Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has removed Police Chief Adrian Diaz from his position. Sue Rahr, former King County sheriff will serve as the interim chief starting Thursday. Harrell announced that Diaz would be assigned to special tasks.

A rational person may assume that the leadership change is brought on by the need to install a chief who will crack down on crime – but, alas, Seattle is not a rational city. If it were, Seattle would have never defunded the police or enforced various anti-law enforcement legislation. Rather, the leadership change follows months of internal issues and allegations of discrimination within the department against women and people of color, which Diaz has denied and are under external review.

The new Seattle Police Chief will face significant challenges, including a decline in officer numbers in the first quarter of 2024, with the total falling to 1,053 sworn officers (down from the projected 1,074). Despite recruitment efforts following years of officers leaving for greener pastures, the Seattle Police Department hired a mere 11 new officers in the first three months of 2024, a significant 66% decrease from the projected 31 hires. Meanwhile, SPD continues to rely heavily on overtime to address the officer shortage, using 24% of its overtime budget in the first quarter alone. In 2023, SPD’s overtime spending reached $39.6 million, exceeding the budgeted $31.3 million. In fact, between 2022 and 2024, SPD’s overtime budget increased by 43%, from $26.4 million to $37.7 million. And that’s just how employment is going.

Response times for priority one calls, requiring immediate action, also deteriorated, with only 44% of such calls receiving a response in under seven minutes. That’s down from 48% in the same period in 2023. The median response time for priority one calls was just under eight minutes, which exceeds SPD’s goal by an entire minute.

So, will Harrell consider all these challenges? Will he push for a roll back of anti-law enforcement policies and a new Police Chief who will crack down on crime? He should – but, in all likelihood, he probably won’t. Read more at the Center Square.

The drama continues in the Democrat vs. Democrat battle between gubernatorial candidates State Senator Mark Mullet and Attorney General Bob Ferguson. Mullet is accusing Ferguson of violating ethics laws and the state bar code by asking to rearrange the primary ballot to his advantage. Specifically, Mullet claims Ferguson abused his power by requesting Secretary of State Steve Hobbs to reorder the ballot if two other Bob Fergusons remained. So, Mullet took action. He filed complaints with the Washington State Bar Association and the state executive ethics board, alleging conflict of interest.

Ferguson’s campaign has dismissed these complaints as a desperate tactic from Mullet, who is polling poorly. But state law does specify that the order of names on the ballot be determined by lot, a process Hobbs followed. So, in fact, Ferguson’s demands that Hobbs reorder the ballot in his favor is unethical. It remains to be seen whether the Washington State Bar Association or the state executive ethics board will act on Mullet’s complaints. Read more at The Seattle Times.

Democrats are doing damage-control… and it’s not going well.

Kamala Harris? Is that you?

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