In a similar fashion, when Davison assumed office in 2022, she reported having a backlog of close to 5,000 misdemeanor cases from her predecessor, Pete Holmes. At the time, the problem was shrugged off as being mostly due to the chaos caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. However, the recurrence of this issue now that newly elected City Attorney Erika Evans has taken office could suggest a deeper issue. 

Among the over 5,000 cases in this new backlog, at least 1,700 are domestic violence cases, which are among the most serious cases handled by the City Attorney’s Office. There are also at least 1,210 backlog cases categorized as criminal traffic cases, which include Driving Under the Influence (DUI) cases. Davison’s challengers criticized her alleged mishandling of DUI cases as part of their campaign pitches.

In its capacity to handle criminal matters, the Seattle City Attorney’s Office only handles misdemeanor cases, while more serious felony cases go to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. 

Evans said the oldest case in the backlog is from 2022, which was the first year of Davison’s term.

Further confusing matters is the installation of a new data management system within the City Attorney’s Office, transitioning from the previous system that had been in use since 1999, according to Jenna Robert, the criminal division chief. About 1,000 of the backlog cases don’t currently have a crime category assigned to them, meaning the numbers above represent the confirmed cases but could grow over time. 

Robert told The Urbanist that because of the new system’s migration issues, it has taken the last two months for the office to try to determine the magnitude of the backlog.

A spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office told The Urbanist that the methods by which the Evans administration determines the size of the case backlog are different from the methods used by previous administrations. The Evans administration is counting a backlogged case as one where a prosecutor has not-yet filed or declined the case, whereas Davison’s administration removed some of these cases from the backlog, such as DUI cases waiting for a toxicology analysis. Due to this discrepancy, the Davison administration reported a much lower backlog than that discovered by the Evans administration.

The existence of this backlog creates a dilemma for the Evans administration. They must balance dealing with these old cases, including determining which are past their statutes of limitations, with handling new cases coming in the door. However, changing the method by which the backlog is counted does muddy the waters in terms of how systemic a problem the office is actually facing.

Evans and Robert believe the main reason for this backlog is insufficient resources for the office. 

“We have been an under-resourced office the whole time I’ve been here,” said Robert.

Robert began as an attorney in the City Attorney’s Office in 2009 and stayed until 2021, right before Davison’s term. She left to work at the Attorney General’s office and returned to the City Attorney’s Office this year. She referenced how technology has changed the way cases are dealt with due to the large amount of video footage that needs to be processed. A case can require video footage review from body-worn cameras, in-car cameras, footage taken inside precincts, and surveillance video from both public and private cameras.

“Our juries expect all of this evidence. It’s so much more complicated to try a case, to prepare a case, to gather all of the evidence: magnitudes more difficult than it was when I first came into this office,” Robert said. “Yet, when you look around, we have not resourced up for that. So we just are always struggling with the resources that we have to actually be able to handle 10 to 12,000 reports that were referred by the police department every year.” 

Public defenders experience similar issues. Increasing attrition rates for public defenders, who are likewise contending with mounting piles of digital evidence, have raised the possibility of a public defense crisis. In response, in September 2023 the Washington Supreme Court asked the Washington State Bar Association to analyze a landmark study on public defense and make recommendations for workload standards at the state’s criminal courts. This recommendation ultimately led to the state Supreme Court significantly reducing public defense caseloads last summer, although municipalities have up to 10 years to implement the new rules. 

The Seattle Municipal Court has also been struggling with reduced capacity due to updating its digital filing system and operating without one of its elected judges. In March 2024, Davison announced the office would file a blanket affidavit of prejudice against Judge Pooja Vaddadi, which left Vaddadi unable to hear her usual docket of cases. 

Changes being made

In one of her first acts of office, Evans banned all blanket affidavits of prejudice, meaning Judge Vaddadi is now able to resume a normal caseload. 

Another issue plaguing the City Attorney’s Office has been a growing backlog at the state toxicology lab that processes DUI blood tests, thereby slowing the office’s ability to file cases. In this legislative session, Evans has been a strong supporter of SB 5880, which would allow private labs to perform these DUI blood tests. 

“We know that justice delayed is justice denied,” Evans testified during a January public hearing. “You asked Senator Salomon about what it takes right now for the current delays. Right now, if someone has a drug and alcohol DUI, it takes 22 months for the toxicology lab to get that report back to us, which means that if someone commits a DUI today in Seattle, it won’t be until the end of the summer of 2027 that we can actually file charges in that case.” 

The bill passed out of the House on Friday with very little time to spare before the cut-off and now returns to the Senate to concur with changes. Being able to utilize private labs should speed up the office’s ability to prosecute DUI cases. 

Evans wants to see the number of case dismissals drop, saying that more than half of the cases filed under Davison were ultimately dismissed, which she says represents a waste of taxpayer dollars. She pointed to her and Robert’s experience as prosecutors, which differs from both Davison’s and Holmes’s backgrounds. She thinks that experience will allow them to better evaluate which cases to file. 

“I think because we have the experience we have as prosecutors, some of the things that happened under the last administration will not be happening under this administration,” Robert said.

The office’s priority for filing will be violent misdemeanor crimes, including domestic violence, DUI, and assault. 

Meanwhile, the office will determine certain non-violent cases, such as public drug use and drug possession, to send to diversion, which will help avoid clogging the court system. Evans previously criticized Davison’s administration for its approach to the City’s new drug ordinance, which did not appear to prioritize the diversion services the ordinance identified as the preferred course of action.

To this end, Evans still plans to collaborate with the Seattle Municipal Court and the Department of Public Defense to design a “reimagined community court.”

In contrast, Davison slowly ramped up the drug possession misdemeanor cases filed since the drug ordinance passed in 2023, with a more extreme escalation in her last months in office. PubliCola reported an increase from an average of four per week from mid-June to mid-September 2025 to 16.4 per week from mid-September to mid-December. 

Davison also disbanded the former community court a year and a half into her term.

The criminal division of the City Attorney’s Office will be converting to a vertical prosecution model from a horizontal model, starting with the domestic violence unit. A vertical model means that the same prosecutor handles a case from its initial filing all the way through to sentencing. This model can be more time efficient, and it also allows an attorney to take ownership and accountability over their cases, which Evans said could lead to fewer dismissals. 

The office will be forming a DUI team similar to their domestic violence team to give extra focus to filing those cases.

One of the strategies Davison said she’d use to deal with her inherited backlog of cases in 2022 was to shorten filing times. Robert said the existence of this new 5,000 case backlog illustrates the failure of this approach. She explained that quick filing times can lead to poor filing decisions and a higher rate of dismissal.

“A bunch of cases that should have never been filed go into the system,” Robert said. “They do harm to the people that are subjects of those–all those defendants now have a crime that should have never been on their record as charged–and then the taxpayers and the clogging the court and all of the cascade of issues that happen.”

What’s next

Even with the approach outlined above, Evans believes the office needs to hire more attorneys. 

The timing could be challenging, given the City faces a $140 million deficit next year. At the end of February, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson asked all city departments for plans of cutting 5-10% of their budgets. Wilson will also likely be searching for funds for her own mayoral priorities, which are almost certain to include standing up more emergency housing.

That being said, WIlson has been a big proponent of new progressive revenue sources and may propose one or more new revenue streams during the City’s budget process this fall. The most likely candidate remains a city-level capital gains tax. While this might assist in future budgets, most new revenue sources do take some time to implement, meaning the new funds wouldn’t be collected immediately in 2027.

Evans said being able to hire more attorneys sooner would be ideal, signalling the possibility of a mid-year supplemental budget request from the City Attorney’s Office. The office would have another chance to advocate for more funding during the regular fall budget season.

On the other hand, city councilmembers might wish to wait to see the effect of the procedural changes within the City Attorney’s Office before attempting to find more money in an already strapped budget.

As for the new data management system, right now the City Attorney’s Office’s system is unable to interface with the Seattle Municipal Court’s system, the integration of which is part of the next phase with the vendor. Robert estimates it could take up to six months to gain this functionality. 

More long-term, Robert said the administration is going to be faced with ongoing challenges adapting to the new system and getting it working smoothly, potentially for a year or more. 

The post Seattle City Attorney Says ‘Tough-on-Crime’ Predecessor Left Big Case Backlog first appeared on The Urbanist.

The wave of emergency actions follows reporting by WIRED and other outlets that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm are advancing plans for dozens of new outposts and expanded offices in the wake of a dramatic increase of billions in funding thanks to last year’s H.R. 1. Late last year, DHS released a notice of pre-solicitation for a “facility close to Seattle and with proximity to airport services providing for comprehensive detention, transportation and food services for detainees.”

That notice is expected to be followed by a Request for Proposals (RFP) that has not yet been released, leading to cities like Tukwila trying to cut DHS off at the pass. A six-month moratorium is the easiest tool available to local governments under state law, and can be extended as many time as a city deems necessary within certain parameters — in other words, the “temporary” measure could last indefinitely.

“There is no permit pending with the City of Tukwila. There has been no application, nor has the federal government awarded any type of facility to operate within the city of Tukwila or within the a city in the greater Seattle area,” Brandon Miles, Tukwila’s Director of Strategic Initiatives and Government Relations, told the Council Monday night.

On top of the high-profile Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Tukwila has been an epicenter for immigration enforcement activity across Puget Sound. Last year, notices went out to a number of immigrants around the region — with legal status to remain in the U.S. — to check in at an ICE field office at 12500 Tukwila International Boulevard, an incident that led to a number of detentions.

WIRED’s reporting indicated that ICE was eyeing a different Tukwila site, at the Riverfront Technical Park on S 102nd Street, for a detention center. That site, controlled by the Sabey Corporation, includes office space that is currently available for lease, along with current health care and engineering tenants.

“Two weeks ago, we heard of this article that was in WIRED. We were not pleased to read it. We reached out to the Sabey Corporation just to verify is this true, and they told us we could take at face value what we saw. We immediately moved into action,” Tukwila Mayor Thomas McLeod said Monday.

Nothing in the moratorium would prevent ICE from expanding its office footprint within Tukwila, a potential avenue for the agency to skirt zoning requirements. But Tukwila staff noted that substantial upgrades would be required to overhaul space permitted for office use into a detention facility.

Local governments looking at their zoning regulations as a tool to block what they see as federal overreach is only expected to ramp up. A new report by Yonah Freemark, Will Curran-Groome, Lydia Lo, Jorge González-Hermoso, and Rick Su at the Urban Institute looked at how attempts to regulate federal activity at the local level may play out in a new report.

“State and local governments cannot ‘unduly interfere’ with a core function of the federal government. While it’s too early to know how a court might rule if ICE asserted immunity from local zoning laws for its detention centers, there is a strong chance that courts will consider immigration detention to be a core federal function,” their report noted. “Consequently, regulations that entirely prohibit such facilities may be viewed as an unconstitutional obstruction of that function.”

Conditions at Tacoma’s ICE facility, maintained and operated by the private Geo Group, Inc., have been widely reported to be substandard. Last week, The Urbanist‘s Amy Sundberg covered a newly filed lawsuit seeking damages for the treatment provided to three Black men who were detained there in 2024, during the Biden administration.

“The report documents a laundry list of horrifying conditions, including violations of constitutional due process rights, overcrowding, inadequate emergency medical care, inhuman and degrading treatment by guards, insufficient and poor quality of food, and more,” Sundberg wrote. “A man sexually groped out of view of the security cameras during a standard pat down procedure. A man slammed into the concrete floor for objecting to his cell being ransacked, another violent blow inflicted after being handcuffed, only to be placed in solitary confinement and stripped of his clothing on video. A man who asked to be able to review legal documents pertinent to his immigration case being retaliated against by being beaten so badly he had to be carried away on a stretcher.”

While what these local governments are attempting to be doing could be called using the tools of NIMBYism (not-in-my-backyard activism) for good, they are ultimately reaching for one of the few tools at their disposal to influence federal actions that are seen as out-of-alignment with the values of the residents in their communities.

“This is a first step. What else we can do? I don’t know. We’ll find it, because, you know, one council member does not have the power to make change. It takes a group of us, but I know as one person, I am committed to making sure that this doesn’t happen under my watch,” Tukwila Councilmember Verna Seal said ahead of the vote. “I am more than in favor of us passing this tonight, and figuring out what else we can do, because it’s not going to stop here. It’s not going to stop here, so we just have to keep it up.”

The post Tukwila Becomes Latest Puget Sound City to Impede ICE Expansion first appeared on The Urbanist.

*Editor’s note: Seattle Public Library leadership have published a rebuttal to this article on their blog, disputing several of the claims. Some of the disputes of fact that leadership had with the three library workers and one security officer interviewed boiled down to differences of interpretation, but in other cases staff accounts conveyed factual errors or incomplete information we have since sought to rectify with corrections and clarifications now contained in the piece and noted at the bottom.

The revisions are the culmination of a long journey that began in 2018, when an article in the South Seattle Emerald revealed that the library imposed an unusually high number of bans, or “exclusions,” on its patrons, disproportionately Black and brown youth as well as the homeless and mentally ill. Well before the rollout, rank-and-file library staff were softening the enforcement of existing rules and working to change the culture in anticipation of the new codes, now called the Community Use Agreement, or “CUA.” 

Some library workers were shocked when Walton, a former Port Orchard police officer, took over and began issuing guidance that felt to them eerily similar to the old rules of conduct the library spent the better part of a decade overhauling. 

“We were thinking everything should be nicer with this new policy,” said a library worker, who requested anonymity. “I feel like we’re actually excluding people more.” 

One of Walton’s first acts on the job was to retrain library security. Library staff had been working with security to develop a more compassionate approach to homeless people sleeping in or outside of branches. Security was encouraged to do wellness checks instead of asking them to leave.

When Walton came on, she had security start sweeping the areas around the Central Library nightly, staff say. Library spokesperson Laura Gentry said the homeless encampment removals were not initiated by Walton.

“Ms. Walton never directed Security Officers to conduct nightly sweeps around the Central Library,” Gentry wrote. “In response to documented incidents of damage to Library property after hours and complaints by nearby residents that there was illegal and dangerous activity occurring around the Central Library after hours, Administrative Services director Rob Gannon asked Library Security Officers to conduct emphasis patrols at night for a few weeks in September 2025 to observe and gather data. They did not observe any dangerous activities. Security Officers stopped those patrols in late September 2025.”

Walton reportedly proposed adding floodlights and hostile architecture to prevent homeless people from sleeping outside the branch — though this proposal never came to fruition. Library staff also contend that Walton is pushing security officers to document minor infractions to justify longer suspensions, riling some librarians, who have generally shifted to imposing shorter bans. Gentry disputed that claim.

In one case, a suspended patron used a library computer under a fake name and left without incident. The man was originally suspended for rolling over a security guard’s foot with his wheelchair after being told not to smoke near a library entrance. Walton logged it in the system as “other crime: identity theft” and extended his suspension by a month. Library workers say that using an alias to skirt a ban isn’t serious, much less criminal, and that they originally logged it under an existing violation category called “Return under active suspension,” but Walton escalated it.

After publication of this article, Gentry said that this patron has repeatedly assaulted two security staff and injured one, earning them a two-year suspension, and that violating the suspension was a serious safety concern in this case.

Library staff says Walton is imposing suspensions of several months on people who act out nonviolently while in a behavioral crisis. They’re calling these bans unnecessarily harsh, arguing that long suspensions exclude people living on the streets from one of the few public spaces available to them.

“For some of our patrons, a month or two or three is a very long time,” a library worker said. “Most of these people don’t mean us harm. They are ill and may not know what they are saying. There has to be another way.”

Some library staff say they also feel pressured to call 911 more often. In a January Q&A about updates to the library’s 911 guidelines, a staff member said that the new guidelines seemed to be a reversal of course. When the staffer started, they were told that the library was moving away from calling the police, and emphasized their concerns, particularly for communities in South Seattle who have had negative experiences with the police. 

Walton likened library staffers’ reluctance to call the police to a “domestic violence mentality,” where library workers “feel responsible to protect [their] perpetrator because they had a bad childhood.” During the Q&A, library staff said she told them that security and other staff did not call 911 because their coworkers “didn’t like police.”

Another library worker, who also requested anonymity, said their reticence stemmed from real-world experience, citing an incident a few years ago where security called the police about a man who threw a metal can. Officers arrived and tackled him in the middle of the library.

“The minute we call, we surrender any sense of control and de-escalation,” the library worker said. “They didn’t listen to anyone.”

Moreover, calling 911 can mean a steep penalty for the patron: a one-year suspension. A security guard said that Walton added a new category to the library’s incident-reporting system titled “Police called for assistance.” If library staff call 911 on a patron, they can be barred from all Seattle libraries for a year if police for a year, with the decision out of library staff’s hands at that point.

Gentry explained that a one-year suspension occurs automatically if police apply trespass charges, but in other cases the library team would have the discretion to log the incident as they deem appropriate in accordance with the CUA.

“When Library staff call 911 for SPD assistance to resolve an incident with a patron, SPD typically issues the patron a one-year trespass and it then becomes a crime for the patron to return to the Library during that one-year period,” library leadership wrote on their blog, following publication of this article. “When SPD issues a one-year trespass, the Library issues a corresponding one-year suspension. This was a recent adjustment made to reduce confusion between trespass vs. suspension lengths, which were previously out of alignment.”

The security guard gave an hypothetical example where a situation with a patron is escalated and they are asked to leave for the day, but they refuse, so the library staff call 911. Ultimately, the person leaves before police arrive, the call is canceled, and the incident is resolved peacefully. That person could still be banned for a full year, the guard said.

