Hello, I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
It's an unsettled time for Seattle politics.
After a fatal shooting at Seattle Center and
a serious breakdown in emergency communication,
Mayor Katie Wilson requested and received the resignation
of Police Chief Shon Barnes.
City Council members and many others have been critical
of the Mayor's decision.
So what sort of confidence does the council have in her
leadership going forward?
I'm with City Council President Joy Hollingsworth and
Council Member Maritza Rivera to discuss this issue and the
questions you're sending in too, next on City Inside
Out, Council Edition.
And I think every single gun violence issue in our city
deserves this type of response, this type of energy,
these type of resources.
We're not big fans of surveillance.
I wish we didn't need it.
But the fact is, when crime happens, they
do help solve crime.
All that and more coming up next on City Inside
Out, Council Edition.
Thanks again for joining us on City Inside Out Council Edition
here on the Seattle Channel.
Brian Callanan here with you and here with me.
I'm very glad to have Councilmember Maritza Rivera,
who represents District 4 in Northeast Seattle,
from Ravenna through to the U District up to Windermere.
Very much appreciate you taking the time.
Thank you, Brian, for having me here.
Also with us is Council President Joy Hollingsworth,
who also represents District 3 from Eastlake down
to the Central District.
Thank you for being here, too.
Thank you for having me.
Let's jump into it.
And, Council President Hollingsworth, I want to
talk to you first about the council's relationship
with the mayor right now, following her decision to ask
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes to resign after the shooting
at Bite of Seattle last month.
As the news about the resignation was announced a few
weeks ago, you told KOMO News, I believe this decision to ask
a police chief to resign or to let him go is irresponsible,
and it's a tad bit reckless, and it puts us in a very
difficult position as a city.
We are recording this program soon after the news came out
that two Seattle residents have actually filed a recall
petition against the mayor.
I just want to put this in perspective here.
A judge is reviewing that to see if it'll go forward.
I feel like I need to ask you directly.
Do you think the mayor should step down?
Is that where we are right now?
No, the recall, that's none of my business.
That will be handled in the courts.
I'm focused and I know my colleagues are focused on the
continuing improvement of the relationship with the council
and the mayor's office to make sure that we can run the city
well people want to know that their government is working from
from the executive branch the Legislative branch and so that's
what we're committed to making sure that that communication
is tight that we're working together on issues to solve for
the community. -- Got it
Councilmember Rivera. You're a member of the Public Safety Committee
and I know you take that role very seriously.
I know that you and many other council members
were very supportive of now former Chief Barnes.
You put out a press release as the reports were starting
to come in about the resignation.
Mayor Wilson's lack of experience and her incompetence
have led to poor decision-making and put the safety of
our communities at risk.
I wanted to talk about this.
Is the mayor's decision-making enough of a safety risk
in your mind that she needs to step down?
I just want to make sure I asked you the same question too.
Yeah, no, I agree with Council President.
That is not, you know, for me to say.
I'm focused on making sure that we're building relationship with
the mayor's office in the same way I've been doing all along,
actually, since she got started.
Her success is our collective success as a city.
And so I'm going to continue to do my part.
That's what my constituents want me to do is to stay focused
on the issues and to build that relationship with the
mayor's office because we all succeed if we work together.
Has something changed in between?
It feels like a long time ago now, but just a few
weeks ago when the shooting happened to now to restore
some of your confidence in working with the mayor.
Can you talk to me about that?
Well, nothing has changed for me.
And as far as since this new administration came on board,
the job is to work together.
and I take that really seriously.
So for me, I'm gonna continue, like I said earlier,
to work with her.
I have seen her since and we've chatted
and I've chatted with some members of her staff,
including her deputy mayor and the director
of public safety, and I'm gonna continue to do so.
That's the job.
Like I said, I take it seriously and we need to to
address the issues of our mutual constituents.
- Thank you.
Council President, some thoughts about
what was happening then and what you were thinking then
and where we are now in terms of that relationship.
Is it changing?
Is it growing?
What's going on?
