audio or identify callers.”

Leftist tech platform shuts down

Italian collective Autistici/Inventati (A/I) recently shut down after being designated by the US State Department as a “Global Terrorist Organization.” Arguing that it could no longer safely exist, A/I shut down on Sept. 6, which is 19 days before the deadline it was given to cease operations. Among the several services provided by A/I, the most well-known is their noblogs platform. Supporting autonomous organizing for 25 years, noblogs hosts bloggs, zines, historical documentation, and report backs. This kind of repression is not new, but it’s certainly escalating. Organizers are already finding new homes for this work and ways to continue disseminating information. It’s still a tremendous blow as we struggle to weather this kind of censorship going forward. On a related note, the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair is coming up soon on Sept. 26 and 27. They previously used noblogs and had to switch to a new website. We’ll be tabling at the fair on both days, so come say hi.

We didn’t fight the fire

The Seattle police must be struggling for heroic content these days. Their story about the 60-year-old cop saving baby ducks from a storm drain didn’t get much traction, so they had to up the ante. Two weeks ago, SPD officers entered an apartment building, breaking the front door glass, saying they saw a fire in a second-story unit from the street. Bodycam video does show smoke in the building, but the video SPD released was slyly edited so that we never actually see the fire itself. As the officers open the apartment door, the video cuts to scenes of firefighters entering. The usual local police stenographers have rendered what could be described as a moderately smoky building containing a small fire in one unit into “SPD runs into burning building.” According to a press release, the officers received commendations.

Hey, before you go…

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…