Bad Apple Baseball Cards: Mike Solan
SPOG President Mike Solan may not be a good poster, an interesting podcast host, or a decent human being, but, boy, can this guy run a protection racket.
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When Mike Solan defeated "soft-spoken moderate” Kevin Stuckey to become president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild in 2020, he brought a new approach to public relations. Solan doesn’t shy away from the limelight, and his rhetoric is more confrontational and overtly political. At the same time, Solan modernized the guild’s propaganda, replacing its old-fashioned newspaper with a podcast featuring a who’s who of local rightwing bottomfeeders.
Solan’s turn to new media hasn’t exactly been successful. Despite sinking so much of the guild’s dues into sets and recording technology, his podcast rarely tops a thousand views on YouTube. Meanwhile, his clumsy attempts at social media campaigns have fallen flat. SPOG’s arbitrary, perpetually falling “Public Safety Index” was widely mocked, much like the guild’s latest obsession: quote-tweeting “This is Seattle” on posts about crimes (that happen in other cities).
Of course, lack of media skills notwithstanding, Solan has delivered what a police guild president should. While he might not be a good poster or a compelling podcast host, Solan runs a world-class protection racket. What he lacks in wit, charm, humility, policy knowledge, and basic human decency, he more than makes up for with his ability to extract rents from the city and defend SPOG’s members from any semblance of accountability.
2020: Illegally Registered to Vote at a Precinct
Solan was one of eight officers who registered to vote at a Seattle police precinct instead of their home addresses.
While Solan does live in Seattle, the precinct he registered at was not in the same district as his home address in West Seattle.
Solan said that it used to be common for officers to use precincts to receive mail, citing an outdated policy.
Even if that policy were still in effect, it did not permit voter registration. Registering at an address aside from one’s residency is a Class C felony.
The Office of Police Accountability found that Solan violated Seattle Police Department policy and possibly the law. He was suspended for a day.
2021: Blamed BLM for January 6 Riots
After January 6, Solan retweeted a conspiracy theory by far-right influencer Andy Ngo claiming that Black Lives Matter was behind the riots.
The basis was the arrest of a man known as “Activist John,” a Proud Boy affiliate who attended BLM protests in Utah and Portland but was universally disavowed.
There were widespread calls for Solan to resign. He didn’t.
The OPA declined to investigate because it would ostensibly infringe on his right to speak as a union leader.
2022: Taunted the Public in Response to Crime
From 2022 to 2023, SPOG regularly posted “Feel Safer Yet” to their Twitter account every time someone was murdered, shot, or robbed.
This tasteless campaign was intended to show the effects of “defunding,” which never happened, and build support for a new contract.
Instead, it alienated a lot of people, showed a callous contempt for the public, and highlighted the incompetence of the Seattle police.
When crime began dropping in 2024 and continued falling in 2025, despite even lower staffing than SPD had in the period from 2022 to 2023, SPOG didn’t pivot.
Solan continues to emphasize how dangerous the city is, but crime rates have plummeted to 2018 levels—when staffing was at its peak.
2023: Staged a Sick-out
On the weekend of the Taylor Swift show, staffing was at half of the so-called minimum safe staffing levels because so many officers called in sick.
A street-racing event occurred blocks away from East Precinct, and SPD ostensibly could not break it up. Later, there was a shooting.
Afterward, Solan went to several media outlets and acknowledged that there was a sick-out but denied that the union coordinated it.
Sick-outs are illegal under the SPOG contract.
2023: Joked About Woman’s Death, Hid Behind ‘Union Speech’
Solan was talking to SPOG Vice President Daniel Auderer on the night officer Kevin Dave struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula.
Auderer’s side of the conversation was accidentally captured on his bodycam. He chuckles in response to something Solan said and says, “She has limited value.”
He and Auderer claimed that they were only joking about how lawyers would treat this situation.
Solan could’ve shed light on his side of the conversation. Instead, in his OPA interview, he repeated “union speech” over and over like he was invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Auderer was ultimately fired, but Solan faced no discipline because OPA found, again, that his speech was protected.
2024: Neutralized Alternative Response
A city-commissioned report in 2021 found that more than half of call types were appropriate for an alternative response.
The city rolled out the CARE Team, a limited alternative response for non-emergency calls, in 2023.
However, when SPOG negotiated its new contract in 2024, provisions in the contract reduced the CARE Team to personal assistants to cops.
2025: Cozied Up to Trump’s Stooges
As Trump was ramping up his assault on civil liberties during his first year back in office, Solan was attempting to curry favor with his lackies.
Solan traveled to Washington, DC, to testify at the confirmation hearing for FBI Director Kash Patel.
He testified that Patel was “uniquely qualified” even though he has zero law enforcement experience.
Later, when Trump launched “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history," Solan flew to Rochester to pose with Border Czar Tom Homan.