Yeah, I think the comments that people made last week
were about actions that were made at that point in time.
I don't want to conflate that with, like, what does
the relationship look like?
I still stand behind my comments regarding those actions.
But we also know that we have a new interim police chief
with police chief Sayles.
And we're going to support his success because his success
is the community's success.
It's Seattle success, and that's what we're focused on.
All the other noise that is happening I think really has
taken away from the shooters that are still out there.
And then also, too, not only that, are the shooters
that the unsolved mysteries, Conner Dassa-Holland, Amarr
Murphy-Paine, the other shooters that are out
there that we don't know, that we still want the
police chief and the police department to solve as well.
I got a question about that coming up in a little bit, but I
do want to shift to this police response, if I could, following
the shooting on July 26th.
I want to begin with this active investigation
that's going on right now.
So the council had a briefing about this here in mid-August,
just a couple days before we recorded this show, and
heard about the many officers who ran towards the gunfire.
They assessed the scene there.
They provided medical aid on the scene to the
shooting victims there, too.
Three people were killed, four were injured,
including a two-year-old.
There are still apparently a suspect or suspects that the
SPD is trying to track down, but there are a lot of
challenges involved with that.
Here's how Interim Chief Andre Sayles responded to a question
from Councilmember Saka about the need for
transparency from Seattle Police when it comes to
finding one or more suspects.
I'm trying to be as transparent as possible without losing the
integrity of the investigation.
as much as I want to give all the information that we have at
the same time that we have to understand that when the
information is put out there and it either going
to help us that suspect person of interest may get
that information because let's face it they do watch the news
because they have to be ahead of what we're doing
it gives them an opportunity to leave this area
council member Rivera you were at that meeting
were you satisfied with the chief's answer there
for one.
And is there any information you have on
potential suspects in this case?
Where are we here?
I don't have information about potential suspects.
I actually missed that particular meeting,
but I did watch it.
Some of the heroic efforts of both SPD and
our fire department were missed as part of the post incident
lack of communication between, you know, that
was coming out of the Mayor's office the lack of
information and the lack of timely information.
But I want to uplift the fact that SPD and Fire did a great
job responding, and we've heard that from many of our
constituents, and I don't want that to get lost in this
particular case.
And as far as I don't have more information than anyone else
about suspects, but I trust that SPD is doing
the investigations.
I do think that, you know, we should be looking, and I'm going
to bring up the opportunity to talk about cameras,
because I think those would be very helpful as
you're investigating crime.
It doesn't help deter crime, but it does help
investigate crime in my mind.
Do you have concerns about that transparency part, though?
I know Councilmember Saka was trying to get at that.
I know a lot of people are frustrated.
Wait, wait, is there one suspect?
Is there two?
And that kind of a thing.
Some thoughts about that?
Yeah, we should have as much information as we can get.
I am not a police officer or investigator, so I
don't know exactly how these investigations go.
But I think, Brian, overall the issue was that an incident
happened and the public had to wait many hours before
any information was shared.
So I do support transparency.
I wish we had had more timely information, even if it
was just to say right away, we don't have a lot of
information, but this is what we do have.
And that did not happen.
And I'm going to dive a little more into information and
how it was released or not released in just a
little bit.
But Council President Hollingsworth,
I want to talk about the response to the shooting
because you touched on something that we actually
got a message about.
Omari Salisbury of Converge Media brought this up on social
media recently.
The city council wants to know if there
is a killer on the loose from the Seattle
Center shooting, that is a good question.
However, we know there is a killer on the loose
from the murder of Amarr Murphy-Paine, Conner
Dassa-Holland, Tyrone Love and so many more,
hoping that the city government keeps the
same energy to bring justice to so many
families who lost loved ones in the Emerald City.
How do you respond to that?
You were touching on this earlier.
Absolutely. We've heard that before
when we had a press conference with - about Aurora
girls and people said, hey, this is great that
we're paying attention to Aurora and the gunfire,
but what about Southeast Seattle?
And we talked about how Southeast Seattle,
these stats that I'm I'm always talking about
13% of the population, but 30% of the gun violence
that is in our city and putting extra
attention there.
