[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – MTN After almost two years of radio silence on the Breonna Taylor case, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced four Louisville Metro police officers involved in the fatal 2020 no-knock warrant raid on Taylor’s apartment had been charged with violating her civil rights. The four officers charged were Detective Joshua Jaynes, Detective Kelly Goodlett, Sargent Kyle Meany, and Brett Hankinson.
Attorney General Garland said the Department of Justice alleges that the civil rights violations “resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death.” Late on Friday, detective Goodlett announced through their attorney they would be entering a guilty plea on one count of falsifying an affidavit.
The federal charges allege that members of the Place-Based Investigations unit falsified an affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. Taylor’s home,” Garland also mentioned that the search warrant was sought after, despite officers knowing they lacked probable cause for the search. The investigation into the conduct of the officers found Jaynes and Goodlett falsely claimed officers verified the target of the warrant had received packages with drugs at Taylor’s address.
Detective Goodlett, who was is a member of the Louisville police unit that investigated drug trafficking, and Meany, who supervised the unit, were charged with falsifying an affidavit. Detective Jaynes procured the warrant used in the search of 26-year-old Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020. Jaynes and Goodlett are accused of misleading FBI investigators who were looking into the deadly shooting. Former officer Hankison was charged with using excessive force while executing the search warrant in question in a separate indictment.
According to a statement given by Louisville police, Hankison was terminated from the department in June of 2020, and Jaynes was terminated in January 2021. The department also commented that they were looking to terminate Goodlett and Meany. A Louisville Police spokesperson announced on Thursday, “Today Chief Erika Shields began termination of Sgt. Kyle Meany and Officer Kelly Goodlett. While we must refer all questions about this federal investigation to the FBI, it is critical that any illegal or inappropriate actions by law enforcement be addressed comprehensively in order to continue our efforts to build police-community trust.”
Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump gave a statement after the press conference, saying it has been a difficult two years since Taylor’s death. “Today was a huge step toward justice. We are grateful for the diligence and dedication of the FBI and the DOJ as they investigated what led to Breonna’s murder and what transpired afterward,” said Crump.
During the fatal early morning raid, officers opened fire, killing Taylor after her boyfriend, who believed an intruder was trying to break in, fired a gun at the door. Attorney General Garland reaffirmed that Taylor’s boyfriend had legally obtained the gun. After he fired and struck an officer, two officers proceeded to fire 22 shots into the apartment, one of which was the fatal blow that struck Taylor in the chest.”
The raid was meant to target Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, a convicted drug dealer who was not at the apartment. According to Glover, Taylor had no involvement in the drug trade. Garland clarified that the officers directly involved in the raid were unaware of the falsified statements in the search warrant affidavit.
Garland further clarified that Hankison was the sole officer charged with excessive use of force because after Taylor was shot, he moved from a doorway and fired 10 additional shots into a window and a sliding glass door that was covered with curtains. Hankinson was previously charged with endangering a couple and their 5-year-old son in a neighboring apartment on the night of the raid when. He was found not guilty on all accounts in March.
While Breonna Taylor’s death was a horrible tragedy and a prime example of the gaps in the U.S. law enforcement and justice systems, the officers involved will have to answer for their actions in federal court. “There are still so many families who are fighting and praying for justice and accountability in situations where their loved ones were wrongfully killed by the police.” Crump stated, “We need to stand with them, pray with them, and do whatever is possible for them.”
[WASHINGTON] – (MTN) – Michael Scott Langton, 46, a veteran officer with the Ferndale, Washington, Police Department, was arrested at his Blaine home around 9 p.m. on Tuesday July 26 on a charge of Criminal Attempt, Solicitation of a Minor. The charges were upgraded on Wednesday to Attempted Child Molestation 2nd Degree.
Langton was booked into Skagit County’s jail following his arrest. Information from the jail only indicates he is being held for another agency and does not list a bail status.
Because the charge involves a minor and is sensitive, the Bellingham police will not be releasing any further details at this time according to a city press release.
According to a report in the Bellingham Herald, Bellingham Police Lt. Chad Cristelli reported that his department received a call regarding Langton on July 26 and started an investigation. Cristelli did disclose that one victim has been identified, but the investigation is ongoing.
Whatcom County asked the Bellingham police to investigate to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. However, this is not Langton’s first time being investigated.
The Alleged Oath Keepers Connection
In 2021 an anonymous hacker breached the Oath Keepers security and downloaded data, including emails, from 2020 and part of 2021. The hacker released the data to Distributed Denial of Secrets, a transparency organization, and much of the information ended up posted online.