In a written statement, Rob Gannon, the library’s director of administrative services, denied that the new guidelines would result in more 911 calls, pointing out that the criteria for calling the police are stricter than in the 2023 update. He also cited language added to the document less than two weeks after the call, giving staff discretion to call 911. It now states: “The Library trusts staff to determine when calling 911 is appropriate. The vast majority of Community Use Agreement violations can be appropriately handled by Library staff and Security Officers without calling 911.”

But library staff say it’s not so much what’s in the CUA or the 911 guidelines, but rather that they’re being made to feel like calling 911 is their best or only option in many cases. They contend that the CUA wasn’t rolled out with adequate training. One library worker said they were given an online training lasting 30 minutes, while managers were trained for three to four hours on the new policies.

“We also don’t get routine de-escalation training, so we aren’t investing in any strategies that would help prevent having to call the cops,” they said, adding that de-escalation training is only available on request and not mandatory.

While the freshly updated 911 guidelines state that the library “trusts” staff to make the call, library workers are hearing mixed messages. The language in the guidelines was also updated to say that staff are “required to” call in specific circumstances and to “err on the side of caution.” Library staff said they couldn’t get a straight answer from Walton on whether this would mean they would face discipline if they didn’t. 

A SPL spokesperson said the department overhauled its incident reporting system shortly after hiring Walton, noting a 2024 ransomware attack that shut down the system, leading to skewed 911 call data for 2024 and early 2025. In 2023, SPL logged 215 calls, compared to 127 for 2025. However, the number of calls recorded from August to December was greater in 2025 than in 2023, which seems to indicate an upward trend after the enforcement surge that coincided with the Walton hire — or at least a more concerted effort to document the calls.

Library spokesperson Laura Gentry said the uptick in calls in late 2025 stemmed from a change in reporting procedures that logs patron calls, not just staff calls: “We did a deep dive analysis of the Q4 2025 incident reports involving 911, and the uptick appears to be related to additional data gathering of 911 calls made by patrons themselves for various reasons, something we did not capture in 2023.”

Some library staff question the selection of Walton, an outside hire and former police officer, over the other finalist, who has worked at the library for nearly two decades and supports the direction that the CUA represents. They wonder if she’s the right fit for the library’s culture. Despite transitioning to civilian life, Walton appears to have had a hard time shedding her identity as a cop. Library workers bristle at her use of words like “perp” to describe patrons in behavioral crisis. Once, when referring to police responses, she reportedly said: “We’re on the call. We’re here to win.”

Gannon declined to comment on why Walton was chosen, but wrote that she is a “compassionate, diligent, conscientious, human-centered leader, with a deep commitment to the values that are the foundation of the Community Use Agreement and of the Library’s mission.” 

Similarly, a library spokesperson defended Walton’s conduct and said she was acting in accordance with policy and with the full confidence of departmental leaders.

Another potential red flag is Walton’s presence on the Kitsap County Brady List, a list of officers who have potential credibility issues that must be disclosed to defense attorneys during a trial if they give testimony. Gannon called these allegations “unsubstantiated,” but the Kitsap County prosecutor’s office provided The Urbanist with a 2019 disciplinary report, showing that Walton was found to have lied to her supervisor.

“[Walton] is the 100% wrong person to be at any position [in the library],” a library worker said. “It just shows how privatized, bureaucratic, and undemocratic the organization has become.”

Corrections and clarifications: The original version incorrectly stated that all 911 calls would result in a one-year suspension. This is only true in cases where the Seattle Police Department applies a “trespass” charge, which library spokespeople say is only applied in certain circumstances, such as when patrons are causing safety issues or violating suspensions. Additionally, we clarified that Seattle Public Libraries applied new reporting procedures in late 2025 that may have been responsible for the spike in the 911 calls in the data and emphasized that the ransomware outage appears to be responsible for the low baseline for suspensions in 2024. We also clarified that Gentry said Walton did not initiate encampment sweeps outside Central Library and that the identity theft suspension case had involved a patron who the library says injured a security officer in an assault. We regret the errors and omissions.

The post Seattle Library Workers Raise Alarm About Security Crackdown Hitting Homeless People first appeared on The Urbanist.

These were the alleged stories documented in a lawsuit recently filed at the Pierce County Superior Court against The Geo Group, Inc., which runs Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), a private, for-profit immigration detention facility used by the federal government.

Two specific guards were also named in the suit. 

Three plaintiffs are alleging abuse at the NWIPC in bringing the suit against The Geo Group. All three are Black men who have been detained at NWIPC, two of whom remain in detention at this time. All the alleged events described above happened in 2024, during the Biden administration, but it appears such abuses could be ramping up under Trump. 

The plaintiffs contend that the treatment described above is part of a pattern of misconduct by detention guards, that new guards are trained to follow suit, and that Geo Group covers up said misconduct. Furthermore, they allege that one of the detainee beatings described above was utilized in a training video to provide new recruits “an example of what guards can get away with if they feel a Black male detainee is mouthing off.”

The NWIPC is located in the 27th Legislative District, which is represented by Washington State Senator Yasmin Trudeau (D-Tacoma). Trudeau told The Urbanist the facility operates like a black box, in that it is very difficult to learn what’s going on inside. 

“If it gets to the point where there is something that egregious being leaked [such as the lawsuit], there are definitely horrific things that are being accepted in that institution,” Trudeau said. She referenced the “level of violence and flagrant disregard for people’s bodies” showcased in the lawsuit. 

Trudeau said that civil detainees at the NWICP are treated much worse than people charged and convicted of murder in this country. 

The NWIPC contains 1,575 beds and has a long history of poor conditions. In 2008, Seattle University’s International Human Rights Clinic collaborated with One America to publish a report documenting human rights violations at the center (then called the Northwest Detention Facility).

“Conditions are substandard, and are not even in compliance with the National Detention Standards, much less international human rights law,” the report reads. “These violations, unacceptable in any circumstances, are even more notable given the fact that detention—originally intended to be short-term—often lasts for months or even years.”

The report documents a laundry list of horrifying conditions, including violations of constitutional due process rights, overcrowding, inadequate emergency medical care, inhuman and degrading treatment by guards, insufficient and poor quality of food, and more.  

“My perception is that that facility has continued to operate more or less the same under Democratic and Republican administrations alike,” Angelina Godoy, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) director, told The Urbanist. “The reality is that abuse has been happening even when presidents spoke more palatable language about immigrants, and that abuse is hardwired into the system as a whole.”

Elected officials such as Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, and Representative Adam Smith all documented their concern about this facility in 2018 and 2019. 

The Washington Attorney General has been fighting an ongoing case against The Geo Group since 2017, in which The Geo Group has been found to have violated the state’s minimum wage law. Detainees at NWICP used to have the option to participate in a voluntary work program that paid $1 per day. The state won an appeal last year in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The facility’s contract with the federal government was due to expire in September 2025, potentially giving Congress the leverage to improve conditions during contract negotiations. Thus far, The Urbanist has been unable to confirm the status of this contract. 

More recent research into conditions at the NWIPC

The UWCHR published a series of reports about conditions at the NWIPC in 2020, some of which have since been updated. This research gives context to the allegations in the recent Pierce County lawsuit. 

The lawsuit, for example, alleges that Geo Group “has long employed openly racist employees and permitted discriminatory conduct.” It refers to a Proud Boys sticker on the mug of one of the prison guards named in the suit. The Proud Boys are a far-right, anti-immigrant group known to have ties to white supremacists. 

Godoy, who led the research, told The Urbanist she’s heard many anecdotes about racial slurs used in the Tacoma detention center.

“It’s certainly clear to me from what I have learned about the place that it’s not uncommon for the racial characteristic of a given detained person to influence the treatment they receive,” Godoy said.  

UWCHR’s research also directly pertains to the lawsuit’s allegations about the Tacoma Police Department (TPD). The lawsuit said that two of the three plaintiffs reported the incidents to TPD, but the department “effectively ignored them and allowed Defendant Geo Group to investigate itself.”

A spokesperson for TPD said the complaint has been reviewed, and the department doesn’t comment on active litigation. 

UWCHR published a report in 2025 that found that of the 157 reported incidents of abuse or assault at the facility between 2015 and 2025, only two resulted in prosecution. These two cases were incidents where facility personnel were the reported victims, even though overall, most of the reported victims were detainees, not staff.

Godoy said she hasn’t seen evidence that conditions at the NWICP have worsened in the past year, other than the strain of the facility operating at capacity exacerbating already-existing abuse.

“In this sense, the abusive conditions documented for eight years by the UW Center for Human Rights—such as the overuse of solitary confinement, the denial of access to quality medical care, poor hygiene and sanitation, frequent uses of physical force and chemical gases, and a lack of adequate responses to reported sexual abuse — not only persist, but may in fact have become even more acute as the facility approaches its maximum capacity of 1575 people,” the report read.

Because NWIPC is a privately operated facility, it falls into TPD’s jurisdiction, but Godoy says that hasn’t always been clear to police officers or detention officers. However, in September 2025, TPD released a public policy acknowledging their jurisdiction over the detention center. Godoy says that while UWCHR has requested records to determine whether having an official policy is changing TPD’s response to calls within the facility, the slow records response time means there isn’t yet sufficient data to make an assessment. 

UWCHR’s research also revealed the detention center’s flagrant use of solitary confinement. In 2020, the report found that the NWIPC detained people in solitary confinement for longer than any other detention facility in the country, based on the average duration of each confinement. More than 80% of reported placements in solitary confinement met the international human rights standards definition of torture. The facility regularly used solitary confinement for people suffering from mental illness and people exercising their First Amendment rights (for example, through hunger strikes).

UWCHR was only able to obtain this data by filing a lawsuit against the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act. Once received, they found discrepancies between the data provided by The Geo Group and the data provided by ICE.

“Under international standards, the mere use of solitary at all in civil consent confinement facilities like the Northwest Detention Center is considered extraordinarily inadvisable and something that should not be done, period,” Godoy told The Urbanist. “So the fact that it’s not only happening, but it’s happening in ways that are secretive and unclear, and even the same facility has multiple books, like an accountant with two books, should lead to grave concerns about how effective any mechanisms for oversight or accountability are.”

ICE in Washington State

While abusive conditions at the NWIPC have been documented for almost 20 years, it is undeniable that immigration enforcement has greatly accelerated during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term. In mid-January, ICE was holding about 73,000 people in detention, the highest number in ICE’s history. 

Data collected by the Deportation Data Project shows that during the first nine months of Trump’s second term, ICE arrests quadrupled. Street arrests became much more common, leading to a sevenfold increase in arrests of people without criminal convictions. Deportations increased by a factor of 4.6.

In the past, people would interact with ICE and not necessarily be detained, but this has shifted as well. “Once people have been arrested, changes in policy have kept them locked up in detention centers for longer or indefinitely,” writes Aaron Reichlin-Melnick for the American Immigration Council’s website.

“Maybe that’s what the [Trump] administration is trying to do, is get people so scared that they are leaving,” Trudeau said. “But they’re scared because they know that once they are in the system, they are going to be treated like animals, and that their family may never find them. […] We can’t abide by a system like that.”

Recent reporting from The Washington Post details ICE’s plan to spend $38.3 billion to acquire warehouses – the plan says 16 – and retrofit them into immigration detention centers. People will move from the converted warehouse facilities to eight large-scale detention centers that will hold between 7,000 and 10,000 people.

In 2025, Congress lavished funding on departments carrying out Trump’s mass deportation campaign. “The so-called One Big Beautiful Act allocates more than $170 billion over four years for border and interior enforcement, with a stated goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year,” the Brennan Center wrote. “That is more than the yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies combined across the entire United States.”

Investigative reporting by Wired showed ICE working to spread its physical presence across the U.S., with documents for more than 150 leases and expansions, giving ICE a presence in nearly every state. Those documents indicate a potential new planned detention center at Riverfront Technical Park in Tukwila, Washington, a convenient distance from Boeing Field. This news came after a December posting on a government website indicated ICE’s interest in having more detention space in the Seattle area.

Both ICE and the owners of the Riverfront Technical Park declined to comment to KUOW about any upcoming lease.

“I would imagine, especially in a place like Tukwila that’s so diverse, the ripple effect that will have in a community in that area,” Trudeau said. “You’re talking about Renton, Tukwila, Kent, this is where a lot of immigrant communities live. I think you’re actually going to find a chilling factor if something like that is introduced. I think you’ll find a lot of people that do not want to participate in any systems, including probably even taking their kids to school, if something like that happens.”

Other cities are taking action to prevent detention centers within their jurisdictions. In 2017, the Tacoma City Council passed legislation rezoning land around the NWIPC to prevent any meaningful expansion. The City won the lawsuit brought against it by The Geo Group trying to overturn the legislation in 2021. 

Meanwhile, Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck is sponsoring legislation that would put a one-year moratorium on any new or expanded jail or detention center within the city limits. The bill treats the siting of a detention center as a zoning issue, giving the City time to develop permanent regulations over the next year. 

“We cannot make it clear enough, the human rights violations at facilities like the Northwest Detention Center are unacceptable, and we refuse to stand by while the federal government continues their inhumane practices,” Rinck said.

The bill will move directly to consideration by the full Seattle City Council, with a possible vote as early as Tuesday, February 24. Should the bill pass, there will be a public hearing within two months to give the public the opportunity to weigh in.

The City of SeaTac, where a federal detention facility is already located, just passed a temporary detention moratorium, and King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda announced she’s working on a detention moratorium for unincorporated King County. 

Seattle Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa is planning to introduce an order on February 24 that would disallow nonpublic Port of Seattle properties from being converted to new or expanded use for immigration detention or enforcement support. 

However, the news of the potential new immigration detention center in Tukwila underscores the difficulty for individual jurisdictions to respond to what is a regional, or even statewide, issue. 

Trudeau, along with Senator Lisa Orwall (D-33rd LD, SeaTac), introduced several bills designed to address detention facilities on a state level. SB 6286 would have fined the NWICP if the Geo Group didn’t allow the center to be inspected at will by the Department of Health.

SB 6109 would have prohibited the state from investing in (and therefore profiting from) private detention facilities. SB 6304 would have insured responsible principles be used by the state for its investments more generally. All three bills died at the fiscal cutoff deadline. 

HB 2464, on the other hand, was passed out of the House on Monday. Sponsored by Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self (D-21nd LD, Everett), the bill would require private detention facilities to report allegations of abuse, death, and suicide. Law enforcement agencies would also have to report annually about calls and investigations at the facilities. The bill also includes standards to improve food access and quality for detainees. 

Meanwhile, The Geo Group continues to profit in spite of the documented abuses at the NWIPC. The publicly-traded company, ticker symbol GEO, reported a net income of $254.3 million for 2025, an increase of almost 700% over its reported income for 2024, which was only $31.9 million.

“Not only are you creating a situation where you’re dehumanizing people in concentration camps, but you’re also making excessive and exorbitant profit off of it,” Trudeau said. “I think we call that slavery and human trafficking.” 

The post ICE’s Tacoma Detention Center Targeted in New Lawsuit Alleging Abuses first appeared on The Urbanist.

“The ICE memorandum […] that basically instructs agents to ignore the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, to throw it in the trash, that represents a constitutional crisis at the level of everything the founders of this country warned us against, warning us against the tyranny that could arise if we put our heads in the sand,” Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said.

Early in January, ICE released a memorandum saying their agents can enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant in a direct assault to the Fourth Amendment. A large-scale operation in Minneapolis that began in December has resulted in ICE agents killing two U.S. citizens who didn’t pose any danger to the agents in question. 

“It feels like Minneapolis is being used as a testing ground, both in the brutality of the tactics, and we have seen since they killed Renee Good, we have seen such an acceleration in the brutality and illegality of the tactics that are used against observers, violating people’s civil rights with just absolute impunity,” said Minnesota Rep. Aisha Gomez on an episode of The Majority Report. 

Meanwhile, at least 31 people died in ICE custody last year, which Axios reported is a 20-year high.

Earlier this week U.S. District Court Judge Katherine M. Mendez explored the question as to whether the surge of federal ICE agents has been meant to coerce local and state governments into changing their policies. 

A few days later, Tom Homan, the executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), made a statement that implied ICE enforcement is in fact being used to extort cooperation from state and local governments.

 “The withdrawal of law enforcement resources here is dependent upon cooperation,” Homan said. 

Given the behavior of the federal government, state and city elected officials are being forced to come up with response plans to prepare for the possibility of a large contingent of federal forces being sent to invade Washington state. 

State-level response

On Monday, Governor Bob Ferguson joined Brown to outline how the state is preparing to respond if ICE were to come in greater force to Washington. However, they kept their remarks very broad. 

“People have asked what we can do if ICE descends on Washington state, as they have in Minnesota, and I will not speculate on our strategy,” Brown said. “I’m not going to hand our playbook to them.”

In addition to aggressive legal action – Brown brought 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration in its first year – Ferguson outlined other steps he was taking, including meeting with the head of the Washington State National Guard and coordinating with state and local partners. 

However, Ferguson was clear that he cannot prevent ICE from operating in the state. 

This week, Ferguson and Brown sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem condemning the actions of ICE in Minneapolis and objecting to the illegal orders to ICE that violate the Fourth Amendment.

“If ICE agents attempt any such unconstitutional measures in the state of Washington, we will do everything in our power to oppose it. Our state will consider all legal options to hold the U.S. Government and individual ICE agents accountable for violating Washingtonians’ constitutional rights,” the letter reads.

