Cop who pushed bullhorn into protester's face reprimanded
Seattle Police Officer Jordan Wallace unnecessarily escalated by pushing a megaphone into a trans rights activist’s face last May, the Office of Police Accountability found. Wallace was issued a written reprimand.
On May 27, 2025, evangelical megachurches held an unpermitted rally outside Seattle City Hall billed as the “Rattle in Seattle.” The fundamentalist groups were protesting the City for allegedly discriminating against their anti-LGBTQ+ event called “Don’t Mess With Our Kids” on the Saturday before. The City assigned more than a hundred police officers to protect the event, and they arrested 28 counterdemonstrators.
Wallace was on a line of officers facing a group of trans rights protesters. A young woman with a bullhorn was chanting, “Trans rights are human rights,” and the crowd repeated it back.
At one point, she directed the bullhorn toward Wallace and said: “You’re pathetic!” He pushed the bullhorn's tip, forcing it back into her face. She lowered the bullhorn and said, “That’s my mouth.” Wallace yelled, “Get that out of my face now,” and the crowd became agitated. He later told his sergeant, “So, she put the blowhorn within like a foot in my face, so I pushed her back with the blow hand. So, that’s what happened.”
The sergeant replied, “That’s cool. Just chill, dude.”
The OPA found that the push itself was justified and “non-reportable” force, arguing that the sound from the bullhorn was hurting Wallace’s ears, distracting him, and making it harder to do his job. Though the anonymous complaint stated that the woman’s lip was busted, the OPA wrote that it could not see any injuries in the brief moment that her unmasked face appeared in the video.
However, it sustained findings that Wallace failed to de-escalate the encounter. Wallace told the OPA that he couldn’t issue commands to point the bullhorn away from him because of the loud noise, but the agency found this unconvincing. Given the cadence of her chanting, there were several moments of quiet when Wallace had an opportunity to tell her not to point the bullhorn at him.
The contradiction in the OPA’s ruling is noteworthy. Force must be “necessary, reasonable, and proportionate” to be lawful. According to the Supreme Court, “necessary” means “no reasonably effective alternative exists.” Here, the agency acknowledges that Wallace had an alternative course of action — issuing verbal commands — but chose to use force.
According to the OPA report, Chief Shon Barnes’ disciplinary options ranged from a written reprimand to a one-day suspension. He chose the lowest option, as he has in 70 percent of cases for which we have data.