"Prince" Diaz out, Barnes in, and the outgoing governor wants to tax the rich
Housekeeping:
As we reach the end of 2024, I’d like to thank you for joining me for another year of local news, politics, and analysis. And a special thank you to my financial supporters on Patreon, who help to cover Notes from the Emerald City’s hosting fees.
I’ll be taking the next two weeks off to rest, rejuvenate, and get ready for whatever 2025 brings! I hope all of you have a wonderful end to 2024.
Seattle News:
I had two stories out in The Urbanist this week: one is an interview with Seattle City Attorney candidate Rory O’Sullivan, and the other is an analysis of the new less lethal weapon crowd control legislation being voted on by Seattle City Council next month.
Big news this week is that Mayor Bruce Harrell fired former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz, who was removed as Chief earlier this year and given a “special assignment” within SPD, continuing to collect his generous salary. You can read about the whole sordid saga at The Stranger, PubliCola, two articles at The Seattle Times, two articles at KUOW, Cascade PBS, or you can go straight to the source and read the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation report.
Diaz had “an intimate or romantic relationship” with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, who he hired and directly supervised. Tompkins didn’t have previous law enforcement experience. A romantic card written by Tompkins featuring an Ewok was found, in which Tompkins compared Diaz to a Disney prince and talked about his kiss.
Investigators also found multiple SPD employees who said Diaz often talked and bragged about having a sexual relationship with Tompkins.
The relationship and Diaz’s denials of it violated several SPD policies. Harrell fired Diaz as a result of the investigation’s findings.
In June, soon after he had been demoted, Diaz went on Jason Rantz’s talk show and said he was “a gay Latino man” to defuse rumors of the romantic relationship with Tompkins. Diaz is now denying allegations of the affair with Tompkins and saying the investigation was flawed.
KUOW also published an interesting piece on how they broke and developed this story.
In another SPD shake-up, SPD Deputy Chief Eric Barden, interim Chief Sue Rahr’s second in command, announced his retirement last Friday, effective immediately. Rahr said Barden is leaving after 38 years to take care of his sick mother. You might remember Barden from a controversy earlier this year when it came out he’d been accused of domestic violence and had allegedly asked a Pierce County deputy to lie about it, a move that resulted in him being placed on the Brady list for dishonest police officers.
Rahr is appointing Assistant Chief Yvonne Underwood as acting deputy chief and will soon appoint Capt. Lori Aagard to be the acting assistant chief over professional standards.
In MORE big news, Harrell has announced the new permanent SPD Chief: Shon Barnes, the police chief of Madison, Wisconsin, who got some press this week after a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison left three dead. Barnes will need to be confirmed by the City Council before assuming leadership of SPD. You can read more about it at The Seattle Times, Cascade PBS, KUOW, and the City’s press release.
I will note three red flags that go along with this news. First, there was no public process that went along with the selection of the new Chief. While the public process has often seemed performative to me in the past, I think not having it at all is an unfortunate step in the wrong direction.
Second, it sounds like Barnes is a proponent of police in schools. In fact, Barnes was at one time a history teacher, and talking to the school resource officer at his school at the time played a role in his decision to enter policing. School resource officers were removed from Seattle Public Schools in 2020 in response to the George Floyd protests.
Third, Erica Barnett of PubliCola found a 2022 article from Madison about its disparity of arrests: “Less than 7% of Madison's population is African-American, but Blacks made up 47 percent of those arrested during the first quarter of this year.”
In other news, the CARE alternative response expansion is running behind schedule. Originally CARE was supposed to be covering the entire city by the end of the year. Now it sounds like they won’t be covering that much area until the end of June.
There is more news in the case of SPD Officer Kevin Dave, thanks to The Stranger: “On Wednesday, Seattle Police Officer Kevin Dave admitted to driving negligently when he struck and killed 23-year-old college student Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk last year. In exchange for Dave admitting to the citation, agreeing to pay a $5,000 fine, and attending driving school, the Seattle City Attorney’s Office (CAO) asked the court to waive a 90-day license suspension for Dave.”
The Office of the Inspector General released an audit this week of “Disciplinary Determinations for SPD Sworn Personnel.” PubliCola reported it found that the majority of the time, officers receiving discipline have punishments at the minimum or below of recommended punishment, due to Diaz’s decisions. The same finding was in the 2021 audit, meaning previous Chiefs leaned in a similar direction discipline-wise. It will be interesting to see if Shon Barnes bucks the trend in this regard. PubliCola reports: “The audit also found that there is still a massive backlog of 106 officer appeals awaiting arbitration, with most of those (82) still unresolved since the 2021 audit.”
Washington State News:
Governor Jay Inslee is going out with a bang by proposing a state wealth tax, a 1% annual tax on worldwide wealth of more than $100 million. Just to be clear, anyone who has more than $100 million is very, VERY rich. He is also proposing to raise taxes on businesses, with a temporary 20% tax increase on about 20,000 businesses with high revenues, followed by a 10% across-the-board business tax increase.
Here is a flavor of the arguments in favor of the wealth tax and against the wealth tax. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this in 2025.
Inslee’s budget also includes $5.5 million for additional security for Seattle during the World Cup in June of 2026.
Recent Headlines:
Creative Justice Celebrates 10 Years of Investing in Youth Through Art and Activism
King County Council Gets On Board with Civic Campus Redevelopment
ACLU Sues Washington DOC for Confining Trans Woman to Men’s Prison
Trans woman argues move to WA men’s prison is cruel punishment
The closed-door negotiations to save King County’s health clinics
WA leaders mostly quiet on Yakima jail death as coroner faces recall
Fatal stabbing of King County Metro bus driver highlights Seattle transit safety concerns
Ten Times Sara Nelson Engaged In The “Performative, Ideological” “Political Theater” She Decries
“Illegal Vandalism” Is “Not Art”: Prosecutors Announce Felony Graffiti Charges
Washington families seek jail improvements, one settlement at a time