Ferguson also mentioned bills being considered by the state legislature this session, chief among them Senate Bill 5855, which would prohibit law enforcement officers from wearing face coverings, and Senate Bill 5876, which would prohibit people from having badges and using law enforcement insignia if they aren’t law enforcement. 

In spite of Ferguson’s promises to “not be shy” about taking ICE agents to court if they choose to flaunt the law and wear masks, there are questions about how enforceable SB 5855 would be in practice. The bill includes a private right of action for people detained by a masked officer, but in addition to the potential dangers for a private citizen who chooses to sue an ICE officer, officers wouldn’t be liable for wearing a mask as long as they complied with other state identification requirements.  

SB 5855 passed the Senate on Wednesday and will now be considered by the House. 

Brown cited the Immigrant Worker Protection Act, House Bill 2105, which would require employers to give notice to workers of federal agencies asking for employment eligibility records within 72 hours and make sure employers aren’t sharing personal employee information without a subpoena or judicial warrant. 

Also relevant is Senate Bill 6045, which would give farmworkers more collective bargaining rights. Right now farmworkers don’t receive the institutional protections provided by the National Labor Relations Board, but this bill would allow farmworkers to be represented by Washington’s Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) for the purpose of enforcing workers’ rights.

Senate Bill 6286 would allow the Department of Health to fine private detention facilities, such as Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), if the department isn’t allowed to inspect the premises. The fees escalate to up to $1500 per day if a center doesn’t allow an inspection for more than 60 days. 

While this bill doesn’t go as far as taxing detention facilities, which could lead to their existence being financially untenable in the state, it does at least provide real consequences for a failure to comply with inspections. Lawmakers are already aware that NWIPC doesn’t provide adequate medical care to its detainees.

“What we know from the Department of Health is they’ve had a huge number of complaints that have come in, in the hundreds, around nutrition, undercooked food, black mold, not getting access to medical care. The list goes on and on,” Senator Tina Orwall (D-33rd Legislative District, Des Moines) testified at the bill’s hearing. “And so the reason that we’re putting this hefty fine is it’s urgent. People’s health and their lives are at stake here.” 

Notably, at the press conference Ferguson didn’t mention his failure to address the current loophole that allows ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to access private drivers’ information from the state’s Department of Licensing (DOL). Researchers from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) released a report in early January, finding that at least nine cases of federal immigration enforcement between September and November of last year involved a search in the DOL database. 

Since that time, UWCHR has identified six additional cases and say they expect to find more cases as they continue to investigate. UWCHR confirmed that as of January 22, state officials have taken no action to cut off CBP or ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), leaving Washington drivers’ information vulnerable. 

Response in Seattle

Under new Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans, Seattle, along with King County, have submitted amicus briefs in a lawsuit brought by the State of Minnesota against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other federal officials challenging ICE’s “Operation Metro Surge.” 

Seattle’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (OIRA) presented at a council meeting this week, sharing the increased difficulties being faced by immigrants and refugees in Seattle over the last year. 

Azmi Haroun, the communications advisor at OIRA, told the committee that between December 2025 and January 2026, the 10 partners they work with have seen over 100 community members having their citizenship appointments abruptly canceled with no reasons given. 

Haroun said they’ve seen an increased demand for services and increased barriers to representation, such as “lawyers being allowed into the Tacoma detention center.” Many people are being held in prolonged detention without communication, pressuring them to choose deportation.

The Deportation Data Project found that since January 2025, nearly 2,000 people have been arrested for immigration detention in Washington state. 

Councilmember Eddie Lin spoke of the expected escalation of the need for legal assistance if Seattle sees an ICE occupation, and how various City departments can be a part of a response. 

“I’m concerned [with] how long it’s going to take to staff up and get prepared and get people ready,” Lin said. “And I know it’s a little bit hard to predict, right? But it seems like a natural disaster coming our way, but it’s the federal government.”

Lin called out the federal government for its role in spreading fear and inaccurate information.

“It is so critical that we provide accurate and timely information, and it is just so difficult to do so when our federal government is not sharing information with us,” Lin said. “I want to put blame, the primary blame, where it should sit, which is with our federal government intentionally causing this fear and chaos.”

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck spoke of the atmosphere of fear preventing Seattleites from carrying on daily activities such as going to work, sending their kids to schools, and receiving medical care. “The stakes could not be higher,” Rinck said. “Our neighbors are quite literally being disappeared off of our streets.” 

Rinck also spoke of community members sharing a noticeable increase in visible racism and xenophobia in Seattle’s streets. 

Meanwhile, earlier in the week, Mayor Katie Wilson’s “Standing Up for Our Values” transition team held a town hall to discuss how to protect Seattleites, particularly immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities, from federal threats. More than a hundred people attended the meeting to share their experiences and concerns and stand in solidarity with community members. 

Immigrant and refugee community members spoke of how afraid they were to even be attending the meeting, and how the fear of being detained or killed impacts their daily lives. They also spoke of the fear of not being able to go safely to work, which would mean being unable to pay their rent and ultimately being evicted. 

Transgender community members spoke of their experiences of transphobia in Seattle and the current transgender relocation crisis. In a recent survey, 9% of transgender respondents said they’d moved to a different state between November 2024 and June 2025, which one person estimates could mean 400,000 transgender people moved during that time period. 

Attendees expressed a mixture of distrust in the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and the desire for SPD to step in to protect people from ICE and arrest ICE agents who are acting illegally. 

One attendee, who was a circus artist, noted police’s mistreatment of left-wing protestors: “I also don’t think that the solution is to take that power and give it to SPD, because the Seattle Police Department is a menace to a lot of us. Last summer, when the counter protesters at Cal Anderson Park were just brutally beaten by SPD, they came out with a statement afterwards from their union reps that said, we operate in the heart of antifa land. What makes you think that they have any interest in protecting those of us who are anti-fascist?”

Many community members spoke against widespread surveillance in Seattle, saying it was making them less safe. 

A person who grew up undocumented in Texas argued many companies are profiteering off mass deportation and surveillance: “I’ve witnessed the economics of criminality, of deportation, and locking people up in jails for as long as I’ve been an activist: families being torn apart, Black or Brown people being surveilled unlike ever before, while putting billions of that money into the pockets with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Palantir, Axon, Flock and many others that profit from the economy of mass surveillance, deportation and incarceration.”

Community members had a list of requests for Wilson, including:

• Turning off the surveillance cameras, license plate readers, and the real time crime center in Seattle.
• Providing more support for immigrant and refugee communities.
• Providing more support for transgender people, especially those relocating to Seattle, including job programs.
• Canceling contracts with companies with a direct relationship to ICE.
• Requiring SPD to withdraw from the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Washington State Fusion Center so they are not directly cooperating with ICE and DHS agents.
• Banning all staging and operations of any federal law enforcement activities on public and City property.
• Preventing SPD from arresting protesters who are protesting ICE or other immigration enforcement and/or trying to protect community members from ICE.
• Eliminating the use of SPD to attack local mutual aid networks that have organized to protect at-risk residents.

While Wilson wasn’t invited to attend this event, several community members expressed disappointment that she wasn’t present. More than one person shared feelings that WIlson hasn’t acted decisively enough since taking office. 

“I think we should be clear that there are stakes for Mayor Wilson as well and the longevity of her administration,” a participant said. “So far, what you’ve seen is a lot of talk and not a lot of action. We’ve seen this during the campaign, she spoke openly against the establishment of the CCTV system in the city, and now, since she’s in office, it’s still going. What happened to that? She says she’s waiting to hear from immigrant rights groups. They’ve already spoken. They’ve said those surveillance cameras should be gone, and they’re still there.”

The Wilson administration’s response

The Mayor’s Office issued a press release on Thursday afternoon outlining the steps Wilson plans to take in response to the current constitutional crisis and federal violence.

The list of commitments includes providing City employees with updated training about how to report and respond to enforcement activity, having all departments conduct a data privacy review, posting clear signage of private spaces on city properties, and coordinating with other elected officials in the state.

In addition to moving quickly on spending money designated during the budget process last year for supporting immigrant communities, Wilson will issue an executive order prohibiting civil federal immigration authorities from using property that is City-owned and -controlled for civil immigration enforcement activities. 

The Mayor’s Office announced the new “Stand Together Seattle Initiative,” which will invite private property owners to post notice that their properties cannot be accessed by federal agents without a warrant. 

A hotline will also be established, led by a “trusted community-led organizational partner,” where city departments and community organizations can share information about federal enforcement activities that can then be passed along to concerned community members. 

Finally, Wilson will “require the Seattle Police Department to investigate, verify, and document any reports of immigration enforcement activity.” This will include SPD officers validating the identity of ICE agents, using body-worn and in-car video, and securing scenes where ICE might have done something illegal in order to gather evidence. 

However, the Mayor’s Office said the mechanism for the above is an updated directive, with no plan to enshrine the instructions in official SPD policy, which would provide accountability for SPD officers to comply. 

The press release contains no mention of the surveillance technology currently operating in Seattle, which appears to allow the current surveillance status quo to continue. 

“So many of us are shocked and heartbroken by the news out of Minneapolis, and share a growing concern that our city too could come under attack by the federal government,” Wilson said in the release. “The federal government is causing profound, long-term harm to so many communities, and we all have a shared responsibility to organize, practice solidarity, and do what we can to keep Seattle safe.”

As Washington and Seattle elected officials scramble to respond to the possibility of a federal incursion, Gomez has lessons to share from Minneapolis.

“The fact of the matter is that we have to be clear-eyed about the truth, which is that state and local policy are not the tool with which to respond to an authoritarian federal regime,” Gomez told The Majority Report. “Those tools are inadequate.”

Gomez presented an alternate solution to authoritarianism on the march: “We, the people” coming together, being courageous, and taking care of one another.  

The post Washington State Reacts to Feared ICE Invasion, Constitutional Crisis  first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Seattle Transit Measure is up for renewal this fall, and expanding bus service could be a greater focus in that package, based on our conversation. Wilson hinted that more bus lanes could be on the way, noting that she campaigned for Denny Way bus lanes for the perpetually late Route 8 — a bus lane the previous administration sought to rule out.

In her role on the Sound Transit Board, Wilson also pledged to bring a collaborative approach focused on delivering results for riders regionwide and looking at the system holistically. She shared skepticism of the idea of dropping the second downtown tunnel from the Ballard Link project (in hopes of addressing its ballooning budget). Bolstering transit capacity and system reliability is key and the second tunnel brings that, she said.

FIFA World Cup preparations are another topic we dove into, with transportation and public space improvements in the works to accommodate the throngs of fans that will be in Seattle for the matches that the city is hosting. It sounds like some improvements have a chance to become permanent.

Note: We also asked Wilson about Seattle’s growth plan — as it has played out through the never-ending Comprehensive Plan process — but we opted to pull that question out and turn it into a separate article. Watch for that piece later this week!

This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and brevity.

Transportation department

Doug Trumm: What changes would you like to see at the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and what direction did you give Angela Brady when it comes to running the department?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, there’s a lot. This year is very front-loaded with big decisions, big important things happening at the City regarding transportation. And I felt that it was very important to have someone at the helm who had really strong operational experience, and who was going to be able to just hit the ground running as we make some of these big decisions. And so I’m excited to work with Angela Brady on that.

Obviously, Sound Transit is a big part of what decisions need to be made about early this year, and I’m looking forward to taking up my seat at the board. Part of this is just wanting to make sure that we’re making the best decisions possible for Seattle and for our whole region in a difficult funding environment. So, we’re going to be working on that.

The Seattle Transit Measure renewal coming up, obviously, is another thing that’s very much on my mind. Our transit service is worse now than it was in 2020 when that measure was last passed. And that’s a problem. And so I really think we need to chart a course to getting back to 2019 service levels and better. So, that’s a very high priority for me.

As we think about levy implementation, we want to hit the ground running on delivering promised levy projects… because there’s so much there, right? And part of this is about just like doing the projects, delivering results, but I think really doing that through a lens of: what are the outcomes that we’re looking for? And we’re trying to improve mobility for people. So, as we look at the prioritizing on the levy projects, really making sure that we’re paying attention to what people are going to feel as they move around the city, and especially, of course, to the more vulnerable road users, and trying to improve improve safety, since we’re so far away from our vision zero goals.

So, that’s all fairly high-level things that are coming up early this year. But, those are some of the conversations that that I’ve been having with Angela.

Obviously, I’m also a big fan of bus lanes, and campaigned on bus lanes on Denny [Way]. And so I think another thing that we’ve been talking about is, what’s the low-hanging fruit in terms of improving the experience of transit riders in Seattle, making transit more reliable and more comfortable? And so that’s another thing that that’s going to be important.

Seattle Transit Measure renewal

Doug Trumm: You managed to answer our second question with your first answer, but I’ll just see if you had anything else to add. We wanted to see what you were thinking about the Seattle Transit Measure renewal measure. You mentioned getting service levels back up. Anything else that you wanted to add?

Katie Wilson: In my mind, the Seattle Transit Measure is about funding transit service. And so I know there’s a tendency to want to put a bunch of other stuff in there. I really do want to make sure that we are prioritizing getting our service levels and reliability back up.

I also have many, many memories from 2014 when we had a county-wide measure that failed, right? I care not just about Seattle’s bus service, but about our whole region’s bus service. And so I think having conversations with the county about how we get back to a regional measure and with advocates is also something that’s important to me. So, as we think about Seattle’s measure, we’re going to be having those conversations as well.

Obviously, affordable transit programs, transit access programs, which have been folded into that measure, also. I’m strongly supportive, and so we want to continue those. If there’s an opportunity to to expand on those, for example, by making transit passes available to more people who live in subsidized housing. I think that would be a great direction to move in as well.

Doug Trumm: Yeah, and I was curious, if wanting to partner with the county, is that something that’s still feasible in the 2026 timeline, or is that a future?

Katie Wilson: I don’t know. I had been assuming it wasn’t. If there’s a pathway, I won’t have that decision. [If not and] we’re just doing Seattle, then that’s a future conversation.

Seattle Library Levy

Amy Sundberg: I want to talk about the library levy, because that’s also a big one coming up. Of course, the libraries have suffered a lot because of the pandemic, and there are a lot of related library services that people don’t necessarily think about when they think about libraries that either are already funded by the levy or could be funded by the levy. So what is your broad thinking about that?

Katie Wilson: I love libraries. That’s probably going to be like the depth of my answer right now. So yeah, we haven’t really had a detailed conversation yet about what’s anticipated to be in the levy. I mean, I know there’s also some issues floating around about a levy lid, because there’s a several levies coming up, so it’s kind of that conversation. But yeah, we can maybe talk later in a more detailed way, once I’ve had more thorough briefing. But, yeah, I love libraries. Very supportive of libraries.

Sound Transit decisions

Doug Trumm: You’re taking the helm at a really sensitive time for Sound Transit. What are your top priorities heading into your first board meeting there? And how are you approaching the decisions made by your predecessors regarding the alignments, whether North and South of Chinatown-International District (CID), or others?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, high level, I think it’s really important that we are delivering what voters are expecting, and also funding problems are real, right? And so I’m going to be coming in, I’m looking forward to meeting with the other North King subarea folks, and just with all the board members. And I also think it’s really important to remember that we are building a regional system, and the whole system only works if the whole system works.

Seattle is the biggest in terms of people voting for the funding, right? So it is very important that we’re making the best decisions possible for Seattle residents and Seattle riders, but at the same time, again, the system only works if the whole system works. And so I don’t want to set up an antagonism between Seattle and the rest of the system. And so I’m looking forward to those conversations with all the board members, so that we can navigate these challenges together.

I’m very committed to building out the lines that we promised to voters. And we’ll be working with the other board members on the specifics of how we get there in terms of CID. My understanding of where things are at now is that we are still waiting for some analysis back from the agency around the North and South option, is that correct? And maybe the [4th Avenue] Shallow [option] as well. I’m looking forward to receiving that.

My position hasn’t changed from what it was during the campaign, which is basically, I want the best outcome for our transit system and transit riders in terms of connectivity, and also care about the impacts on the neighborhood and want to make sure that we’re developing stations in a way that’s minimizing the disruption and displacement. So, we’re going to be working with folks in the CID and paying attention to what Sound Transit comes back with making these decisions.

Doug Trumm: Lately some of the action has been around the single tunnel option, dropping the second tunnel in Downtown Seattle, and it seemed like the board chair and a few of his allies were like: let’s just not even think about that. But, there were other members who were interested in it. So it’s in limbo. Are you hoping that that is going to be at least an option for you going forward?

Katie Wilson: We need a reliable system, and I think it’s pretty clear that with the single tunnel, we don’t have a reliable system. And so as we’re building it out, we need that capacity, that a second tunnel seems to be the only way that we’re going to get that. I’m happy to have things looked at, but to me, it’s pretty clear that that’s the direction we need to go.

Homelessness and emergency housing plans

Amy Sundberg: Can we talk a little bit about emergency housing? I know one of your big commitments was 4,000 units by the end of four years, but I also had the understanding that you wanted to get moving quickly because of the World Cup. What can we expect that to look like? And what can we expect to see in the next three to six months?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, this is very, very top priority for me, something that my team is working on now. And, yeah, this is going to look like a few things. So, just on the defensive side, we need to not lose permanent supportive housing and shelter that we already have. And so we’re very engaged right now in the in the strategy and conversation around contingent care funds, and trying to make sure that we’re fortifying our permanent supportive housing against potential cuts so that we’re not adding to our homelessness problem.