BuzzFeed reported on the released data, and among the active military members and law enforcement employees who had sent inquiries about joining the Oath Keepers, the article cited a specific email from February 4, 2020, scarcely a week after three members of the Oath Keepers had been indicted for their part in the attempted insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2020. The email in question was from Scott Langton who identified himself as “a current Washington State Police Officer looking for information.”
The Buzzfeed article was published on October 1, 2021, and on October 4, Officer Langton was placed on paid administrative leave while the department and city investigated the incident.
Local community groups in Whatcom County, including the Riveters Collective and Connect Ferndale, advocated for transparency in the investigation. The request fell on deaf ears, and Langton was back on full duty by the end of October. The internal investigation concluded that no violation of law or department policy had taken place.
Local groups were disappointed with the outcome of the investigations into Langton, prompting Connect Ferndale and the Riveters Collective Justice System Committee to release statements calling for independent review, transparency, and policy improvement. They criticized the investigation for the inherent conflict of interest, having been performed by Langton’s colleagues, and the blatant disregard of the published department polices as relates to making contact with such groups.
Prior to the October 2021 investigation, the Riveters Collective Justice System Committee gathered information on police practices and published the data and their analysis. The project, titled Learn Why We Believe Public Safety Reform is Necessary, first appeared on their website in September of 2021. Multiple updates soon followed, and Langton turned out to be a focal point due to the statistically significant number of complaints against him.
Other Incidents Involving Officer Langton
The Riveters Collective Justice System Committee (JSC) looked at 52 complaint allegations dating from 2015 – 2020 for Ferndale Police officers employed at the time of their records request in January 2021. Their findings revealed that the department has sided with officers 94% of the time when the complaint came from a civilian. However, when a complaint started internally, 98% of allegations were either sustained or ruled founded. The name at the top of the list for most complaints was Langston’s.
From 2015 to 2021, Langton has 17 complaints on record. The officer with the next highest number has three.
Langton started with the Ferndale Police Department in August 2012, but prior to July 2021, when SB 5051 went into effect, complaint records at Ferndale PD, Bellingham PD, Blaine PD, and Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office were destroyed after six years. The earliest records available at the time dated back to 2015.
Most of the complaints against Langton alleged behavior described him as harassing, discriminatory, rude, insulting, or overly aggressive. Five complainants specifically identified the color of skin as the element that triggered Officer Langton’s behavior towards them.
Of the 17 complaints, 16 were internally investigated, and his colleagues deemed them “frivolous” or “did not occur.” The JSC report noted that at least one complaint acknowledged that Langton is known by many of the areas minorities as “the racist cop.”
Lawsuits
In February of 2020, Langton pulled over a female motorist that he alleged committed a traffic violation. Following his decision to cite her, he continued to detain her at the scene, in violation of federal law and the Fourth Amendment. The lawsuit alleged Langton purposefully delayed citing the woman for a traffic violation so he could have a police dog brought to search the woman’s car.
The case was moved out of Whatcom County Superior Court and into Federal Court in September of 2020. According to the Bellingham Herald, the case was settled out of court and dismissed on April 12.
In June of 2011, while Officer Langton worked for the city of Blaine, he was alleged to have used excessive force against a 54-year-old, legally blind man with limited mobility due to crushed vertebrae. During that encounter, which was initially a call for a verbal dispute between neighbors. Langton was alleged to have struck man, dragged him across a parking lot, and thrown him to the ground. That lawsuit was reportedly settled for $129,000.
There is some evidence that other incidents exist: A letter from 2013 references a lawsuit involving Langton and the City of Blaine. A 2011 court document described a witness report that they had to avert their eyes due to the rough treatment that Langton applied to a Blaine resident.
Partially due to previous policies around destroying records of complaints, there may be no further information available anymore, and advocacy groups think that’s part of the problem that needs to be addressed in Whatcom County.
Could Ferndale Have Intervened Before Things Went This Far?
It is unclear if Ferndale knew of Langton’s complaint history from Blaine. The Ferndale police policy does have a requirement for comprehensive screening, background investigation, and selection process, but it does recommend reviewing an officer’s complaint history.