And these are things that come up
when people see the city react like this
and understanding and wanting to know,
well, how come we didn't react to this
with a murder in South Seattle or the two young kids that
were killed in Rainier Beach?
These are things that people are always asking about.
And I think every single gun violence issue in our city
deserves this type of response, this type of energy, these type
of resources, and this type of concern and sense of urgency.
It's unacceptable any time that happens in our city.
It feels like a good time maybe to start talking about
the work the council wants to do to prevent gun violence.
And, Council President, let me start with you here.
You recently sponsored an amendment to the city's
mid-year supplemental budget to reallocate $250,000 in
unused funding from the SPD's Real-Time Crime Center
to go towards violence interruption ambassadors.
This funding is unused because the mayor's put this pause
on deploying closed-circuit TV cameras on Capitol Hill.
This was a contentious decision, I know, for the
council going back and forth and talking about this.
Can you tell us why you made this move and what impact
you think these violence interrupters will have?
Yeah, so it's been known I've supported cameras in our city
throughout different areas.
We have them in three big hotspots downtown.
We have them in CID and then up north in Aurora.
We wanted to expand them.
They went in SODO.
The program was paused for Capitol Hill and
Central District where we heard from residents
and people on both sides.
OK, so this is very contentious.
Fast forward, those were not installed.
And so now we're getting towards the end of the year and made
a decision after two major gun violence pieces that have
happened in Capitol Hill to say, you know what, we need
eyes on the ground right now.
And so made the decision to take money because I don't
know if we're going to turn them on, turn them off.
We've seen that happen with SODO.
We turned them on for guests.
We turned them off for residents.
Now we're at a point where people are wanting
folks on the ground.
I thank Councilmember Rivera and my other colleagues who voted
in support of this because they know how important this is.
And I have to deal with this every day.
I have to deal with the gun violence victims, the folks
that are losing folks, the businesses that are getting
bullet holes shot through them, the folks that are
terrorized, you know, that are experiencing this all the time.
And also, too, Brian, the fallout with, you
know, some people can go home and go to sleep.
But there are some folks like us that are so connected to the
community that have to deal with the mom that lost her husband.
And now she's about to lose her home and she needs help.
So she's asking for resources.
The friend that's jumping on sofa to sofa because
she lost her partner, right, from gun violence.
This is the this is the this is the impact that it's having.
This isn't this is beyond policy.
This is real life every single day.
And if I know I can do one thing with that vote to put people
on the ground, I would do that vote over and over again.
Yeah. And can you tell me what violence interrupters
are and what they're going to actually be doing?
Yeah, there are people on the ground that de-escalate
situations before they arise.
Not police.
These are different.
No, these are folks that are going to be out at night.
So what I've heard from community on Capitol Hill
and Central District, they want people at night.
They want folks engaging with people before stuff happens.
They want to make sure that things are safe
around in the community.
We had the Torchlight Parade last year.
We had gun-violent prevention folks on the ground preventing
fights before they happened.
We had them at Umoja Fest.
People were there preventing stuff.
We also had SPD there, you know, people were getting in
fights. There were no guns, but it was like, you know
We're creating a sense of calmness and safety for
people and that's what we want on Capitol Hill.
We want proactiveness Got it and councilmember
Rivera. I wanted to talk about this when it comes to these
closed-circuit TV cameras You've just talked about
it. You're a big fan.
And I know that the council
president is too with this vote Well, yeah, you support
it. You support it.
Maybe that's a better way to put it
I guess, though, when people were looking at this vote,
they're like, wait, you're taking money away from
closed-circuit TV cameras.
And I want you to help try to parse this out because this
was a difficult thing for some people to understand.
So the mid-year supplemental is supposed to be where we
look at for the budget for that year and any adjustments
that we need to make.
It's not really meant to take up whole new bodies of work.
I support a council president's add because I know, and I
have prior experience at the City of Seattle, including in
the budget space, that at this time of the year, between now
and the end of the year, to be able to utilize all that funding
for the cameras, given what council president said earlier,
the fact that they're not being installed or turned on,
it's unlikely we're going to spend that money through
the end of the year.