I talked a lot on the campaign about tiny house villages, micro modular housing, being part of the solution. And so we’re going to be working on identifying sites, and that will mean looking at land that city departments potentially have at their disposal, and also working with partners, including the county, including the port, including the state, to try to identify sites that would be appropriate for tiny house villages or other kinds of micro, modular housing. And then, working with service providers that can operate that housing.

We’re also looking, right now, at the City budget, and figuring out what flexibility we have to funnel some money toward that. So that’s something that we will certainly have some announcements, more specific plans to share in the coming weeks. But yes, you’re right that there is urgency for us around the timeline of the World Cup and trying to make sure that we are opening up really significant numbers of new units before June, so that we can really help some of the folks who are unsheltered inside in the downtown core and adjacent neighborhoods, and neighborhoods around the city, but with a focus there, because of World Cup, and get folks the support that they need. So that’s part of it, and then there’s others.

I know that the Downtown Seattle Association and the PDA have a project in Pioneer Square around some new shelters. So we’re also trying to move forward and look for opportunities to open up other kinds of new shelter, not just tiny house villages. And this is really going to be a team effort, right? We’re starting the process of reaching out to potential partners, churches, faith communities, the business community, and we’re going to all have to pull together and identify space, identify operators, identify funding, and so, yeah, this is going to be one of the big things that we’re working on over the coming six months.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, it’s a big effort. I always say it’s not an intractable problem, but it seems like it has felt that way.

Katie Wilson: It has felt like that for a very long time. We’re going to try to break that logjam.

World Cup preparations

Doug Trumm: Zooming out a little bit, we’re curious about not just homelessness and emergency housing, but what you’re looking at for your first six months as key things to get moving, whether that’s World Cup related or just in general and whether transportation-related, public space, or amenities.

Katie Wilson: I probably won’t have as specific an answer to this yet as you want, but very much aware that we need to make sure that our transportation system is ready for the World Cup, and I think there’s some opportunities around public space to make improvements that will last beyond the World Cup — don’t have specific announcements yet.

Public bathrooms is something that I talked a lot about on the campaign, and I think it would be great if we could start to actually do something about that pre-World Cup. I think we’re gonna have a lot of people in our city walking around enjoying the city, and it would be nice if they had a place to pee.

Doug Trumm: That isn’t just a porta-potty.

Amy Sundberg: Or even just the porta-potty. [Laughter]

Katie Wilson: I mean, there’s a lot of different ways to think about the World Cup, right? There’s the emergency mentality of like: oh, this big thing is happening, we have to be prepared and make sure it’s not a disaster, right? So there’s that lens, which obviously is important from the City’s point of view, but then there’s also the economic opportunity lens where there’s going to be all this money flowing into the city, and we want to make sure that that is benefiting small businesses around the city and residents. And so there’s that kind of lens, which is something that we’re also thinking about, how do we get all the visitors, not just kind of huddled around the stadiums, but out into neighborhoods and experiencing our culture and history of the neighborhoods, and also patronizing small businesses.

And then there’s the games themselves, right? And wanting to make sure that Seattle residents are have the opportunity to be excited about the games and to watch them and get kind of swept up in the World Cup moment. And so that’s another thing that we’re thinking about: how do we make sure that there are watch parties that are accessible to people and that you don’t just need to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a ticket in order to feel like this is an event that you’re part of as well.

Yeah, I also have an idea about getting people playing soccer, and we’ll see, we’ll hopefully be able to do something along those lines, too.

Surveillance and federal overreach

Amy Sundberg: Related to the World Cup, surveillance is hot topic. With what’s happening federally, of course, it’s become an even greater concern than it was before. I know that at least one or two groups have already sent you letters saying what they would like to see and asking for you to act fairly quickly on matters of surveillance. So I was wondering how you’re approaching that topic, and what you’re thinking now that you’re actually mayor.

Katie Wilson: Yeah. My position from the campaign has not changed. I’m very, very concerned about the the risks to immigrant communities and other vulnerable folks from expanding surveillance, and also from some of the surveillance that already exists in our city. And so, you know, it’s my third day on the job here, so… I take this very seriously.

And so as we’re standing up our team in the mayor’s office and starting to get all the wheels rolling in terms of our policy shop and our work with departments, we’re going to be reviewing all the surveillance policies and programs that are in place, and talking to the folks who have written in with concerns and others, and coming up with a plan. And so I don’t have the details of exactly what that looks like, but it’s very important to me that we’re protecting people’s privacy and not unnecessarily handing tools to the federal government that could be used to target people.

Media Strategy

Amy Sundberg: One of the things that I’ve been interested in that I think is going to be really important for your office, is having a direct line of communication with Seattleites. We saw the first right-wing media attack [of your administration] a couple days ago. So it started right away. I expect that will continue. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has just announced the Office of Mass Engagement as part of his strategy to deal with similar issues in New York. And so I wanted to know what your administration’s approach to that was going to be.

Katie Wilson: Yeah. I mean, there’s a number of pieces to this, right? There’s how are we getting accurate information about what we’re doing and why out to the public, and that is a challenge in our media environment, right? And we just saw that this week with the kerfuffle, if you want to call it that, around SPD and drug arrests. And I think it’s an all-of-the-above strategy. So we have to use traditional media as much as we can set the record straight, put out the statement that says: No, this is actually what happened, and hope that that filters out as much as possible.

And I think also there’s a very important social media side to this. A lot of people, that’s where they’re getting their news anyway. So if we can really build the mayor’s office’s and the city’s social media presence so that people are hearing from us directly in the videos that we make, or in the statements that we put out, and they can trust that, yes, this is actually from the mayor’s office, they’re talking to me, this is what they’re doing: that’s another important piece of that. And then also working through trusted community organizations and folks out in the community that have networks where they are also spreading news and information.

And yeah, we haven’t started an Office of Mass Engagement. Yeah, I’m just gonna be constantly compared to Mamdani, aren’t I?

Amy Sundberg: It was interesting idea. It’s a really big problem, right?

Katie Wilson: I think it’s very important that the city is working through ethnic media and non-English language media to make sure that we’re reaching communities that are not going to be like easily reached through traditional media as well. Again, getting out accurate information about what the city is up to and things that people need to be aware of. In this very challenging media environment, it’s going to be a multi-pronged strategy.

Also, I have this idea around public funding for local news outlets. And if we can get that going, that longer term, deeper project is strengthening our local news ecosystem so that news organizations actually have the funding that they need to do investigative reporting, to produce high-quality local news, then that also will help.

Police department, CARE, and culture change

Amy Sundberg: I wanted to ask about Seattle Police Department (SPD) Chief Shon Barnes. I know you decided to retain him for now, and he’s had kind of a rocky first year, and I’m sure you’re aware of all the reasons why that is. So I was wondering what expectations you’ve expressed to him in terms of what you’re looking for in his leadership of SPD?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, I guess I’ll say I’m really looking forward to working closely with him to move the department and to move the city’s public safety response in a good direction. And I retained him because I think we can do that. There have been some challenges, some stumbles over the last year, but really I think that there’s also responsibility for that to be put on the previous administration.

It’s very important that, as the mayor, I have a very close and trusting working relationship with my police chief. And this is a team effort, and I’m not sure that was really the case before. So, in terms of expectations, or the direction that that I think that I’m hoping that we can move, we’re going to continue hiring officers, right? And I think we’re also going to need to be really creative and intentional about how we’re using the force that we have to address the problems that people are experiencing in their neighborhoods and on the ground. So I’m really eager to be working with SPD and with stakeholders in different neighborhoods where there are persistent public safety issues to really get to a better place.

And we have some good models for how to start doing that, really in the work that’s going on in the U District and Downtown and several other neighborhoods. So I really want to build on that and make sure that we have a really good working relationship between SPD and the CARE [Community Assisted Response and Engagement] department.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, that was going to be my follow up, because I feel like it’s not there right now.

Katie Wilson: Correct. And again, I think that it’s really not useful to try to assign blame in this case, and it’s really the responsibility of The Mayor’s Office to develop that partnership and to oversee that partnership and to make sure that those two departments have what they need, including strong direction from the Mayor’s Office to work together and make sure that the appropriate responder is coming to a given call. Obviously, we are somewhat constrained in that by the recently approved police contract. But within those boundaries, we’re going to do everything we can to make the best use we can of our alternative response and then also collaboration with the service providers that do similar work in terms of outreach and alternative response.

Amy Sundberg: My understanding is if SPD wanted to cooperate more, the contract wouldn’t be quite as crippling as it might otherwise be, because they still have a choice [as to when to refer calls to the CARE team].

Katie Wilson: Right, and so I think that part of the work ahead is really working with Chief Barnes to make sure that SPD and all of our officers are on the same page around our goals and making good judgments in the moment. So that’s very high priority for me. In general, I think within SPD that we want being an officer to be a good job, not just in terms of the pay that you’re getting, but that officers are there feeling that they’re providing a public service, feeling that they have a relationship with the public, with the neighborhoods that they’re working in, and also that within the force, they’re respected, they’re, you know, not sexually harassed, right?

I think it’s important that SPD be a place that women, that minority officers have a good experience working in. And this is so important if we’re trying to create a situation where our force reflects the communities that it’s serving and feels that they have that relationship. And so there’s some work to do there.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, the culture there is another seemingly intractable problem. I guess we’ll find out.

The post One Week In, Katie Wilson Charts the Path Ahead first appeared on The Urbanist.

A new report released last Thursday by the University of Washington (UW) Center for Human Rights shows that driver information from Washington state’s Department of Licensing had been used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for federal immigration enforcement through at least mid-November. 

While state officials said two separate times last year that improper driver data was no longer being shared with federal immigration officials, it appears there is still a simple way for agents to obtain Washingtonians’ data.  

Researchers identified nine cases between September and November of last year where federal immigration enforcement occurred to Washingtonians while they were driving, following a search of their license plate numbers in the Washington Department of Licensing (DOL) database. Federal access to this data required the cooperation of both the DOL and the Washington State Patrol through Nlets and ACCESS, which are switchboard-type systems that allow users to query data held in a variety of institutions’ systems, including federal and state databases and records from undisclosed private companies.

At least seven of these cases are confirmed as civil immigration enforcement, in spite of this kind of state cooperation being against both agency policy and state law, including the Keep Washington Working Act. Several of the cases took place in King County, with traffic stops leading to immigration detentions in Renton, Auburn, Tukwila, Burien, and Puyallup. 

In the first 11 months of 2025, federal agencies used ACCESS/Nlets to query WA DOL data a total of 2,671,776 times, according to data provided by DOL. While many of these queries had nothing to do with civil immigration enforcement, the large number illustrates the possible scope of the problem. 

Through the ACCESS/Nlets data connection, immigration officers are able to access information such as date of birth, height, hair color, home address, and often most useful to agents, identifying photos. 

“We know [this number of confirmed cases] likely represent the tip of the iceberg,” Professor Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, the director of the UW Center for Human Rights, said at a press conference. “In fact, later today, we expect another batch of records about other arrests that have been reported to us, so it’s likely that the number of confirmed cases and affected Washingtonians will only continue to climb with time.”

Department of Licensing’s history of security issues

The Seattle Times first discovered the DOL was sharing driver data to assist federal agents in civil immigration enforcement back in 2018, when ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) would directly email the department and receive records. ICE and CBP were also able to search the DOL’s Driver and Plate Search (DAPS) database. 

At that time, the DOL changed its policy to stop emailing data except in the case of a judicial warrant. It also canceled several DAPS contracts with federal offices to protect its data. The next year, the legislature passed the Keep Washington Working Act. 

However, in July of last year, King 5 discovered that the DOL was once more sharing driver information with ICE through the DAPS database, leading to multiple immigration arrests. The DOL initially denied the allegations but then said that ICE had lied about how they were using the data. By the end of August, the DOL had terminated the two ICE DAPS accounts that had been used to obtain the data. 

In November, a group of lawmakers revealed that immigration authorities had another way to access driver data through the Nlets system. At that time, Governor Bob Ferguson quickly moved to block ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations’ (ERO) access to the data via this new pathway. 

However, eight of the nine cases identified by UW researchers showed that the Nlets system had been accessed by CBP, not by ICE ERO. CBP was never blocked from accessing the Nlets system. “We know the Border Patrol is engaging in civil immigration arrests and therefore failing to block their access, there’s no reason to believe that this would have stopped,” Godoy said.

The report referenced recent sworn testimony from federal officers in Portland, Oregon, explaining that they traveled to locations they considered to be promising for finding immigrants and then randomly ran license plates. Once they had the name associated with a vehicle, they could run the name in other databases, and if that information suggested the owner of the vehicle may have immigration issues, they would either arrest them during a traffic stop or visit their registered address to arrest them later.

The report said, “Records reviewed by UWCHR researchers, including ICE documents and records of Nlets queries using ACCESS, show that similar tactics appear to be being deployed by immigration agents in Washington.” 

Maria Abando, representing Whose Streets? Our Streets!, a BIPOC-led workgroup that formed as an offshoot of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, spoke about the fear and anger caused by ICE’s assault on civil liberties and the state’s failure to protect sensitive data.

“We are infuriated that we have been misled to believe that state institutions like the Department of Licensing were keeping us safe,” Abando said. “We are disgusted that our leadership is not taking action to eliminate institutional surveillance of the people, knowing that they’re putting us in harm’s way. There should be no negotiation, no compromise, no prioritizing of business partnerships with tech companies when it comes to our lives – for all data, not just with the Department of Licensing.”

ICE’s attack on civil liberties

The timing of this report’s release highlights the dangers presented by Washington state’s lack of data security when it comes to protecting immigrants.

On Wednesday in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed a woman, Renee Nicole Good. Good had been participating in a protest against an ICE raid in the neighborhood and appeared to be attempting to drive away when she was shot. 

The Department of Homeland Security claimed Good was trying to run over an agent who feared for his life. However, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the claim “spin” and “bullsh*t.” 

An analysis from The New York Times shows Good’s vehicle appears to be turning away from the agent at the time he shot her. 

“We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of this ICE presence in Minneapolis,” said Frey in a statement. “This was a federal agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.”

The New York Times said this shooting is the ninth ICE shooting since September. 

“ICE is tearing families apart, detaining people regardless of immigration status, often targeting people based on race and language. District 2, Seattle’s most racially diverse district, has already seen an uptick of activity by ICE and other federal officers,” Seattle Councilmember Eddie Lin wrote in a statement. “Let me be clear — ICE is not welcome in Seattle.” 

Also on Wednesday, masked ICE agents reportedly arrested three men in Seattle at Evergreen Washelli Cemetery.

“I am furious at the federal government’s abuse of power. It is unacceptable to kidnap people who are simply going about their lives. There is no place for it in Seattle,” Wilson wrote in a statement.

I joined today’s ICE Out vigil to grieve for Renee Nicole Good & the many others who have lost their lives to ICE. To mourn. And to organize too. To everyone who makes Seattle home: this is your city, and you belong here. You deserve to be safe here. And together, we’ll fight to make it so.

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— Mayor Katie B. Wilson (@mayorofseattle.bsky.social) January 11, 2026 at 3:59 PM

On Thursday, federal agents from the CBP shot two people in Portland, Oregon. Oregon’s attorney general is opening a formal investigation into the shooting. 

ICE also continues to ramp up its nationwide surveillance apparatus. 

“With a budget for 2025 that is 10 times the size of the agency’s total surveillance spending over the last 13 years, ICE is going on a shopping spree, creating one of the largest, most comprehensive domestic surveillance machines in history,” wrote Cooper Quintin, the senior staff technologist at Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Multiple instances over the last year have illustrated how data collected by Washington State can be incorporated into this surveillance system.

Politico reported at the end of the year that ICE has new data-sharing agreements with several federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Health and Human Services. These agreements appear to enable bulk data-sharing in spite of the 1974 Privacy Act, which ostensibly barred such arrangements. 

President Donald Trump also went on a firing spree of inspector generals and government watchdogs when he took office last January. 

Meanwhile, in October, Radley Balko interviewed former immigration judge George Pappas, who was fired by the Trump administration in July.

“I can tell you that today, the immigration courts are substantively dead,” Pappas said. “They are completely absent of due process. Of fair hearings. They exist only for show, and in name only. Period. The courts are dead.”

Locally, the state democratic congressional delegation has grave concerns about the conditions at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. A December letter cites insufficient medical staff, two suicide attempts in April, and pregnant women not receiving appropriate pre-natal care. The detainees have also not been receiving enough food and face barriers to receiving necessary legal counsel.

State officials have the options of rescinding the business license of GEO, the operator of the ICE center, and taxing the facility per detainee per day in an effort to make its operation financially untenable. Rescinding the business license would be a job for Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, while a detention tax could be instituted by the state legislature during this session. 

The behavior of ICE and status of immigration courts and detention facilities raises the stakes for protecting Washingtonians, and their data, ever higher. 

Next steps for Washington State and Seattle

In an interview with The Urbanist, Wilson reiterated her concern for the threats surveillance data poses to vulnerable people in Seattle.

“We’re going to be reviewing all the surveillance policies and programs that are in place, and talking to the folks who have written in with concerns and others, and coming up with a plan,” Wilson said. “I don’t have the details of exactly what that looks like, but it’s very important to me that we’re protecting people’s privacy and not unnecessarily handing tools to the federal government that could be used to target people.”

In a statement reported on by The Washington Standard, Governor Bob Ferguson said “he stands prepared to take further action.” 

The statement goes on to say he’ll do so “with reason and care.”