Despite this, by October of 2021, when Langton’s email exchange with the Oath Keepers came to light, a third of all complaints against the Ferndale Police Department since 2015 were against Langston. Ferndale existing policies did not catch this outlier in their department, nor considered the significant number of complaints piling up against Langton in comparison to other officers on the force. Additionally, there is an apparent pattern of ignoring the work of community organizations and independent journalists that provided concrete evidence that Langston was violating already published internal policies.
The Present
On Tuesday, when Bellingham police arrested Langton at his home in Blaine, they contacted the Ferndale Police Department informing them of his charges. Officer Langton, who is still listed as an employee on the Ferndale Police Department website, has been placed on paid administrative leave. His annual salary is listed as $98,810 per year.
[SEATTLE] – (MTN) Malcontent News is conducting a series of interviews with 2021 Seattle mayoral candidates. We have contacted, or are in the process of contacting the most viable candidates, inviting them to answer seven prepared questions. Today we feature Jessyn Farrell.
For all candidates, the first interview will be about their platform and vision. Prior to the primary election, we will conduct a second round that will focus on differentiation, and challenging positions and visions. Once the final candidates are selected in the primary, we will invite them for one last round of interviews.
All candidates for the first round will be asked the same seven questions, and have received a copy in advance. These questions were created by our editorial board, and are aligned to topics of key interest to the residents of Seattle.
Malcontent News is committed to providing equal time for all candidates, and operating under a “fairness doctrine” for all candidates.
We are publishing a transcript of each interview. Transcripts may be lightly edited to remove, umms, ahhs, pauses, and aid in readability.
David Obelcz: What is it that has you running for mayor in 2021 for Seattle?
Jessyn Farrell: This is a really hard time for folks, whether it is the economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice. If you’re a parent like me, [who] struggles with remote learning and lack of childcare, I think that there’s this sense that we can be doing so much better as a city. We’re not tackling both the really basic things like basic service delivery, let alone the biggest problems like homelessness and climate change and housing affordability and public safety. I really think that there’s this hunger for a problem-solving leader. Who’s really willing to articulate a vision, wake up every day, and implement that vision. I am hoping to make that case to the city [on] why I am that person.
Question one – houselessness crisis
David Obelcz: Seattle Is facing an ongoing crisis related to unharmed people’s Washington state experienced a 6.2 increase in homelessness in 2019 – 2020. King County spends over a billion dollars a year between public and private investment to support approximately 12,500 unhomed people, with disappointing results. If you were elected as mayor, how would you address this crisis? How do you think your plan provides aid in resolving this crisis, both in the short term and in the long term?
Jessyn Farrell: I think there are three parts to that question. Number one, what is the plan? Number two, why I’m the person that can get it done, and number three, what we need to be doing above and beyond that. So I’m going to kind of take each of those things in turn. And the broad context is we’ve been in a homelessness crisis now for many years. Our leaders have not acted like that’s the case, waking up with a sense of purpose and determination and holding ourselves accountable to helping people get inside and get the services they need. So I, like many Seattleites and people across the region, are just really disappointed in the lack of progress that we’ve made. Now, the good news is I think there’s quite a bit of consensus around what it is that we need to do.
We need to be creating more interim housing options. We have learned that using hotels as a safe and stable place for people to come inside is really effective. We also know that we need to massively scale up access to mental and behavioral health services that people need. We have an opioid crisis in the state. We have a really strong state opioid prevention plan. We need to be partnering with the state to be delivering on that. Finally, not only are we needing to invest in the interim solutions, but we need to be scaling up our access to affordable housing. Generally, there is absolutely a crisis across the region, and that’s something we need to be solving for. My background is as an advocate on transit and transportation. I am a former state legislator, and I’ve delivered on those big regional solutions and to get in front of the homelessness crisis. We’re going to have to stop patting ourselves on the back for incrementalism and relentlessly focus on those particular solutions that are scaled to helping people get inside.
David Obelcz: How does your plan differ, and how does this get us to the long term?
Jessyn Farrell: If you look across the candidates’ plans, particularly on those interim solutions, there is a lot of consensus; but I’m going to make the case that there are really two core differences for me. Number one, part of my plan includes massively scaling up affordable housing. I’m calling it ST3 for housing. It takes its basis from the way we’ve been able to scale up regional transit infrastructure. We have a regional approach. We’re working together across three counties. We have a very significant public investment that is tied to a plan, and we’re using multimodal strategies to get people around. Similarly, in housing, we need to be scaling up housing at all income levels, very low income, all the way up through middle-class housing, and at a variety of lifecycle needs.
