Barnes flanked by new recruits (Image: SPD)
Mayor-elect Katie Wilson has opted for continuity and announced she will retain the Harrell administration’s cadre of first responder and emergency department leaders including Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes.
“They are each committing to lead their departments in accordance with my vision of community safety,” Wilson said in her statement. “With active partnership and direction from the Mayor’s office, I believe these leaders can work together and form a unified team committed to strengthening coordination, reform, accountability, and results.”
In the announcement, Wilson said she will retain Barnes, Seattle Fire Department Chief Harold Scoggins, Office of Emergency Management director Curry Mayer, and CARE Chief Amy Barden.
Criticized during her campaign for her support for police defunding principles, Wilson has said she will grow efforts to civilianize more of the work currently saddling the Seattle Police Department, expand alternative responses like the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department crisis responders, and fix the city’s “broken” police accountability system.
CARE is already lined up to grow. The city’s new agreement with the police union approved this week by the city council lifts lifts the cap on CARE Department hiring and opens the door for the city to grow the new team of crisis responders to its budgeted capacity, growing to 96 responders in the department’s first 18 months. Under the new contract, Barden has said she will begin “solo dispatch” of the new crisis responders, meaning Barden’s teams can be sent to appropriate “low acuity” 911 calls without a Seattle Police Department officer to accompany them.
The retention of Barnes might have been the longest reach for Wilson.
During the campaign, Wilson criticized Mayor Bruce Harrell and his new chief for not including more of the city’s departments and leadership in its approach to important and long-running challenges like gun violence, pointing at more inclusive approaches that have been successful in other cities like Baltimore and Milwaukee.
Wilson has championed efforts like the city’s CAREA crisis responders and said she would clear the ways CARE has been “systematically undermined” by SPD.
Barnes has also not exactly helped his case with incidents like the bumbled promotion of a new commander in the East Precinct, May’s policing debacle around the anti-trans Christian rally that led to a police crackdown on counter-protesters in Cal Anderson Park, Barnes’s continued deployment of “directed patrols” as part of abatement efforts at the Denny Blaine Park nude beach, and the chief’s rejected push to station a police officer inside Garfield High School.
But the former Madison, Wisconsin chief — hired to lead SPD as it operates without federal oversight for the first time in more than a decade — represents organizational stability after the troubled leadership of dismissed chief Adrian Diaz. Barnes has overseen progress in what officials say is a reversal of SPD’s hiring challenges and a department on track for growing its ranks from just under 1,000 officers on patrol in 2022 to nearly 1,500 by 2027.
“My administration will work with Chief Barnes to make SPD a place where professionalism, integrity, compassion, and community partnership are at the center of every action. We will strive for a workplace culture where employees are valued and empowered. Promotions will be rooted in performance, integrity, and good judgment, and every SPD employee will be encouraged to share concerns, experiences, and good-faith feedback with leadership,” Wilson’s statement reads. “I am committed to retaining and recruiting officers who represent the diversity and values of Seattle, and to building trust between SPD and communities across the city.”
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