The UW report contains three recommendations for next steps regarding the DOL data:

1. Immediately block Nlets searches by any agency associated with ICE and federal immigration, including CPB and Homeland Security Investigations.
2. Institute a process of accountability for the harm that has been caused to people through the improper data sharing that has taken place.
3. Commit to transparency of data-sharing by state agencies, including providing various logs to independent researchers.

However, reporting from the Seattle Times indicates the state might be reluctant to cut CBP’s access to Nlets, with Brionna Aho, a spokesperson from the Governor’s Office, saying it’s not a straightforward issue. “Misleading reports like this do more harm than good,” Aho said.

According to the report, one of the reasons the state hasn’t yet blocked CPB from Nlets is because of the need for agents to check enhanced drivers’ licenses at the border. However, there is a technical fix that would alleviate the problem should the state choose to invest in it. 

Regardless, both Godoy and Nina Martinez, executive director of Latino Civic Alliance, agreed that even if CBP’s access is revoked, they are concerned ICE will simply find other agencies and avenues that aren’t blocked to get to the state’s data. Godoy suggested that if the state was either conducting audits itself or allowing audits by independent auditors, the migration of which agency was sharing data with ICE could be more easily tracked.

However, if the data sharing with ICE is happening on a more informal basis, as it does with law enforcement officers performing casual look-ups of license plate reader data on behalf of ICE, audits might not be enough. 

Abando and BJ Last from Stop Surveillance City referred to this as a game of Whac-a-Mole and asked for more action from the state, including state agencies deliberately trying to scale back their collection of data. An example of this would be the DOL no longer sharing photos with Nlets or ceasing to permanently store photos at all.  

“Whose Streets? Our Streets! would like to say to our Washington State leadership, do something,” Abando said. “We urge you to stop playing this game of Whac-a-Mole when ICE shows its ugly head on our streets, and be accountable. We paid into this system, registering our licenses, not expecting our information to be treated so carelessly. We call on you to reduce data being collected to only what is absolutely essential to providing the services, and store that data for as little time as possible, and delete all non-essential data about us to help prevent us from getting targeted, harassed and snatched up on the streets.”

The post UW Report: Immigration Agents Still Accessing WA Driver Data first appeared on The Urbanist.

Evans is the first Black person to be elected to this role, as well as the first woman of color. 

In a discordant note, right-wing media attacks against Evans began before the ceremony had even been conducted, with a concerted effort to brand her as soft on crime already underway from the Seattle Police Officers Guild and right-leaning media sources.

Evans was sworn in by U.S. Federal District Court Judge Richard Jones after remarks by former Washington State Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu, whom Evans called a mentor, University of Washington student and campaign worker Towa Nakano-Harris, and Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown. 

“My purpose, my North Star, is serving others,” Evans said in a speech following her swearing-in. “Service to others is something that has always guided me. Dr Martin Luther King Jr, said that life’s most urgent and persistent question is: what are you doing for others? This has guided me in my life and in my career in public service.”

Evans’s speech culminated in a standing ovation and the audience singing to mark her birthday. Many notable local elected officials attended the event, including Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay (and his daughter), former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, and most of the Seattle City Council. Seattle Police Department (SPD) Chief Shon Barnes was also present and served on Evans’s transition team.

Evans ran as a progressive Democrat, pledging to follow evidence-based policies and stand up against the overreach of the Trump administration. Evans spoke strongly against her predecessor’s tough-on-crime policies, especially the Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) and Stay Out of Area of Prostitution (SOAP) zones, policies that Evans said are racist and ineffective. 

Known as the city’s top lawyer, the Seattle City Attorney defends and initiates lawsuits on behalf of the City, advises elected officials such as the mayor and the city council, and enforces city regulations, including labor laws and tenant protections.

In a criminal capacity, the City Attorney only handles low-level misdemeanors, the most serious of which are driving under the influence (DUI) and domestic violence cases. Other misdemeanors handled by the City Attorney’s Office include shoplifting, trespassing, disorderly conduct, vandalism, and as of the fall of 2023, simple drug possession and public drug use. 

Meanwhile, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office handles all felonies, which include charges such as murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, arson, and drug trafficking. 

Brown spoke about a time in the past when he advised Evans against taking a career opportunity, which later led to her being free to run for office. 

“There was going to be a future opportunity to lead, to shine, and see what she could become,” Brown said. “I did not know it would be serving as the City Attorney for the City of Seattle, but I knew that she had the skill set and the character to do something bold and visionary that would have an impact on more people.” 

Assuming office at a time of legal challenges

Evans assumes the office of the Seattle City Attorney at a challenging time, between a slew of lawsuits from current and former members of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), a new mayor who’s interested in passing more progressive revenue and pushing for a bolder vision for the City’s comp plan, and an erratic United States president who has spent the last year regularly trying to withhold federal funding and threatening to send a more active U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence and/or the National Guard to Seattle. 

“You step into the role at a time when the challenges facing our cities across the nation are complex, ever changing,” said Yu during her speech. “But with those challenges come opportunities, opportunities to strengthen trust, to uphold transparency, and to ensure that every voice in our community is heard and respected. I am confident that your leadership will help guide us towards solutions that reflect the values that we hear.”

As she stressed on the campaign trail and in an interview with The Urbanist following her victory, Evans reiterated her pledge to be proactive in protecting the city from federal overreach, whatever form that might take.

Evans also has the opportunity to shape the city through her legal interpretations and level of risk aversion.

During a discussion of council amendments to the Seattle Comprehensive Plan last fall, councilmembers used legal advice given to them by the City Attorney’s Office as a reason to oppose the addition of several neighborhood centers that had been included in the planning department’s original growth plan before then-Mayor Bruce Harrell’s team intervened. If Evans were to take a more pro-active approach than Davison, one obstacle or excuse for council action for adding density to the comp plan would be removed from the table. 

On the criminal side, Evans plans to focus strongly on DUI and domestic violence cases, which she has said are not being filed quickly enough. 

Now that she’s in office, Evans plans to determine the methodology Davison was using in her High Utilizer Initiative, which focused on a list of people who frequently cycle through the City Attorney’s Office because of low-level violations. Many of these people have been found to be homeless and suffering from substance use disorder and/or behavioral health disorders, and some of them aren’t competent to stand trial. 

Evans will be working with King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion to ensure the City and County are aligned in their methodology for who belongs on such a list. 

“[The High Utilizers] definitely need our attention and focus because we need to be making sure we’re being good stewards for the whole city and for people that need help, or providing the right help in treatment and services and for public safety,” Evans told The Urbanist. “I see it all weaving together.”

Evans is also full steam ahead on implementing her reimagined community court, which she sees as a key component to breaking the cycle of people committing misdemeanors. Evans told The Urbanist she has already met with the Seattle Municipal Court, who are very excited about the idea of a new community court. 

Immediate right-wing attack

The Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) did not wait for Evans to settle into office before going on the attack. 

The night before Evans’s swearing in ceremony, SPOG published a social media post making the inaccurate claim that SPD would no longer be arresting people for open drug use. SPOG president Mike Solan signed the post, which specifically attacked the City’s Let Everyone Advance with Dignity (LEAD) diversion program, identifying its ideology as “meeting people where they are who are in the throes of addiction.”

“Most cops know that the LEAD program supports this ideology and they don’t want to refer cases,” Solan wrote. “It is a waste of time. We’ve all seen how our streets can be filled with death, decay, blight and crime when ideology like this infects our city.”

This post appears to have been inspired by a memo issued by Evans last week and a department-wide email Barnes sent to SPD in response. 

In her memo, Evans states that all arrests for drug possession and public drug use should be referred for review to a team within her office, who will determine whether each case is suitable for referral to LEAD. Evans confirmed with The Urbanist that the cases will not be directly referred to LEAD without review.

In his email, Barnes appears to misinterpret that guidance: “Effective immediately, all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use will be diverted from prosecution to the LEAD program.” 

This statement isn’t strictly correct, since cases with those charges will be sent to an internal team within the City Attorney’s Office to determine whether a LEAD referral will be made. 

On Monday, SPD released a statement saying “SPD has not changed its policy around public drug use and SPD will continue to enforce Seattle’s laws” and “Seattle Police officers will continue to make arrests for drug-related charges if they have probable cause.”

This clarifying statement from SPD did not prevent Seattle City Councilmembers Bob Kettle and Maritza Rivera from making statements of their own. Kettle recognized the misunderstanding that had taken place and expressed a wish for continued improvement, but Rivera said she found the news “concerning” and expressed a fear that Seattle might “go backwards.”

When asked for her response to SPOG’s statement, Evans referenced her experience as a federal prosecutor working on fentanyl drug trafficking cases.

“To say that we shouldn’t be aggressive in our approach to help get folks connected to treatment to stop this extremely addictive drug is really out of touch,” Evans said. “Jail isn’t the solution. It’s not a treatment facility. I have prosecuted folks that have smuggled fentanyl into our jails, and so it’s very clear that that is not the place for people that are dealing with substance use disorder to get any meaningful recovery.”

Evans cited the failure of Davison’s approach to the fentanyl crisis, talking about kids and teenagers she’s seen on the streets addicted to fentanyl.

“You have to provide the right response so people are not back out on the streets using [drugs],” Evans said. “That’s what we all want at the end of the day. And we’re going to be smart and evidence-based in our approach to accomplish that, and not just say things that sound tough, but actually in substance, are failed.”

Moving forward

This SPOG offensive against diversion services is likely to be just the beginning as Evans joins fellow progressives Wilson and Councilmembers Dionne Foster, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, and Eddie Lin in beginning new terms of office. 

Solan announced at the end of the year that he’ll be stepping down from the SPOG presidency in a month, but he has already endorsed a possible successor: Kent Loux, whose campaign video says that he served on SPOG’s board and the contract negotiations team. 

Kent Loux, Mike Solan's hand-picked successor to lead SPOG, is somehow an even bigger dope, but he's a "proven fighter with miles left in the tank," according to his campaign video:

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— DivestSPD (@divestspd.bsky.social) January 7, 2026 at 9:06 AM

The video utilizes bombastic music and images of flashing patrol lights, a pack of wolves, and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) battle ropes and a riled-up boxer. 

“Make no mistake: Seattle’s politics have veered sharply left, unleashing a storm that threatens to dismantle everything we’ve built brick by brick,” Loux says in a voiceover.  “SPOG is staring down its most brutal years yet—a relentless assault on our unity, our resources, and our resolve.”

During the voiceover, the video alternates between photos of Wilson, Foster, and Rinck.

It's the 5th anniversary of Jan 6 & Mike Solan is stepping down. Good time to share an excerpt from Capt. Robert Brown's journal. On 1/6, Solan's chosen successor, Kent Loux, told a roomful of cops that the 2020 elections were "'clearly stolen" and needed to be "set right."

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— DivestSPD (@divestspd.bsky.social) January 6, 2026 at 1:05 PM

Regardless of the results of the SPOG presidential election and right-wing propaganda efforts, Evans has expressed her readiness to fight for Seattle’s values. 

During her swearing-in speech, Evans referenced her grandfather, Olympian and two-time gold medal winner Lee Evans. Lee Evans wore a black beret and raised his fist while accepting one of his Olympic medals in 1968 as part of the Black Power movement, embracing what his granddaughter Evans referred to as a sacrifice and risk to make things better for others. 

“I’m approaching this with eyes wide open that the road ahead will not be easy,” Evans said. “I think about what my grandfather did at the Olympic Games, how it was met with outrage, but it stood the test of time, and it was on the right side of history. And now we are in a moment where young leaders like Towa will look back and ask what the leaders in this moment were doing to be on the right side of history. And we are going to do that work right now.”

The post Erika Evans Takes City Attorney Oath, SPOG Goes on Attack first appeared on The Urbanist.

Check out our recent articles for more information:

• Thousands Packs Trains for Opening of Federal Way Light Rail
• Federal Way Link Stations Not Seeing a Housing Boom
• Seattle Approves Controversial Police Guild Contract, Three Councilmembers Dissent
• Katie Wilson’s Transition Team Features Mix of Advocates and Insiders
• Katie Wilson Charts New Course on Public Safety and Homelessness

This episode of The Urbanist Podcast was edited by your truly. Episodes also air on KVRU 105.7 FM radio Thursdays at 4pm. Thank you to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their assistance producing this episode.

Podcast Transcript:

Ryan: Welcome to the Urbanist Podcast, a show touching on the biggest headlines at The Urbanist, and also offering a deeper look from the reporters breaking the stories. We’re an independent reader supported publication, covering the Seattle Metropolitan region since 2014. We do advocacy journalism for better cities. You can find us at theurbanist.org. I’m Ryan Packer, contributing editor. We’ve also got Doug Trumm publisher,

Doug: Hi, Ryan. Excited to break down the stories.

Ryan: And we’ve got Amy Sundburg.

Amy: Good to be here. Excited to talk about, what’s been happening this week.

Ryan: Every couple weeks, The Urbanist will break down the biggest headlines. Here’s what we’ve got on deck for you this week. We’re gonna talk about Sound Transit opening a brand new extension down to Federal Way. We’re gonna talk about Katie Wilson, incoming mayor of Seattle, and her assembling a crack team of top staff and transition team members.

Ryan: And we’re also gonna talk about the newly approved Seattle Police Officers Guild contract.

Amy: [00:01:00] let’s go ahead and dive in and talk about the new light rail stations, because that’s very exciting for everybody I think.

Doug: Yeah definitely. And Ryan and I were there for all of the hoopla and fun times and, uh, a lot of people riding the trains for opening day. What did you think of the opening day, Ryan?

Ryan: It was a very exciting day, finally bringing light rail into South King County. Getting all the way to Federal Way. This is a day that’s been worked towards since 2008 when voters approved the Sound Transit 2 ballot measure, which envisioned getting all the way to what’s now Star Lake. Ultimately, the Great recession in 2009 prevented them from getting south of Angle Lake.

Ryan: But, with the 2016 follow up Sound Transit 3 measure, we were able to get all the way to Federal Way.

Amy: What is this expansion gonna mean for the people that live and work in South King County?

Ryan: It’s a much better connection to the regional transit network, especially from, I’d say downtown Federal [00:02:00] Way, as well as students accessing college at Highline College. There’s quite a bit of, of parking along the alignment, the trackway follows I-5. And so it’s a little more park and ride oriented than maybe the, uh, the northern section through, you know, Seattle, the University of Washington, Capitol Hill.

Ryan: But ultimately it’s gonna be better access to the region.

Doug: Yeah I think the airport connection’s gonna get a lot better too. Which I found out the reverse way when I was thinking about how I was gonna get down there for the opening from, I live in Fremont and if you connect on the A Line from the end of what used to be Angle Lake, obviously it was the end of the line.

Doug: You’re still looking at a half hour to get all the way to, uh, downtown Federal way. So that’s gonna be more like 16 minutes, I think, is what they said. So that’s a, that’s a pretty nifty connection for folks along there. And, obviously it’s not just people flying out, but thousands and thousands of people work at the airport.

Ryan: Yeah. One of the deputy CEOs [00:03:00] at Sound Transit shared with me that on his train, uh, the first one to leave Federal Way, there was a, a pilot who knew that the service was starting at 11 o’clock and used it to get to the airport in the very first revenue service train.

Amy: That’s amazing. I love stories like that. so Ryan, you mentioned that the light rail was aligned with I-5. What was the other option and what were the pros and cons?

Ryan: Yeah, so about 10 years ago, we had this big debate. Transit advocates were pushing for an alignment that went along, uh, PAC Highway SR 99, essentially directly serving the businesses and amenities that are all along the highway. But a lot of businesses were concerned that their property was gonna get taken for that alignment.

Ryan: There was also concerns about traffic impacts from temporary closures and all these impact concerns. And so ultimately all three cities along the route. Des Moines, Kent and Federal [00:04:00] Way all got on board with pushing the route over to I-5. And you know, the northernmost station at Kent Des Moines is, is pretty close to both, like, it’s a kind of most, the most narrow part of the area where I-5 and 99 are pretty close together.

Ryan: So that’s not a huge difference, although Highline College was ultimately pushing for their station to be on. On the same side of 99, so students don’t have to cross that really dangerous, noisy highway every time. Kent had been proposing to do a pedestrian bridge, but that ultimately never materialized.

Ryan: Star Lake is really the big missed opportunity. It’s right along I-5, along a wetland. There’s very little TOD. Sound Transit is not even developing any affordable housing at that site, which they are. The other two with the property they had to use to acquire to build the line.

Ryan: That’s kind of the big opportunity as well as potential infill stations will be a lot harder to add in the future. [00:05:00] But coming back and adding more stations between other ones, it’s gonna be a lot harder to do that.

Doug: Yeah, riding the train, for me was the first time I know you got to go on the early press ride, Ryan, you know, it was really a huge mix of what kind of uses and just generally was built when as you went by. You go by some pretty empty areas like forest and the wetland.

Doug: You mentioned obviously McSorley Creek Wetland, which actually was also a problem during construction because that’s part of why they had to delay due to a landslide.

Ryan: Potential landslide, right, Doug?

Doug: potential landslide, yeah, I guess it may be a bit sensationalized in the reporting but bad soil conditions that they sort of knew were there, but they didn’t expect ’em to be that, that bad. But that, that’s why this project’s opening and late 2025 instead of 2024, which is kind of the plan for most of the last decade. But, you end up going through a, a great variety of areas. There was some low density housing, some high density housing. Didn’t necessarily stop at all the high density housing, [00:06:00] but, yeah, the three stations we do have a, a real mixed bag. And I think Star Lake’s probably gonna be weak link there with a lack of TOD opportunity and, and just not as much there now either besides a big parking garage.