You know, if you’re a family, you have a different need than if you’re aging in place or if you’re a younger person. And finally, every single neighborhood across the region needs to be taking on its share of affordable housing. So that’s a core difference. And then the second core difference is, again, one of experience. I’m the candidate in this race that has accomplished large-scale regional and state solutions to our problems. I mentioned working on Sound Transit and advocating for transit. That also includes helping negotiate paid family leave and [delivering] the 2015 transportation package. So it’s that combination of being able to deliver both the consensus solutions, filling in the gaps, and then having the experience to do it.
Question two – infrastructure and economic recovery
David Obelcz: As a result of the ongoing COVID pandemic, economic recovery and development and addressing Seattle’s crumbling transit infrastructure such as the West Seattle bridge and the Magnolia bridge [is] of great importance. Additionally, some are expressing concerns that the jobs that left downtown Seattle specifically are permanent and that workers are not going to return. So this is a three-part question. Part one, how do you plan on tackling the infrastructure issue of which it sounds like you’re passionate about. How will you stimulate economic recovery and development as we move beyond COVID? The third part is, what concern do you have about employers and workers not returning to Seattle?
Jessyn Farrell: That’s a lot of great questions. I think what it recognizes is how important infrastructure is as a tool to spring economic recovery. I was the chair of the Governor’s task force on safe work and economic recovery. One of our core recommendations was that we need to be making major investments in infrastructure – both the safety fix projects like saving our bridges and fixing potholes – but also saving public transit in a big, dense city. We need to make sure that people have options to get around. And for those folks who are transit-dependent, continue to have that agency and freedom that transit brings. So that’s a really important piece. I would say that there are three core strategies that we need to be employing to continue to fund transit and move it into the next generation of really excellent service.
The great news is that the state is still considering a transportation investment package. And the city has to be advocating for including our bridges and transit infrastructure in that. Secondly, the Biden administration is also considering a significant infrastructure plan that matters. And then third, we have our own local tools, and we need to be stepping up and being a partner in funding and furthering our own infrastructure. I would say that it has to be tethered to our core values around equity [and] making sure that those parts of the city that have historically been left out, particularly those communities of color, have the first set of investments that matters. Secondly, climate change. Transportation is a significant driver of climate change. So we need to be lowering emissions from transportation. This idea of freedom and agency transportation should be a way to help you get to where you need to go. [For] our most vulnerable users, our youngest or oldest folks with disabilities, we need to be centering their needs. So that’s a little bit about my transportation agenda. There is a lot more on my website.
As to that second question, I think it was around downtown and what we’re going to do around downtown. Our city is so strong because we have a fantastic downtown and we have great neighborhoods, and we need to be investing in both. And obviously, there are a lot of concerns about the state of downtown right now. There are both short-term and long-run things that we need to be doing. We’ve done a great job bringing jobs downtown. And of course, now there’s some question around what’s going to happen in COVID after the pandemic, but we need to be aggressive about continuing to build housing downtown.
If you have a family like mine, there aren’t a lot of options for you to be able to live downtown. We need to treat downtown like the great neighborhood that it is. And so that means aligning the housing strategies with the job strategies. And that way, you’re able to have people downtown shopping and participating in commerce, et cetera. But that also then means you need that complete community aspect. You need schools, [and] you need open space. Those are all longer-term things. And the very near, near term, of course, people are worried about public safety. They’re worried about actually getting people downtown. Again, they’re worried about our jobs going to be coming back. And that is something that we need to be focusing on. I think one of the things we can be doing is, be a tourist in your own community as a way of getting people back downtown; downtown is open.
And part of it is that kind of “re-culturating” ourselves and changing our habits again. To being downtown for those of us who don’t live downtown and don’t go downtown every day again. But obviously, homelessness and public safety are real concerns, and those need to be addressed immediately as well. It is a crisis. It is a humanitarian crisis, and we just haven’t been acting like it. And that’s something that has impacted downtown in particular.
Question three – does Seattle have a crime and/or inequity problem
David Obelcz: As a result of protests related to the murder of George Floyd, police violence, and ongoing racial inequality, Seattle has earned a reputation as crime written, dirty and unsafe. At one point, the city was labeled an anarchist jurisdiction by the previous Presidential administration. Do you agree with that view? What do you think will shift perceptions, and how do you address racial inequality that exists in Seattle?
