The Divest Digest: July 15, 2026
In this issue: Adam Smith begs feds to fund Seattle cops, half a million to drop a drone, cops can't stop shooting walls, and stadium cameras are off (for now).
Adam Smith Just Loves Funding Occupations
Local war hawk Adam Smith has long supported sending aid to the Israeli military (insincere posturing notwithstanding). Now, he wants to fund another occupation force: the Seattle Police Department. The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee was in Little Saigon last week to announce that he has requested federal money for the Seattle police to provide “critical assistance in the neighborhood," meaning emphasis patrols — c’mon please, just one more emphasis patrol, bro. It wasn’t Smith's only foray into local politics in recent days. The Bellevue City Council passed a residential protest buffer zone on Smith's behalf in response to frequent anti-war protests outside his home. In the past, the ninth district congressman voiced his annoyance with what he dubbed “totalitarian protesters,” calling for them to be arrested. When asked what he considered proper protester behavior, he literally said they should stand quietly and leave when asked. He even had the gall to invoke the Civil Rights movement. Those folks were famous for moving when they were told to.
City Spent $567k Per Downed Drone at the World Cup
There are still three more games left in the World Cup, but we already know who the big winner will be: manufacturers of police tech. In the run-up to the event, police departments campaigned for all sorts of surveillance and weapons they could keep permanently after the games ended, including CCTV cameras, robot dogs, drones, and drone countermeasures. Dedrone, a drone mitigation platform, is the latest cash cow for Axon, which is quickly cornering the cop tech market. Axon produces SPD’s Real-Time Crime Center, CCTVs, tasers, and 85 percent of the nation’s body cameras. It’s also snatching up an increasing number of ALPR contracts from its competitor, Flock, which has become toxic in the past year due to growing outrage over its use by ICE.
Here’s a snapshot of just a few local expenditures on drone mitigation: The King County Sheriff’s Office got $11.5 million from the passage of the Safe Skies Act (a total of $500 million in federal funding), which mostly went to three Dedrone trailers. Renton spent around $3 million on one Dedrone trailer, which they purchased along with Axon AI translation-equipped bodycams. The Seattle police spent $2 million for “drone identification & mitigation,” but that didn’t include any gear purchase. The Guardian reported that a whopping 29 drones were seized in Seattle. Without knowing the total spent just on drone mitigation by regional agencies, that is already a baseline of about $568,965 spent per drone seized in Seattle.
He Shot the Wall (And The Wall Won)
As DivestSPD reported earlier this week, King County Sheriff’s Office pilot Alex Paul had a little oopsy-daisy at his desk in April. He claimed that he was trying to transfer his gun from his desk to his side holster, and it went off (he had a literal “desk pop.”) The bullet fired through the wall and into the bathroom across the hall. No one was hit, and no critical infrastructure was damaged. The sheriff’s office did conduct an internal affairs investigation. Paul was given “performance-related training,” consisting of a short chat with his sergeant. Coincidentally, this occurred on the anniversary of Seattle Police Officer Robert West shooting the wall of the North Precinct, which we also covered:
The Cop Cup Comes to a Close
The World Cup is finally over, for Seattle anyway, so downtown is no longer crawling with quite so many regional cops. There are far too many of the locals already! The morning after the final match, Mayor Katie Wilson claimed to have "turned off" the stadium district cameras. A “pause” was in effect before the World Cup, but Wilson enabled them, citing "general but credible threat.” But before you get too excited, per The Burner, the cameras are only turned "off" through an Ethernet switch. Wilson claims that fully unplugging them would cost too much for the box trucks needed to do so. Not sure what box trucks run these days, but it's definitely not as much as the $355,000 diverted from JumpStart housing to pay for the stadium cameras alone or the cost of whatever panopticon expansion that SPD and the City Council propose next. They can turn these cameras back on just as fast as they turned them off, so this is once again setting a very low bar, like when Wilson shot down a single camera—of 310 CCTVs, not counting the SDOT network—that Wilson turned off this spring. You do not under any circumstances "gotta hand it to her."
Hey, before you go…
DivestSPD is your only source for critical police coverage in the Puget Sound area and beyond. From filing public records to reading hundred-page reports, we’re putting in the hours to bring you weekly exclusive stories about cops brutalizing the public, committing crimes, and violating civil rights.
We get all our funding from ordinary people like you, so if you think this work is valuable and want it to continue, join our Ko-fi community today. Tiers start at just $5 a month.