Doug: Yeah, 

Amy: you quickly define TOD?

Doug: Oh, I hate that. I’m always the one trying to do that, when I’m editing and I didn’t do it when I was speaking. Transit oriented development, which it’s a little bit of frustrating from, from a urbanist perspective ’cause it should all be transit oriented development. Right. But, obviously we have to differentiate from the normal way we do things, especially in the suburbs where, we’re just building a lot of low density housing with largely single family homes that it’s really hard to serve a transit whether we wanted to or not.

Ryan: Yeah, I think Federal Way is the big opportunity here. You know, they have pretty grand ambitions for what I think a lot of people would kind of laughably consider a, a downtown now. The idea that Federal Way has a downtown as kind of a, a running joke. And so I think we should encourage those plans.

Ryan: They have four big sites that Sound Transit’s gonna [00:07:00] directly develop right now. Those are pretty far along actually in the process, those are gonna have retail on the ground floor and start to kind of create a mixed use district. They also have this very large parcel home to a former target that they have been working with the development agreement on with a developer which could bring like as many as 1600 units, through phased development.

Ryan: So you’re potentially looking at a very different federal way in 10 to 15 years.

Doug: Yeah, it, it certainly feels like there are things at the Federal Way Station. They’re just not that close to the, the station itself and. We learned as we were going to our little urbanist afterparty where we went to a Italian restaurant near the station, but not near enough not to have to cross two stroads to get there.

Doug: And a stroad is the urbanist term for an overbuilt road, street road that is very unpleasant to cross. We waited probably over 90 seconds just to get across one intersection, because there were so many [00:08:00] protected turns for cars. And then you’re just waiting to get your turn chance to cross both of these roads as a pedestrian, and you feel like you’re trapped in a mall parking lot hell.

Ryan: Yeah. Federal Way still has a long way to go to get out of that car-centric planning mindset. Their long-term vision, rather than slimming down that major road is to dig a tunnel so the cars can pass, pass underneath and you can have pedestrians crossing on the top of the surface, but not have to actually slow any cars down.

Ryan: While I don’t think it actually will ever happen is a great illustration of kind of the mindset of current Federal Way city planners.

Doug: Yeah. That’s not downtown thinking, is it? 

Amy: So how successful do we expect the new line to be? Like how many people do we think are gonna be riding?

Doug: Well, I can give you the official agency projection, which, uh, I think was last revised to 18,000 to 23,000 daily passengers is what the extension will contribute. And to give you some context, [00:09:00] the 1 Line before this extension averaging more than 110,000 rider daily riders. That was buoyed by the addition of Lynnwood Link in 2024. So it’s definitely a growing ridership. This is gonna help a little bit, but it’s not gonna be like, a night and day thing.

Ryan: I think due to the fact that it’s a much longer trip to get to downtown Seattle than it is from Lynnwood, on the other end of the line. It has to go through the Rainier Valley to get to downtown. Sound Transit is gonna continue running express bus service between downtown Federal Way and downtown Seattle, in illustration of the fact that it’s not actually saving you a lot of time to jump on the train, like Doug said, it’s gonna be great for airport travel, but it’s not gonna be, I think the game changer that Lynnwood has been, especially because Lynnwood’s gonna have four minute service with the 2 Line extending up there.

Amy: Yeah four minute service is a big deal. I think it makes people a lot more likely to give it a try.

Doug: yeah, [00:10:00] I know a lot of my friends are excited for that. Even folks who aren’t died in the wool urbanist. It just makes it so there’s not really that mental barrier of like, oh, is the train gonna come and am I gonna make, make my trip in a reasonable amount of time and not be late? And beyond the airport connection, the silver lining of a not very quick route into downtown Seattle, where you go through Rainier Valley. I think there are a lot of, uh some trip demand for folks who like to go to Columbia City, say from Federal Way or from from Kent Des Moines. That that is a lot faster trip because much of our transit system forces you to go downtown to transfer. And, now you have some connections along this line that, that are not forcing you to do that to make a connection like that so that that’ll be an improvement.

Ryan: Now that sound transit’s gotten to Federal Way, what is next is the two line which is finally gonna extend across I-90 into Bellevue between Seattle and the Eastside. Recently [00:11:00] we’ve been hearing rumblings about a spring opening and CEO Dow Constantine has confirmed that the train will open no later than May 31st of next year.

Ryan: Well in advance of the World Cup Games in downtown Seattle. So everyone’s eagerly anticipating that opening is gonna be a huge deal when we’re finally able to bridge the Eastside and Seattle with very frequent train.

Doug: Yeah, and get Judkins Park in Seattle service too and Mercer Island. They’ve been waiting a long time.

Ryan: My question about the two line, where should the grand opening be?

Doug: I’ll, just say Judkins Park ’cause I’m Seattle for life, but, uh, 

Amy: I think I think it should be on the east side because the east side hasn’t had the connection. So it makes sense to me to maybe have it over there or you could have a dual head celebration. So have it on one side and then have it move to the other side. Actually, I think that’s probably the most fair.

Ryan: [00:12:00] But then will it be in Mercer Island, which has spent a very intense amount of time fighting its light rail station?

Doug: would say if Mercer Island can approve a big upzone before the opening, then let’s give it to them. But if not, uh, no. No thank you.

Ryan: Well, that up zone might be happening under the threat of a lawsuit, so we’ll see.

Doug: We always knew we were gonna have to coerce them. Right. yeah, it’s probably gonna be Bellevue, but it feels weird ’cause they’re already open. But yeah, that is, I didn’t think about that question and it is a kind of sticky one. I think probably still thinking about that one. It sound transit. ’cause the segmented opening really complicates things.

Ryan: One thing is for sure, it’s gonna be a huge party.

Amy: Well, there’s a lot to celebrate.

Doug: And one other piece of news, which is a little minor piece of news, but it kind of fun. One thing that happened at the urbanist holiday party was that Claudia Balducci gave a little speech and she said she is going to be on a ride across the lake with some other. Sound transit staff and officials. Uh, so they are [00:13:00] actually taking passengers across there, which is another of these mini milestones. We’re counting every single milestone, as they get the floating bridge service working. ’cause that’s been a huge engineering feat to figure out how to run a train across the floating bridge.

Doug: But, it feels even closer now that we know that they’re actually taking people across.

Ryan: Yeah, hopefully the press ride isn’t too far behind. We can give our write readers a little preview of what’s happening. It’s my understanding that once the line enters simulated service, which will probably be happening a few weeks to a month before actual start, as riders will be able to use the, the trains north of International District.

Ryan: So you’ll be able to get that, that four minute service we’re talking about ahead of time.

Doug: That’ll be so awesome. And with the two line full opening, that’ll be a full build out of Sound Transit 2 or ST2. , And that was approved in 2008. So it did take about 17 years. But that still feels huge to have [00:14:00] fully completed a package like that, and it’s, I think over 62 miles of light rail lines, accounted for in that.

Amy: Yeah, I mean, it definitely makes a difference to the whole region to build out infrastructure like that.

Doug: Yeah. And Sound Transit 3 isn’t going quite as smoothly, but obviously we will have even more expansions on deck with that. But that’s probably another podcast episode.

Ryan: Moving on to our next topic. Let’s get into City of Seattle News. We’re just a few weeks away from the new Katie Wilson administration taking office, the first progressive mayor we’ve had in quite some time. It’s gonna be exciting to watch, and we’re gonna read the tea leaves when it comes to senior staff hires and the broader transition team.

Ryan: Amy, what have you been tracking when it comes to the transition team and who Katie Wilson’s bringing on to help her lead the city?

Amy: Well, you can see with her transition co-chairs kind of where a lot of her priorities [00:15:00] lie. Tiffany McCoy is the co-executive director of House Our Neighbors, a social housing. organization. And I think that just shows how dedicated Katie Wilson is to really pushing social housing and making sure that it gets done as well as we can do it here in Seattle.

Amy: So I found that one really encouraging. Karen Estevenin, who is the executive director of Protec17, shows Katie Wilson’s strong labor ties, right? So that was not a surprise at all, but always, always happy to see it.

Doug: Yeah. And those two struck me as definitely a thank you. I mean, they stand in their merits for sure. These are, these are well connected people with good ideas. But, Protec17 was the first major union to throw their weight behind Katie. And, that was before the primary when, when that wasn’t the obvious pick. A lot of labor was worried the mayor was gonna punish ’em if they, if they did something like that. And, Estevenin and Protec17 threw their neck out there and now they [00:16:00] in a better position because of it. And Tiffany McCoy similarly, was an early endorser, but also the fact that we had a social housing measure in February that the mayor kind of flubbed that by being the face of the opposition. You know, Wilson has credited that with why she even jumped in the race. So, those two are instrumental in, making sure this, this race went the way it did.

Ryan: Yeah. The other two co-chairs are Andres Mantilla of Uncommon Bridges, who used to be, the director of the Department of Neighborhoods and Brian Surratt, who’s been the CEO of Greater Seattle Partners, but used to lead the City O ffice of Economic Development.

Ryan: The way we describe this on the site is a mix of advocates and insiders, and I think, it’s clear that even with the selection of her co-chairs for transition, she’s making signals that, she’s gonna bring in people with deep background in making city government work, but also continuing [00:17:00] to highlight people who will push the city to do better.

Ryan: With Tiffany McCoy, especially leading the charge in terms of making sure that we are still advocating for new ideas.

Doug: Yeah And I thought Quynh Pham was an interesting pick, as executive Director of Friends of Little Saigon, because they’ve been working on a public safety approach for Little Saigon that isn’t based on just hotspot policing and punitive enforcement. They’re looking at a holistic approach.

Doug: I think that could be a signal that’s, that’s something that Katie Wilson wants to do on a larger scale. And really, especially with that effort too, because I know 12th and Jackson has been this intractable problem for so long. but we keep kind of doing the same approach it seems like.

Amy: Yeah, I was really interested to see Pham on there as well. And I do think it’s a strong signal of of more neighborhood based approach to public safety that Wilson has talked about on the campaign. She’s really interested in developing these relationships with various neighborhoods.[00:18:00] 

Ryan: Doug, how,

Doug: And those folks aren’t people who endorsed her as far as I know, like with Surratt and Pham and Mantilla. So, she’s showing she’s not just gonna play political favoritism, but also try to work with everyone. I think even though there are a few of her, her loyalists there too,

Ryan: Doug, how much do you think people should read into the members of the transition team? How much are they gonna really influence policy after January 1st?

Doug: You know, normally I would say. Don’t read too much in these tea leaves. But I, I have talked to a few people who have said, when we go to these transition team meetings, which granted are just starting now in December, but that they felt like they were really well run and that, that they were really asking for real feedback and, and trying to actually capitalize on the knowledge.

Doug: And, that goes to speak to what some people are trying to say about Katie Wilson from the beginning is that this caricature of her as this like progressive firebrand like Kshama Sawant was, was not really the [00:19:00] Katie Wilson, anyone actually knows who’s worked with her. She is the ultimate policy nerd. And she’s gonna have a thorough process and actually hear from people. That’s at least the person that people know. And obviously people can be different once they’re actually in power but so far I think people have said, oh, this, this is a transition team.

Doug: It’s not a checking in a box. It’s actually looking for real feedback and I think the thing people always try to guess when they announce it is usually a few other people become appointees. And we’ve seen that with Brian Surratt being a co-chair and now he’s the deputy mayor. So obviously that one if you’re in that committee and getting a chance to talk to the Deputy Mayor, that’s gonna be a part of a relationship and feedback that he’s gonna carry with him probably for his whole term.

Amy: I think one thing that’s also really important to remember about Wilson is that she has a really strong background as a community organizer, and she has stated repeatedly both on the campaign trail and since. We know that she’s going to be the next mayor, that that’s how she intends [00:20:00] to lead.

Amy: And so it doesn’t surprise me at all that that first transition meeting was extremely well run because Wilson’s experience is in talking with people, bringing them all to a table, trying to get people on the same page. My guess is that we’re gonna see a really different style of leadership coming out of City Hall come January 1st.

Ryan: Doug, you mentioned Brian Surratt is gonna be Deputy mayor. Do we have some other ideas of who is gonna be filling the top jobs in the Wilson administration?

Doug: Yes, Yes we’ve been getting a little trickle here and there. In, within that same announcement, there was a handful of other names. For example, we know, Katie Wilson’s Chief of Staff is going to be Kate Brunette Kreuzer, who is a old friend of the publication for sure.

Doug: As someone who was on our, on our board at one time, I believe. And, Brunette was at Futurewise before this, and was their development director. But, has, has known Katie for a really long time through Transit Riders Union and, and other things where she [00:21:00] has been active. So, chief of staff can subtly be this pretty important role because they control who has access to the mayor and runs their cabinet. So, that is someone who urbanists should feel good about. Because she’s been doing work with Futurewise, The Urbanist and other folks who for a long time.

Doug: And then I can just run down the list of names. Jen Chan was appointed director of departments, which is sort of like a deputy mayor role. But and I think for the better, Mayor Elect Katie Wilson is not doing the four deputy mayor thing that that Bruce Harrell did.

Doug: And I think, Mayor Durkan had like three deputy mayors. Is that right? 

Doug: Uh 

Ryan: Deputy mayor, inflation is a real thing.

Doug: Yeah, it’s a real thing. So it’s a reorg and I think that’s probably for the better. So that, people know what the, what the hierarchy is, and what people’s responsibilities are ’cause you can say, deputy mayor for this and this and this, but I think to most people it’s just like, okay, you have four deputy mayors. It’s kind of [00:22:00] confusing. Who do I ask for help when stuff getting sorted out between the departments. That’s a pretty senior role I think, and she’ll be the liaison between the mayor’s team and, and all the different city departments, which there are a lot of.

Doug: And then Seferiana Day is the director of communications coming over from the Office of Planning and Community Development, where she was the communications director. And Alex Gallo Brown is the director of Community Relations. He was Katie’s campaign manager and a union organizer with UFCW before that. Definitely someone who she built a good relationship with over the campaign.

Doug: And

Ryan: another signal that they’re gonna continue the community organizing through the administration, right.

Doug: yeah, yeah,

Doug: Well, actually, Seferiana Day has a background in community organizing too. Both, indirectly through OPCD, but earlier in her career. And she also was with Upper Left Strategies. So someone with some political savvy. Obviously we would like Katie Wilson not to get the old Mike McGinn treatment and have all the local [00:23:00] media painting her as outta touch or ineffective. So I think, they’ll have to think about how they’re what they’re doing rather than it get communicated by their enemies.

Doug: And then we have Aly Pennucci, which I know is something Amy, you’re familiar with , as someone who covering the budget closely.

Amy: Yeah so Aly Pennucci will be the director of the city Budget office. And Ali Panucci was a long time central staffer for Seattle City Council. And when she left, I don’t know, a couple years ago, I think it was, there was a lot of concern because she was just known to be very, very good at her job, very knowledgeable.

Amy: So, there was the feeling that the city was losing a lot of its institutional knowledge when she left. So it’s great to have her back on board and get that institutional knowledge back at City Hall, as well. Yes, I’m a huge budget nerd. I think everybody knows that by now. And, Katie Wilson is gonna be facing a very challenging budget.

Amy: Her first budget , there’s gonna be deficits, there’s gonna be a lot of issues. Even if she [00:24:00] wasn’t interested in revamping it, it would be very difficult. But if she’s interested in doing anything differently, even more so, right, because obviously it’s always easier to just stay with the status quo.

Amy: So having someone as experienced as Aly Pennucci to lead that effort, I think is very encouraging.

Ryan: Once again, we’re seeing evidence that, despite the idea that Katie Wilson’s gonna come as a very inexperienced mayor that we’re, we’re getting really people with a very long history at City Hall who know what they’re doing and are gonna be able to really pick up that job on, on day one.

Doug: Yeah. And the last person that they’ve announced is Nicole Vallestero Soper, who’s the director of policy and innovation. Either you followed what she’s been up to.

Amy: No, I was just gonna ask what the Director of Policy and Innovation does. I think that that’s a new title, right?

Doug: I think so. Yeah. There’s usually [00:25:00] someone who’s like the policy lead, but I don’t think the Harrell administration had a one for one replacement of that, but they had a large cabinet with people maybe with policy and innovation in their title separately.

Ryan: Amy, what do you think about the idea of only having one deputy mayor instead having someone who’s in charge of the department heads, but also maybe we will, you know, let them actually do their jobs?

Amy: Yeah, I mean, we’ll have to see how it goes at the end of the day. Predictions are just that. They’re predictions, but we don’t actually know. But I would say , from what I’ve heard about how City Hall has been operating in the past, I feel like this is a strong effort to move away from infighting and backstabbing and like a dysfunctional, overly competitive culture, to something, yeah, where people maybe have a little bit more direct control over what they’re doing, a little bit less hovering kind of oversight and maybe less about like the political game and more about actually getting things done. That might be wishful thinking [00:26:00] on my part, but I think that’s what it signals, whether or not that’s how it works out in practice.

Amy: We’ll have to see.

Doug: Yeah, I mean, we’re reading a lot into the tea leaves this early, but. I think so far signs are good.

Ryan: There’s one more person who I don’t think has been officially announced, but, Alex Hudson, who ran for the District 3 Council race in 2023 and had been the executive director at Commute Seattle. Sounds like she’s gonna be also heading to the mayor’s office. That role is a little bit up in the air, but , in terms of her policy background, we can be sure that they’re gonna be involved in the 2026 Seattle Transit Measure renewal, which figures out how the city invests in public transit purchases, bus service from King County Metro, and pays for bus passes and things like that, as well as the monumentous decisions that are gonna come in front of Katie Wilson as a Sound Transit Board member next year.