And because I know that residents on Capitol
Hill, because I know folks on Capitol Hill, too,
our friends on Capitol Hill, need response
with safety issues, then to me it was prudent to
use a small amount of the CCTV money that I know we don't have
the ability to use by the end of the year for this purpose.
It was still to help in crime prevention.
We all support, we're not big fans of surveillance.
I wish we didn't need it.
But the fact is when crime happens, they
do help solve crime.
So I am in support of it, and I do want to continue that.
I want those cameras in SODO turned on.
I want the cameras on Capitol Hill installed
and being utilized.
It does help.
Even Seattle Center, I don't know how many cameras
are at the Seattle Center.
No one has answered that question.
And, you know, in terms of doing investigations,
do we have, you know, is there footage of what
happened that will help us solve that crime?
They do serve a purpose, and we need to be honest about that.
No one would want to use them, but here we are.
And they do help in crime investigations.
I didn't mean to cut you off there,
but I did want to talk about a proposal that you've
been really working on when it comes to
preventing gun violence.
This National Network of Safe Communities,
you hosted a symposium about NNSC,
as it's called here, a few months ago.
What is this program?
What could it do for Seattle?
I am hoping it will do what it's done
for other cities around the country,
including Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia,
South Bend, Indiana.
It is an approach out of John Jay College
in New York City, evidence-based approach
that's had 40 to 60% gun violence reduction
in those cities that I mentioned.
And we did have folks from Baltimore
and Philadelphia here as well as South Bend
to talk to us about how they implemented that effort here.
That effort is a carrot and a stick approach, if you will.
It is a focused deterrence approach.
That's what it is.
It's something that they created, and so they go and they
work with cities on the ground.
They don't bring people to Seattle to help do the work.
We have to do the work.
It is a concept.
There's a three-legged stool.
It's law enforcement working with community and working
with moral voices, what they call moral voices, to identify
those folks in every city, whether it's here or anywhere
else, any other city, excuse me, there's a small, very small
percentage of the population engaged with gun violence.
So it's identifying those folks and focusing our efforts
on getting those folks to stop engaging in gun violence.
If they need services, then we provide those services for them.
But if they don't accept services and continue to engage
in behavior, then there's going to be a consequence.
The accountability piece is what is part of
this approach as well.
And it's not something that we're honestly
doing here in Seattle.
So my effort is to, you know, the symposium was to
intro what it would be like to work with the National
Network for Safe Communities.
Everyone was at the table there from my council
president was there.
Not all the colleagues could be there because of OPMA
issues, but the mayor's office was there, the city
attorney, the prosecuting attorney, public health, the
community-based organizations.
Everyone was there at the table and it will take
all of us who were at the table and even the folks
that weren't yet there to work together to
institute this effort here in Seattle and I hope
we will do it and it is my intent to bring a
resolution saying that we are going to partner
with NNSC to bring that effort here.
I too want to see the 40 and 60 - to
60 percent gun violence reduction here in the city that
they're seeing in our city that they're seeing in other cities.
It's worth us looking at.
We have all the tools in the toolbox.
We need all the tools.
It is all important.
The violence interrupters are important.
SPD is important.
And all the partners that we
talked about are important.
You can't just do one approach.
And this approach is worth looking at
and not just looking at implementing here because
it's had such success.
Thank you.
Looking forward to hearing more about
that. I do want to head back to the aftermath of
the Bite of Seattle shooting and talk about this
communication breakdown that happened in the hours
following it.
There was this delay of nearly
five hours before police released any update on the
shooting, even with an apparent shooter or maybe shooters still
at large.
The mayor made one announcement about two and
a half hours after the shooting with some erroneous
information about who who was in custody here.
The Seattle Times actually reported that the mayor
was in touch with former Chief Gil Kerlikowske
to investigate what happened, but he apparently backed out.
Council President Hollingsworth, I'm trying to figure
out who's in charge of investigating
this, what's going on?