Jessyn Farrell: I want to just start by pushing back really hard on the Trump administration. They obviously had a strong political interest in demeaning cities for a whole host of reasons. So I want to dismiss that out of hand. I will say that there is this sense – I think across the city – that we want to be a city that we’re proud of. How do we turn anger into action and particularly around public safety? I want to talk a little bit about what I see as our city’s core values around that because that should guide our conversations, our strategies, and [our] budgets around public safety. First of all, every person in our city, especially our Black and brown community members, should feel safe as they go about their day-to-day lives.
For people like Charleena Lyles, who [was] murdered by the police in 2017, she was calling for help. She was in a crisis. So that is a situation in an instance where our public safety failed because it was not creating safety for folks. Likewise, another value that is important is that public safety has to mean so much more than just a traditional policing response. It has to mean all of those social, economic, and cultural supports that create thriving communities. Those ideas need to drive our discussions around budgets and what public safety means.
If I could give a couple of specific examples of what I mean by that, because the details matter here, our values and articulating our values matter, but the details matter too. So our crisis response system needs to be changed. There should not be a case where if you are in the midst of a mental or behavioral health issue, you could get harmed or killed by the police.
That is absolutely something that we need to change in there. A lot of strategies that are being employed on the ground in Seattle, whether it’s Health One, that is through the fire department or community-based crisis response systems, relying on caseworkers, we need to scale those up.
Another specific example where we can do better around public safety is changing the way we do transportation and enforcement. Too often, there is disparate enforcement of traffic laws. Whether you’re fare enforcement crossing the street, riding a bike, and we know that there are ways to remove an officer from the policing piece. You can build, you can do all kinds of things to slow traffic down on streets, whether it’s the use of cameras or creating roundabouts and more street trees.
There are lots of ways to promote better safety around transportation that we should be looking at. But there are things that are working that we need to also keep, for example, our regional domestic violence unit and the way they have been working to take guns away from dangerous people that matters implementing our Extreme Risk Protection Order Law. That’s important. The detective work that happens around things like theft or catalytic converters, those are things that we need to continue to invest in. So it has to be tethered to values first, and then strategies and budgets need to follow.
Question four – police reform
David Obelcz: You’ve dovetailed on a lot of things that we’re going to dive deeper into. Compared to the west coast cities of Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Oakland, and San Diego, Seattle has the second-highest cost per officer tied with Oakland and the second-highest officer per capita behind San Francisco. Additionally, the average officer makes [$153,000 sic] a year before benefits, according to a study done in the Seattle Times and also Forbes. Seattle police say that they are suffering from slow response times and claim that they need additional budget. The police budget was cut approximately 18%, and staffing levels were adjusted to roughly 1,325 officers, if fully staffed – there are 1,088 today. How would you define “defund the police,” and what is your position on defund? How, as mayor, do you restore community trust in the Seattle police department?
Jessyn Farrell: This answer has to be driven by what our values are, and I just, articulated them, which is to say that every single person should feel safe as they go about their day-to-day lives. Public safety is so much more than just a traditional police response. It’s those cultural, economic, and social supports that create thriving communities, and fundamentally our budgets. Therefore, staffing levels have to reflect those values and the strategies that actually work. I laid out a bunch of those strategies in my previous answer. So I won’t go through them again, but it is just to say that you can’t lead the conversation with staffing levels because, in a vacuum, you don’t get the results that you want around actual public safety. You have to start with values and the strategies that we know work.
David Obelcz: What is your position on “defund the police?” One of the protester demands in 2020 was defund by 50%. Again, the budget was cut by 18%. What is your position, and how do you define defund?
Jessyn Farrell: My position is that our public safety system fundamentally needs to be transformed, particularly in those places that are causing deep harm. Our crisis response, as an example, transportation enforcement is another example. The way we treat substance abuse is another example. Those are all things that need deep transformation. My position is that if we are able to transform based on our values, if we are able to build budgets and staffing levels based on our values, there will be things that we are scaling up. There will be things that we are absolutely scaling down. So that is how I would approach this conversation so that we get to outcomes where every single person. Particularly our black and brown neighbors feel safe in this community.
Question five – mental health crisis
David Obelcz: One of many things that COVID has shed light on and that you have alluded to is the ongoing mental health crisis that is facing us as a nation. And Seattle is not exempt from this. Recently a man in the throes of a mental health crisis was fatally wounded by the Seattle police department near the Seattle waterfront. Some cities have implemented programs where unarmed teams and social workers respond to mental health calls. And in Seattle, we’ve rolled out Health One, and we’re adding a [third] unit currently. What would you do as mayor to further address the ongoing mental health crisis? And I’m going to add a little bit to that question. The increasing opioid deaths that we are currently seeing and headlines over the last say 60 days.