Doug: Yeah, And that is another [00:27:00] old tie to The Urbanist with someone who served on our elections committee as well.

Doug: Oh, and I’ll add that, Nicole Vallestero Soper, Director of Policy Innovation , she was at last, at Puget Sound, Sage, which is a very influential group advocating for communities of color especially in south King County. And she worked on the 15 dollars minimum wage in SeaTac, which Katie also helped on. So, definitely another close ally, someone who has a lot of experience collaborating with the mayor and, and it looks like that position is responsible for developing and advancing specific policies that fulfill the mayor’s vision.

Doug: So, kind of a catchall position, but someone that likely will work pretty close with the mayor.

Ryan: Yeah, coming from Puget Sound Sage into the mayor’s office, sounds like, the Dionne Foster move.

Doug: And another good ally for the mayor having Dionne Foster on the council side.

Amy: Do we have any other thoughts about signals that these picks could possibly mean.

Doug: Another thing this process at least signals is that they are thinking [00:28:00] a lot about how they wanna present themselves and kind of forging a new way. The fact that their transition team, they met at Centilia Cultural Center, which is at El Centro De La Raza in Beacon Hill, it’s also where Katie Wilson had both of her victory parties.

Doug: So it’s turned into a defacto base for them at least, until they’re informally in the seventh floor of the city hall. But, having that event, it was partially open to the press, so Katie gave a public speech and then so did her co-chairs of her transition team, and then they had the co-chairs available for media interviews. We weren’t able to get there, but, I think just the fact that they put that out there, shows that they’re trying to say, ‘Hey, if you wanna talk to us about this stuff, we’re, we’re available. That is always the case, with every administration when they wanna do a lot of the stuff behind closed doors. And once they are in office, then you have the gatekeeper from the press shop that you have to go through. That might be the case once they’re in office. But right now they’re trying to reset and really offering [00:29:00] some access here, rather than have it be behind closed doors.

Amy: All right, well, let’s move on to some more big recent news, which is the passage of the new Seattle Police Officer’s Guild, a.k.a. SPOG, labor contract.

Doug: Yeah, you were there. Take, take us through what it felt like to be in that room, Amy,

Amy: I was watching, I was watching, and I was posting on Blue Sky because I knew a lot of people would wanna know what was happening as it was happening. There was a lot of public comment to start out the meeting. Most of which was asking the council members to, to not pass the contract, to vote no.

Amy: And then once they got to the contract. First of all, there are two contracts. I wanna be clear about that because I think it can be confusing to folks. There were two contracts that the council was voting on. The first one was the Seattle Police Management Association , which is different than the SPOG contract and not what everyone was talking about.

Amy: So [00:30:00] it SPMA, as they’re called, they represent higher ranking officers. So like lieutenants and captains. And their contract, while it could still definitely be improved, is a lot less egregious than the SPOG contract. So it doesn’t receive the same level of attention.

Amy: Also, it covers a lot fewer total officers. There just are less captains and lieutenants than there are officers and sergeants. So, it affects a lot fewer people who work at SPD. So they voted for the SPMA contract first, which is a different contract. And it passed unanimously, which was expected. And then they, they did the big vote, which was the SPOG contract, which has all kinds of issues that, that we can dive into, but the big surprise of the day was that Councilmember Rob Saka of [00:31:00] D1, voted against the contract, which was not something that I saw coming. But earlier that day, he published an op-ed at the Stranger, stating his intention to vote no. And at the actual meeting, he spoke for almost a whole half hour, I think it was 27, 28 minutes. He spoke about all his thoughts about the SPOG contract, including why he was not going to vote in favor of it, and

Doug: The full Saka experience..

Amy: It was maybe the longest speech during a council meeting that I’ve ever heard. I think it was, I don’t remember one being that long before. So it was, it was interesting because of course, there was a lot of tension in terms of what was gonna happen with the vote. Yeah, but also it just went on and on and on and on. So, yeah, that was a memorable experience. He brought up some of the weaknesses of the contract, most notably in accountability, which [00:32:00] I was happy to hear because I do feel like there are different aspects of the contract, and accountability often gets a short shrift, in my opinion. And that’s really why he was voting no, was because of the almost non-existent gains in accountability that the contract offers us as a community. did say some things that were not perhaps the most, uh, tactful, in terms of his colleagues on council,

Doug: Tact isn’t his signature move.

Amy: Um, yeah. So, that was very dramatic, but long.

Doug: Yeah.

Ryan: Amy, what types of police accountability measures were advocates hoping might be in the new police contract?

Amy: Yeah. So, it’s hard to talk about because a lot of it is very in the weeds. So if you’re not familiar with it, it, it doesn’t necessarily have a huge amount of meaning. So I’m gonna try to be less wonky and just explain it [00:33:00] in a lay person’s terms. But basically there was this landmark, well, it was, it was called landmark at the time, accountability ordinance that was passed in 2017. It was supposed to be this really big deal in terms of really turning a corner of police accountability in Seattle. And then the very next year, a new SPOG contract was passed that really didn’t implement this landmark mark accountability ordinance. And in some ways even perhaps went backwards. So, what advocates really wanted to see is this, this ordinance, which is now eight years old, right? So that’s a long time to wait. It was supposed to be implemented as soon as possible, but it did have to be bargained, parts of it. They wanted to see it finally be implemented and it still isn’t.

Amy: And that is kind of the easiest way to understand what’s going on with this contract. There are a lot of nitty gritty things that are involved with that. But [00:34:00] the other thing to remember is that this is an ordinance that was passed eight years ago. And it was meant at, even at the time that it was passed, it was meant as a floor of accountability.

Amy: Not a ceiling, but a floor, like the very basics. So it was not fixing all of the accountability problems, it was just let’s get it a little bit better to start and then we can build from there. And yet Seattle has been completely incapable of even reaching that floor. And then as time continues to pass, of course people get more and more upset and trust continues to erode because we’re not able to make any additional progress because we aren’t even able to meet that basic level. 

Amy: I would say the other major issue with the contract, aside from money, it is very expensive. So that’s a third major issue. But, the second major issue is what it does with the CARE department and the CARE team, which is our alternative response here in Seattle, for people who [00:35:00] don’t have a gun and a badge who are supposed to go out and address behavioral health calls and, and that sort of thing. There’s been a big movement to have a response like that in Seattle since 2020., And it has just suffered so many setbacks and problems and foot dragging. But this contract was supposed to be the one that really allowed that team to thrive and allowed them to finally answer 9 1 1 calls by themselves without having to have police there , which was a really big deal. Allow them to grow at an appropriate pace for what the need was for their services. Basic things like that. And what this new contract does is it allows the team to grow, which is great, but what it doesn’t allow them to do it, it technically allows them to do solo dispatch.

Amy: So they are allowed to go to 9 1 1 calls by themselves. But it puts so many limits on those calls and in terms [00:36:00] of when they’re allowed to do it, that in practice it’s gonna be hard for them to answer a lot of the calls that they are best suited to answer. And it also really takes away from the independence of 9 1 1 dispatch. And unfortunately, if we wanna see a call response times for 911 calls go down, which I think everyone agrees would be great. We need to have that independence of dispatch to be able to send who is best suited as a first responder to each individual call.

Doug: And it definitely feels like there’s irony there in that they’re allowing the CARE team to grow larger, but then they’re saying actually you can’t do this, this, this, and this, and this. So it’s, they’re gonna have all these staff that are gonna be very hamstrung in what they can do, and it doesn’t seem like in a very efficient way to run things.

Ryan: We keep hearing that the police wanna spend their time going to crimes and spending their time, dealing with crimes. So why, why is their contract hamstringing the departments that’s intended to be able [00:37:00] to free up their own resources?

Amy: I mean, it’s political theater, right? Like it, in my opinion, the CARE team has become a very valuable bargaining chip, that SPOG can use as kind of a battering ram to get the other things that they want in the contract. So, I mean, I think that’s basically it. Because it is true that in general, most police officers would prefer to not answer these sorts of calls. And it’s also true that they’re generally very safe for these alternative responders to respond to. So it’s not actually an issue of are they gonna be in danger? And, and there are, there are a bunch of protocols in place should it turn out to be a more dangerous situation than people originally thought.

Amy: And what we see in these sorts of programs across the country is that actually it, the danger to the first responders is not a big deal. That, that they’re able to dispatch them [00:38:00] appropriately to the type of calls that they should be responding to and that they are fine and they can always call police for backup if that’s necessary.

Ryan: Amy, you mentioned that Rob Saka was a surprise “no” vote. Were there any other council members who might have been expected to push back more on the contract?

Amy: So, the final vote just was 6-3. So the contract did pass as expected. The three no votes were Rob Saka , Eddie Lin, the new D2 council member, and Alexis Mercedes Rinck. The fourth that we might’ve expected to see vote differently was Joy Hollingsworth, who’s the D3 council member. And the reason we might’ve expected to see something different there is because on the campaign trail and specifically on the Hacks and Wonks podcast , Joy Hollingsworth said that there were some issues within this SPOG contract that would make her not support it. And those issues [00:39:00] were part of this. For example , she said that she wouldn’t support a SPOG contract that didn’t give subpoena power to the accountability bodies in Seattle. And there are various reasons why that’s crucial. This new contract does not give subpoena power to these bodies. That’s yet to be negotiated.

Amy: We still don’t have it. So I think people thought because she said yes, I don’t support that, that that would mean that she would say no to this contract. Also, she doesn’t serve on the Labor Relations Policy Committee, which five of the council members do. So a majority of council, which means that legally she could vote no with no worries of an unfair labor practice. No legal problems, right? She, she didn’t have that constraint on her vote. So I think some people expected her to possibly vote differently, but she did vote yes on the contract.

Doug: Yeah, and I would add that I think a lot of people have written off his vote on this issue now [00:40:00] because of everything that’s happened in the last couple years. But Dan Strauss is normally kind of in the progressive ish wing on other issues. But on this one, no one was really counting on his vote, but used to be a progressive solidly.

Doug: And, and I think his reaction 2023 we had to face election and was worried about the defund criticism was like, oh, he put out that mailer said defund was a mistake. And you know, it looks like that wasn’t like a temporary save your skin kind of move for Councilmember Strauss, but that he has shifted right on this issue and isn’t gonna stick his neck out to try to push for a contract with more police accountability in it. 

Amy: Councilmember Strauss did make a speech about his vote that he was gonna vote yes. And he said that, that we couldn’t wait. That the CARE team, we couldn’t wait for it to expand, which I thought was a little interesting since if you’re expanding it, but they can’t answer the calls they’re supposed to answer. I, I don’t know. I thought that was interesting logic, um,

Amy: [00:41:00] And that we couldn’t wait. Another interesting wrinkle, and again, this is deep in the weeds, so I apologize in advance, but, the city has finally agreed to take SPOG to interest arbitration on a few key issues of the contract. And that would not necessarily be able to go forward if the contract didn’t pass. So he was concerned about that. I don’t know how I feel about those reasons, but those are his stated reasons for voting in favor. 

Doug: Arbitration is such a crapshoot. It’s hard to say, like whether that’s an outcome or, or anything close to a Sure, sure 

Amy: Yeah I think the other thing just to remember about this contract, and I especially say it because Councilmember Bob Kettle has mentioned in more than one of his remarks, pushed back on the idea that this was a rushed process. So I do just wanna note that while we’ve been working on getting a SPOG contract for years, we had kind of a weird interim last year, but [00:42:00] trying to get these new accountability provisions has been the work of years. It feels rushed specifically because of the fact that Mayor Bruce Harrell introduced this contract a few weeks before the election. Right.

Amy: And the fact that this is being passed now right before Katie Wilson takes office, right before we get a new council member right before we get a new city attorney, means that these new elected officials will not get the chance to weigh in on an issue that is of supreme importance to public safety in Seattle, and they might not get that chance for their entire term because while this contract runs through the end of 2027, it is not unusual for the negotiations for the SPOG contract to be very lengthy.

Amy: And it wouldn’t be surprising if they used a delaying tactic to try to wait out Mayor Katie Wilson and see if they can maybe get a more favorable mayor into office [00:43:00] that they can negotiate with instead. So it really does not allow these elected officials to have a say in these important issues of police accountability and alternative response.

Doug: Yeah, I think if the centrist faction is gonna be pushovers like this, it actually like invites that, right? The fact that Mayor Harrell over his two contracts that he negotiated gave officers a 42% raise over five years, but didn’t demand accountability in return for that , or just as nature of doing business.

Doug: I guess it is a quid pro quo in labor negotiations, but it shouldn’t be. Like, some of these things shouldn’t be bargained, but as long as we’re doing it, you gave ’em 42% raise, but you didn’t get much back for it.

Doug: Some people have argued we’ve actually gone, either neutral or backwards on accountability over the two contracts that Harrell negotiated, and SPOG is sitting here. Like what incentives do they have to deal with Katie Wilson? At least if she’s a one term mayor. , And we [00:44:00] know they’re probably at some point gonna set the goal of making her a one term mayor. If they don’t like how she’s governing, which seems pretty high likelihood when she’s, her focus is let’s be more holistic, let’s get CARE up and running.

Doug: She, she still wants there to be effective policing, but not gonna be like a Harrell level of bending over backwards. 

Amy: Right, right. Well, and I will say, at least in my opinion, this contract is an excellent deal for SPOG. They really held the line well in terms of what’s important to them, and what they want. Of course there’s that interest arbitration I mentioned that we’ll have to kind of wait and see how that plays out. I imagine that will take a long time, like a year, maybe more. But aside from that, they did very well. And this is also gonna be a contract that’s very expensive for the city. It will cost an additional $131.7 million from 2024 to 2027. And we don’t actually have that entire amount in our planning reserves.[00:45:00] 

Amy: So it’s gonna make the, the budget issue even trickier for Katie Wilson and the council going forward.

Doug: And there’s already a big budget deficit that they’ve left on her doorstep.

Amy: Exactly, exactly. So this just takes even more money away from anything else that it could be spent on, to spend on this new contract, which includes things like special event premiums. , And officers still get extra money for being willing to wear body-worn cameras. That type of extra money for that most law enforcement agencies that has been phased out over time because now it’s just considered standard. But the SPOG members will still get that extra pay. So, you know, there’s, there’s a lot going on there, but when we’re, when we’re having a tight budget, I don’t even wanna say year, it’s gonna be several years, right, like every little bit counts. So it’s something to be aware of.

Doug: And, and what is the starting salary of a Seattle police officer up to now? I know it’s well over a hundred thousand.[00:46:00] 

Amy: Yes, a new recruit police officer will make $118,000 in 2026. And that’s versus in 2021, that that same new police officer would’ve made $81,000. So 118 versus 81 , in the course of five years. Granted, we have had inflation during that time, it’s hit all of us, but that’s still a very, a very significant increase. And it goes up quickly as well. So within six months, that new officer would be making more

Doug: Yeah, you’re pretty quickly at like, what, like 130,000 or something like that?

Amy: 126. Yeah.

Amy: So yeah.

Amy: And I would say that’s base salary. Right. So that doesn’t include the kind of inevitable overtime payments and that sort of thing.

Doug: That’s a lot of money. There’s not many positions in the city where you can be making that just as not a senior level position. Obviously, they have to pay market rate for some specialized positions, but, you know, [00:47:00] most people are not making that. And, that’s why so much of the city budget is going to the Seattle Police Department.

Amy: Exactly exactly So this contract does nothing to help mitigate that in any way. It just continues, kicks the can down the road and continues that same problem. We are hiring more police officers now, so as we hire more police officers, that budget crunch is just gonna get more and more painful.

Doug: Yeah, and it’s interesting, circling back to Councilmember Strauss’s argument for why he voted for it. There’s sort of certain logic to it. They have this CARE expansion right before them, and I get how he wants to grab that. But as we mentioned, there’s a lot of obstacles to effectively deploying them under this contract too, so it’s a mixed bag. But I know you’ve talked to Chief Barden about how to overcome those, so I’m curious if you have thoughts about if they’re gonna be able to work around some of these restrictions and be able to get some people out in the field even if it’s not responding to 9 1 1 calls.

Amy: Yeah, I think they’ll have to, and I think Chief Barden is ready to. She [00:48:00] tends to be a very creative and proactive thinker. She has several ideas. She’s instituted a deal with King County so that CARE responders can go directly to King County Jail once someone is being released and help with their reintegration into the community, which I think is so smart. She wants to have similar relationships with local area hospitals, for when they’re discharging patients that might need assistance. There’s also the possibility of integrating the CARE team into 9-8-8, which is the relatively new mental health line that is being touted as an alternate.

Amy: You know, you call 9 1 1 if there’s a life threatening emergency, but you can call 9 8 8 if, if you’re having some kind of mental health issue. So, that design isn’t as optimal as having CARE be dispatched through 9 1 1, which is why there’s been so many efforts to, to bargain it the other way. But if if there’s [00:49:00] no other option they can go the 9, 8, 8 route. And try to design it that way. They also just go proactively around the city now and look for people who might need help. And that has been somewhat successful. And the police still have the option of tapping CARE and saying, ‘Hey, this is a call that you would be good for.’ And kind of referring CARE to the call. Obviously it’s not as efficient as having 9 1 1 do it directly, but if the police wanted to get on board more with alternative response, they certainly could and they could help make it a lot more effective.

Doug: Yeah at least that’s something. And it’s interesting that care is sort of recreating the role of a beat cop because, there’s so much research suggesting that that proactive policing is a good use of police time, but it feels like pulling teeth to get SPD to do that.

