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 After the initial recall petition against Mayor Wilson was withdrawn last week, Daniel Chapin, the “organization’s” president and only employee, contacted local media to say his “organization” would support a new recall petition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.
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.
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