- So I know that there's been an investigation
with our OIG office.
- Office of the Inspector General.
- Thank you, I know I speak in government terms.
- Happens all the time.
- Where I'm doing all these OIG, DEA, FBI.
Okay, so that is happening.
And here's the thing, Brian, that I think is important.
So there was just a shooting where an officer was
shot at in South Seattle.
There were three people involved, and other
folks got injured.
And there was communication from our police department
shortly thereafter put out so people could
understand what's going on.
So I know that there are systems in place to be able
to get information out.
I can't tell you why there was a delay.
That is not for me to answer.
I know that the people will do their investigation
piece and we'll get those reports and we'll
get that information.
I know the media will do their thing with
investigating, getting emails and text messages.
That's there.
But I want to bring it back to we still want to
have safe communities.
And there are still people that shot people and killed
folks within our community that I want to focus on.
And then also supporting our new chief.
So while that is going to take care of itself, finding
out the five hour delay while people were, you know,
hunkering down in place, they were in the armory, they were
hiding, people were terrified.
Those answers will happen when they do.
And we can focus as council members on the safety
of our community moving forward.
Got it.
Council Member Rivera, some thoughts
about this, please.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just want to say, you know, at the end of the day,
the buck stops with the mayor.
So I will say the mayor is the boss of all the city
departments, including SPD.
The mayor is the operations chief of the city.
And so the buck does stop with the mayor, and it was
my expectation that during such an incident, we would
have heard from the mayor sooner rather than later.
Even if just to say this is what we know so far,
and we don't have a lot of details, but more to come.
And you can do multiple press conferences as
the situation unfolds.
I also wanted to hear, you know, I worked in a prior
mayoral administration.
So did the Emergency Operations Center get, you know, called?
Operationalized, yeah.
Operationalized. Thank you, Brian, because that
is critical in this type of an incident where you have
multiple folks that were shot.
You know, this was a mass shooting.
So to me, that seems like the EOC should have been
activated because that also keeps all the city
departments on the same page with the information
and with having an action too.
If you have to do something that will get
disclosed as part of that activation.
I hear what you're saying with regard
to the buck stops with the mayor, but in terms of
of the Seattle Police Department, what sort
of accountability do you lay with the SPD?
Because they were in charge of that investigation, and they
did not put out information, as they sometimes do in
these different events.
What are your thoughts about that?
What role did the SPD play in this communication breakdown?
And that remains to be seen, and that's part of
the investigation for OIG.
It seems we, you know, at the public safety meeting yesterday,
there weren't answers about, you know, who was on deck first,
who had the information first, who shared the information
first, who shared what.
And then subsequently, we also saw in the news that the public
information officer for SPD said that they had, you know,
wanted to do something sooner, and then it wasn't done sooner.
So there's a lot of missing information here.
It was a little disappointing not to see the mayor's office
at that public safety meeting not give more information,
preliminary information before the OIG information
on what happened.
I mean, I remember post the riots, the Durkan administration
appearing before council and having to do the same thing.
So, you know, anyway, but as council president said with
the OIG investigation, it should disclose a lot of the
information, lack of information that day and what went wrong.
So we don't repeat it in the future because we're here
today and we also have to work together to make sure we -
things are different for the future.
Things are done better.
Brian, we just want transparency, honesty,
no political, just transparency and honesty
and straightforwardness.
That's it.
Are you confident you can get an independent review
from the OIG, which is a part of a city department?
Does it need to be somebody external?
I know that's part of the consideration here, too.
Those are discussions going on right now.
Is it the OIG?
That implies that there was a problem with SPD.
You do it independently, then it's like, hey, we're looking
at it as a whole with the city, right?
From city council, mayor's office, SPD,
city departments, Seattle Center, that's up for
discussion right now.
But I think what's important,
people just want the facts.
They want the information.
They want the people arrested that
did this at the Seattle Center.
So they want to hold people accountable.
And people want to make sure that if this happens
again, and this is the the most important piece,
if this happens again, that we as a city can
respond effectively and they can trust us.