Amy: Right. Well and there are barriers like that would make a police officer doing that. [00:50:00] Like people might be afraid to talk to a police officer, right. Whereas with a CARE team member, they would be more willing to accept the help or to share what the problem is in the first place.

Doug: Well obviously we’ll have a lot to see whether Chief Barnes can keep his position, whether they’re able to get CARE up and going.

Doug: Obviously, we’ll have to actually wait and see once Wilson’s in power to see how some of these things shake out. But before we go, we wanted to talk about something a little more fun, which recently Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck added a new item to the city’s official legislative priorities that they bring to the state legislature to try to ask, suggest legislation, get things moving.

Doug: And she wanted to promote more passenger only fairies, foot fairies for short. And I’m curious what you two, if you had your magic wand, what foot ferry do you want in, in our region to whisk you away to some magical getaway or commute that you have? 

Amy: Yeah, I would love a ferry to Port Townsend. I [00:51:00] think that would be a super fun, like weekend getaway. I would love to not have to have a car and just, you know, whisk over there and, and enjoy my time there. And then whisk, whisk back to Seattle. I think that would be great.

Ryan: Yeah, the secret urbanist stronghold of Port Townsend, one of the first cities in the state to get rid of mandated parking with new development. They just actually this week just did a big upzone as part of their comprehensive plan. So they’re really on the housing abundance train over there.

Ryan: So the, the next step is abundant transportation options to get there from the big metropolitan regions. I guess I would probably go with a better way to get to the San Juan Islands. I think, obviously a foot ferry from Seattle would be great. I think that would be a pretty long trek, to spend on the ferry all the way from from downtown.

Ryan: Another alternative would be. Bellingham, kind of a multimodal hub. You’ve got the ferry to Alaska in Bellingham. You [00:52:00] could have another ferry. You’ve got the Amtrak station. And getting off the Amtrak and getting onto a ferry to Friday Harbor, I think seems like a really great idea to me.

Ryan: What about you, Doug? Where would you.

Doug: I know we kind of have a split in this, Ryan. Oh, I mean, a hundred percent stole mine. I was gonna say San Juans, but I know you Friday Harbor’s kind of your go-to spot partially. ’cause there is more transit options to get there. But I’m a big fan of Orcas Island. I just have a lot of fond memories there, a lot of trips there. And have to go through Anacortes to take the ferry there. And it’s a slower car ferry. A foot ferry from Seattle would be awesome. And, obviously it’s a small island, but there is a state perk on it. And if we could get a bus to take you down the main highway of of the island, that kind of goes everywhere in this weird little, U-shape island, then you would really have it made to do a to a car free trip there. So that’s my own little plug. I guess it’s selfish ’cause that’s where I like to, to go, uh, a long weekend or what have you. 

Doug: But I also agree about Port Townsend.

Ryan: What do you think [00:53:00] about closer to home, do you think Lake Washington will ever see passenger ferry service go from Kirkland to Laurelhurst?

Doug: Uh probably not. The problem we have is that we are, we’re getting this great light rail line there, so I think you’re better off transferring once you cross the lake that way. But yeah, it, I could see them doing some sort of tourist focused line, but it’s hard to compete with a bus or a train going across the bridge for those lines.

Ryan: Yeah. One thing I’ve heard is that the University of Washington is pretty opposed to the idea of any, any passenger ferries in their vicinity ’cause of the impact on the UW Crew program.

Doug: They’re really proud of the boys in the boat, I suppose. Crossing the sound is, is such a bigger hurdle. Oftentimes people even drive around if they’re going on a trip because of frustrations with the ferry having long lines or just being unreliable in general. So that’s where a lot of my focus is. But, it is a dream question.

Doug: So wherever wherever you want the [00:54:00] ferry to go. That’s fine to dream. But, as far as getting the money for it, it’s, it’s a tough question in a time with a lot of strained budgets.

Ryan: This all stems from a discussion around the Mosquito Fleet Act, which was proposed last year, which would’ve empowered local governments and port districts to come up with their own funding mechanisms to support their own routes and kind of empower local government as opposed to just drawing the line on a map.

Amy: Well, I like to imagine a future where there’s just passenger fairies everywhere. I think that’s a lovely, a lovely image to end with.

Doug: Yeah, and representative Greg Nance from Bainbridge obviously has a vested interest being on an island to, to propose the Mosquito Fleet Act. But it is obviously a magical part about being here. Been fortunate enough one time to even see whales from the ferry. So, you get the full Puget Sound experience when you’re on a ferry and definitely a fun way to get around and get to all these beautiful places. Like you mentioned Port Town, since it’s with a historic downtown, as far as I know, they haven’t landmarked [00:55:00] any parking garages there unlike, unlike in Seattle’s downtown.

Ryan: Don’t give them any ideas. Doug,

Doug: No. 

Ryan: King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, actually wants to study a triangle route between Vashan Island, downtown, and Des Moines. So, that might actually happen sooner than you think.

Amy: Oh, that would be great

Doug: That’s cool. I’m actually on team Vashon. I like Vashon more than Bainbridge, but, who can? There’s no bad islands.

Amy: I like them all.

Doug: Well, that’s it for this episode of the Urbanist Podcast. You can hear us Thursdays on KVRU, which is 105.7 FM on your radio dial in the Seattle area.

[00:56:00] 

The post Urbanist Podcast: A Light Rail Opening and Police Accountability Door Closing first appeared on The Urbanist.

Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Eddie Lin, and Rob Saka voted against the new SPOG contract, citing lack of progress on key police accountability issues. Rinck flagged continued obstacles to deploying civilian crisis responders. 

“The badge earns trust not from its shine, but from the conduct behind it,” Saka said. “The proposed SPOG CBA (collective bargaining agreement) is a bad deal for the City of Seattle. Accountability provisions contained in that contract are too lightweight and do not at all close the gap between what’s set forth and our accountability ordinance, our city values, and the terms and conditions and the final agreed upon contracts. For those reasons, I will be opposing and voting against this deal.” 

Both Saka and Lin referenced personal past experiences with police brutality.

“It’s important to recognize that the grief and the anger and the frustration that led to the nationwide protests in 2020, those are just as real today as they were then,” Lin said. “We have never addressed the root causes, the generational trauma that was inflicted upon our communities. It continues to be inflicted upon too many. And you know, we can’t just sweep it under the rug. We can’t just ignore it or move past it, although many people would like to, because it is a festering wound that will continue to impact our communities, continue to impact our ability to provide true public safety.”

Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth voted in favor of the contract, in spite of saying on the campaign trail in 2023 that she would oppose a SPOG contract that didn’t grant subpoena power to the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and didn’t remove limitations on how many OPA investigators are allowed to be civilian versus sworn. The new SPOG contract doesn’t achieve either of these goals. 

Councilmembers voted unanimously in favor of the less contentious Seattle Police Management Association’s (SPMA) new contract. Both police guild contracts cover the term from 2024 to the end of 2027. SPOG represents the rank-and-file of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), while SPMA represents SPD’s lieutenants and captains, a much smaller number of employees. 

The mayor’s office takes the lead role in negotiating the contract with SPOG leaders, but the City’s Labor Relations Policy Committee (LRPC) plays a key role in the bargaining process, and consists of five city councilmembers. By design, this composes a majority when it comes time for the council to vote on the contract. Should any of those five councilmembers vote against a contract approved by the LRPC, SPOG could choose to file an unfair labor practice, saying the City didn’t bargain in good faith. 

However, some police accountability and civilian alternative response advocates, tired of waiting for reform that continues to be kicked down the road, believe such an action would be worth the legal risk. Beyond the lack of accountability wins, critics contend the contract’s generous terms will strain the City budget and siphon resources from other programs that contribute to safety and wellbeing. 

The SPOG contract raises the starting base salary of an SPD officer to $118,000, with a pay bump to $126,000 after six months. This base doesn’t include overtime, special event bonuses, or the newly negotiated premiums for language fluency and education. 

The negotiated raises, bonuses, and special incentive pay are not tied to accountability standards. Officers with a colorful misconduct record – or, in the case of backpay, even officers who have been terminated – will receive the same negotiated benefits.

Council’s central staff estimates that the contract will cost the City an additional $131.7 million during its term. Financial planning reserves will cover the additional costs through 2026, leaving $43.6 million in extra 2027 spending unaccounted for. Any net new officer hires in 2027 would also require SPD’s budget to grow. 

Outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell made the completion of bargaining for this SPOG contract a priority before the end of his first term. Its passage now, however, a few short weeks before he leaves office, means that Mayor-elect Katie Wilson, along with new Councilmember-elect Dionne Foster and City Attorney-elect Erika Evans, won’t have as meaningful a chance to influence police accountability and alternative response, both important issues in Seattle. 

Accountability in the contract

Police accountability didn’t used to be included in police guild contracts, which typically cover wages and working conditions. Moving accountability issues to the bargaining table has drastically reduced their transparency to the public; accountability measures are now enshrined in difficult-to-understand legalese in labor contracts and require confidentiality during the bargaining process, meaning the public doesn’t know what’s happening until a full contract is presented and inevitably framed as a fait accompli. 

In turn, this shift to bargaining away accountability has contributed to reduced public trust in police departments, as well as local government overall. 

Seattle’s landmark accountability ordinance, passed in 2017, was meant to enshrine a basic level of police accountability, a minimum floor that advocates and community groups intended to build upon and improve in subsequent years. While some aspects of the ordinance needed to be bargained with SPMA and SPOG, that bargaining was intended to happen quickly to allow further progress. 

However, a new SPOG contract passed in 2018, negotiated by the office of then-Mayor Jenny Durkan, broke that promise and failed to bargain key aspects of the ordinance, which remain unrealized to this day. As a result, the City has been unable to enact basic police accountability measures, and the conversation has remained essentially frozen for the last several years. 

This inability to make accountability progress was a major inspiration for the movement seeking to divert police funding to other programs, which caught fire in 2020 protests reacting to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police. The defund movement unsuccessfully pushed to cut SPD funding by 50% in 2020 — instead SPD funding has grown — outpacing growth rates at most other departments. Seeing the continued power of SPOG to block commonsense accountability measures while SPD responded violently to protests against police brutality highlighted the systemic issues with policing and the failure of earlier reform efforts. 

The newly passed SPOG contract continues the status quo, with the accountability ordinance remaining unfulfilled. 

A small gain in the contract that allows longer retention of OPA misconduct files regardless of outcome of the investigation is the result of needing to be in compliance with a state law passed in 2021. The clarification of the 180-day investigation clock modifies a system that some experts have recommended against in its entirety. OPA’s civilian investigators may now assist in serious misconduct cases that might end in termination, but they can’t be the sole lead on such a case. These changes are incremental at best. 

On the other hand, SPD will now be allowed to deal with “less than serious” misconduct cases in house instead of referring them to the OPA, in a move SPD leadership has been requesting for years. While this change could potentially free the OPA to spend more time on serious cases while building the leadership skills of SPD officers, the implementation of the system will be key. Removing the OPA entirely from the system and relying solely on the OIG for any review, as the contract states, could lead to problems, as in-house discipline still needs to be consistent, timely, and fair. 

The City and SPOG will be entering interest arbitration to determine several issues around arbitration used to appeal disciplinary decisions around officer misconduct. That being said, information about the issues being arbitrated provided by Mayor Harrell’s Chief of Staff Andrew Myerberg indicates that while the changes sought by the City would be an improvement, they would still fall short of the 2017 accountability ordinance, which requires disciplinary appeals to go through a public hearing in front of the Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC).

The interest arbitration process could take several months to complete.

The CARE team

Supporters of the contract have been citing its new provisions for the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) team that provides alternative civilianized response to behavioral health-related calls that don’t require a police response. The contract makes the CARE team permanent and allows it to expand at will.

The contract also allows the CARE team to be “solo dispatched” directly from 911 without police co-response. However, the contract also imposes so many restrictions on when solo dispatch is possible as to serve as a serious impediment to the team actually being able to do their jobs. 

For example, the CARE team is not allowed to go by themselves to help anyone in a private residence or business, a car, or a homeless encampment. They also aren’t allowed to respond alone if there is any chance a crime has taken place such as public drug use or possession or if expected drug paraphernalia is present, which includes aluminum foil. 

All these restrictions prevent the independence of Seattle’s 911 dispatch to determine which responder should go to which calls. CARE Chief Amy Barden has repeatedly explained that dispatch independence is required to make 911 call response times faster. 

Earlier this year, the City championed a bill at the Washington State Legislature, sponsored by Rep. Shaun Scott (D-43, Seattle) that would have provided the right for the City to establish an alternative response team that wouldn’t need to be bargained with law enforcement personnel. SPD’s Dan Nelson, who at the time was an assistant chief, testified before the House committee. 

“Alternative responses to non-criminal 911 calls is crucial for ensuring that individuals in crisis receive the most appropriate care while allowing law enforcement to focus on serious public safety concerns,” Nelson said at the hearing. “We have proven that the rank and file appreciate the service, and they leverage the service.” 

In early March, SPOG’s President Mike Solan released an episode of the police guild’s podcast that featured doctored photos of Mayor Bruce Harrell, Scott, and Nelson dressed in colorful clown wigs, condemning the bill in question.

Several months later, in mid-September, a post on SPOG’s X social media account announced Nelson’s demotion from assistant chief to captain with the caption FAFO (eff around and find out). The post appeared to take credit for Nelson’s demotion as a retaliatory response after he supported the bill that would ensure the smooth operation of alternative response. 

Options moving forward

In addition to continuing to push important accountability issues into interest arbitration, many elected officials have highlighted the importance of a state-level fix that would remove police accountability issues from the collective bargaining process entirely. 

A bill that would have achieved that goal was introduced in the state legislature in 2021 and again in 2022. However, it faced stiff opposition from organized labor, who worried that even narrowly targeted changes to collective bargaining could represent a slippery slope for labor rights in the state.

“Our system is fundamentally broken,” Saka said. “Our state law keeps it broken. It is past time to address this root cause. Washington’s system is built to produce weak oversight. State law prevents cities like ours from unilaterally strengthening police disciplinary rules. That means anything and everything tied to misconduct must be specifically negotiated, bargained for, and agreed to by both parties. Under current state law, even police misconduct matters are considered routine or standard, quote unquote, terms […] and conditions of employment.”

Saka went on to explain why police misconduct in particular shouldn’t be considered standard or similar to other collective bargaining rights.

 “Police officers carry the state’s authority to use deadly force… Nothing about this solemn authority is routine or standard,” Saka said. “This authority to use force and potentially take a life requires a stronger set of oversight, not oversight designed to collapse during negotiations. The legislature must act. The legislature must change this law now so discipline and misconduct rules cannot be bargained away. Without that change, Seattle will continue to face contracts that undermine our values. Lives are literally dependent on it.”

Barring a state law change, another possible recourse is to change the City Charter mandating the existence of SPD so it can be disbanded, as was done in 2012 in Camden, New Jersey. In Camden, the city opted to build a new department from scratch. 

During his Seattle City Attorney campaign earlier this year, Rory O’Sullivan suggested something similar: that Seattle move to disband its police department and instead contract its policing services from the King County Sheriff’s Office.

“The point that I was trying to make during the campaign was […] that SPOG has created a whole bunch of roadblocks, and, I believe in a number of instances, hasn’t really negotiated in good faith,” O’Sullivan told The Urbanist. “And so the City should be prepared to keep all options on the table. And one of those options is marshaling a charter initiative to change the charter to allow the City to contract with the county as a bargaining piece to hopefully give the City a better opportunity to hold SPOG accountable.”

Aside from the two larger possibilities outlined above, Wilson will have to get creative in finding ways to move police accountability and alternative response forward during her first term. Since the new contract runs until the end of 2027, SPOG will have the option of stalling and working without a contract for two years in an attempt to avoid having to bargain with Wilson, should she fail to win a second term. 

Chief Barden of CARE already has a lot of ideas of how to deploy her team of alternative responders. While she’s hoping SPD will be willing to refer appropriate 911 calls to the CARE team, she’s also setting up arrangements with the King County Jail and local hospitals to be able to receive direct CARE response. The CARE team could also potentially be dispatched through 988, which isn’t a body of work SPOG can attempt to claim. 

Plus, the CARE team can continue its proactive patrols in areas where crisis calls are common.

In addition, Wilson can find ways to encourage better accountability directly through SPD and the accountability agencies, focusing on issues that don’t have to be bargained. For example, SPD’s promotion process could be reformed, requiring consultation with a candidate’s supervisor and review of their misconduct record instead of relying solely on test scores. The department’s backgrounding process that resulted in the disastrous hire of former Officer Kevin Dave could potentially be reviewed and changed.

Wilson could encourage more enthusiastic support for the CARE team from current SPD Chief Shon Barnes, whose services she just announced she will be retaining. Wilson will have the opportunity to decide who should serve as the director of the OPA, as the current director Bonnie Glenn only serves until the end of 2026. 

In a written interview with The Urbanist last month, Wilson underlined her commitment to transparency, which has often been lacking around issues related to SPD. 

“I want people to see a city government that’s transparent about what we’re doing, what’s working, and what challenges we’re facing,” Wilson said. “That’s how we rebuild trust so we can make real progress.”

However, undoing the damage from another SPOG contract that falls short will be an uphill battle, and it could take a long time. Harrell signed the new contract on Thursday, three weeks before his term ends.

The post Seattle Approves Controversial Police Guild Contract, Three Councilmembers Dissent first appeared on The Urbanist.