Trust is a big thing in this.
And they want to know that we can react quickly,
just like those officers did when they rescued the
two-year-old who got shot, right?
The two-year-old was laying up in the
hospital and the people that died, they know that
the fire department's going going to run towards whatever
they need to to make sure that people are on the
EMT onto the hospital.
They know that they'll have timely information.
So if they're hiding in the armory, they can say,
hey, the scene has been secured.
We can be able to exit safely and not wonder what's going on.
They need to know the city knows how to respond
to these things.
That's the most important piece.
That's why I said earlier, Brian, that it was
really important not to lose in terms of the
the lack of transparency in communication and how best
we could do it in the future, not to lose sight of the fact
that the first responders were right on the scene and
they did all the right things.
And maybe we would have had even more casualties had they
not responded so quickly.
And so folks should feel confident about the
actual response and that there's work to be done
on the communication side.
But they should feel confident about the response.
That was very well handled by both SPD and Fire
on the scene on site.
Thank you for that.
Council President Hollingsworth, I want to
make sure I get this in here.
I've heard you say publicly you want the council to be a
little more involved in the search for a new chief here.
I'd like to know what kind of candidate you're looking for,
because the mayor's raised concerns about the amount
of time former Chief Barnes was out of town.
His family was living in Chicago since he
started here last year.
We received a few messages on this, including
one that said this.
PubliCola published verifiable reporting that shows Shon
Barnes was out 40% of the time.
Is that something council members think is normal
for a police chief?
If so, why?
I just want some thoughts about the time Chief
Barnes spent out of town, what you want in terms
of presence, being in Seattle for a new chief.
Yeah, I wasn't his supervisor approving travel.
or not.
I don't know what that looks like.
So I can't comment regarding that.
Every time I had asked the chief to be here
or have a meeting, he was accessible.
He was transparent.
He was honest.
He was very professional.
So don't have a problem with that piece.
I think that's really important
to talk about.
The second thing is the mayor and I know myself
and council members as well, I don't want to speak for them.
Do align on what we want for the mayor talked about some
of the things that they're looking for in a police chief.
And also ensuring, too, that we have the community
involvement as well.
That's important.
You want to have the community involvement.
This is their chief.
We are the this is the city's chief.
This is not the council's chief.
This is not the mayor's chief.
This is the city's chief, the police department.
And so that's going to be important.
When I say involvement, usually someone sits
on a search committee.
The council's involved, we're engaged in that process
because at the end of the day, we also have to confirm
that person and we have to vote on them and meet
with them and make sure that they're the right
person for the job.
And we did that with Dr. former
chief, Dr. Shon Barnes.
And so looking forward to engaging that process
for the new chief.
I've got about a minute left.
I would like your thoughts, council member Rivera
on what you're looking for in a new chief and
any other comments about about what's ahead here in terms
of this very important search.
Does it need to be someone from inside the department,
outside the department?
I know that's always a big consideration.
That is always a big consideration, Brian, and
I've been here for many chiefs at this point.
I concur with my colleague, Council President Hollingsworth.
I mean, I also want to say that my personal
experience with Chief Barnes, he was very professional,
he was responsive, he was a great partner,
And he was very focused on community policing.
And I met with Interim Chief Sayles this morning,
who I know is also focused on community policing.
I think he calls it rational-not rational-relational,
relational policing.
Which is another form of all to say that it's important
for police to be working with community members.
Getting back to community members, knowing
their chief by name and knowing that he cares about
community is really important.
So making sure that council, community, and
the mayor are partnering and part of that process
together is really important.
And it instills confidence in the process as well.
It shows our constituents that we're working together.
And I just want to say, Brian, also in terms of the
communications piece, you know, constituents want to
see us all working together.
So you will see that that's why I'm saying I'm continuing
to commit to partner with the mayor to seeing how
we can improve things.
And because that's what the role is
and that's what constituents want,
all of us working together, and I'm committed to that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you both for your time.
We will be back next time on Council Edition.
That's all the time we have for now.
See you next time.
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