Jessyn Farrell: People [are] experiencing mental health crises, particularly on the street or in their homes, and calling for help. We need to be doing those things that we know work. I mentioned Charleena Lyles. She had called for help 17 times prior to her being shot and killed by the police. So that is a system that is not working. And we do know that there are programs, and you mentioned them. There are caseworkers. There are social workers who are building relationships with people over time. They’re able to meet their medical and healthcare needs as well as help them get to services. That is something we should be doing. And we know that works. For example, Health One is an example, but there are other programs [such as] Just Cares. [We] need to be scaling those programs up because they get people connected to the services and the housing they need.
And they are typically a safer response, a less fatal or harmful response. So that’s important in the opioid crisis. We have a comprehensive state opioid response plan. The city needs to be a much more proactive partner in implementing that plan. And there are a lot of components. There are upstream components working with doctors around prescriptions, [such as] using nonmedical pain management approaches, working to make sure that people have safe storage. Training physicians to assess whether there is an early-stage opioid addiction happening so that help can be provided. There are a bunch of upstream things that we need to be partnering with our medical and care community that are part of our state’s plan. What happens when people are in the throes of addiction? We need to be creating pathways so that people can get the kinds of supports they need, particularly medical opioid use disruptors.
There are treatments like Suboxone that require daily administration. We need to be scaling up our public health infrastructure so that people have access to that so that they can get to a place where they’re able to have reduced cravings. They’re able to have that interruption of the addiction cycle that we know is necessary for people to get to a better place. The public health infrastructure matters. And then, of course, the final piece is stable housing because you can’t get in front of an addiction if you don’t have a stable place to go every night.
Question six – zoning and Seattle housing crunch
David Obelcz: On this subject of stable housing, housing affordability is a significant problem in Seattle. 88% of Seattle’s land for housing is zoned for single-family units. Over the last five years, most of the new construction has been centered on the 12% that supports high-density housing. Developers and builders focused on small footprint properties with minimal parking and luxury [features]. Do you support changing zoning rules for ADUs and more dense construction? That was part one. What changes to Seattle regulations for the construction of residential property would you support?
Jessyn Farrell: The affordability crisis is a real consequence of many decades and, in part, centuries of systemic racism that have left out, [in] particular, our Black neighbors, of wealth accumulation that comes from housing. Trickle-down economics – we have not adequately regulated and taken away regulations that created housing stability in the last couple of decades, so we need to take a comprehensive approach. Zoning is one piece of that.
I support changing and reforming our zoning, so every neighborhood has access to a diversity of housing types that meet people at different income levels and meet people at various stages of their life cycle. If you want to age in place and live in the neighborhood you’ve lived in for a long time, you may not have opportunities. Changing the kinds of housing diversity within a neighborhood matter. There are a lot of things that we need to be doing beyond zoning. Zoning changes in and of itself [don’t] create stable communities necessarily or affordable housing in the way we want it to.
We need to be looking at those financing mechanisms that run behind or through a building. You may be familiar with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. That’s a great housing product if you’re lucky enough to have it. And it creates a lot of stability for a homeowner; we need to be thinking about the next generation of stability supports for both owners, people getting into homeowning and current renters. Those things all matter and that’s a conversation that’s beyond zoning.
Finally, obviously, the way we do permitting has to be streamlined. It takes way too long in this city. We know that we can reform permitting to achieve our ability to deliver more housing [and] our environmental goals. You don’t need to put those two things against each other, such as tree canopy and more affordable housing. Those are things that absolutely can be sorted out. I helped negotiate a permit streamlining bill at the state level that had broad support in both the environmental community and the development community. These are things that we can do, and we just need to be focused. That’s why I’m proposing ST3 for housing because what gets planned for has a chance of getting done.
Question seven – taxation
David Obelcz: Seattle has a reputation for having high taxes compared to other Washington cities. A number of initiatives have added incremental taxes to fund transit, homeless programs, education, and the general fund. These taxes are small on paper. For instance, STB Prop One added one-half of one cent to the city sales tax. However, most of these taxes are regressive due to Washington state’s existing tax structure. Will you pledge no new taxes for the residents of Seattle? And what programs would you cut?
Jessyn Farrell: No new tax pledges are the language of trickle-down proponents, which I do not believe in, in any way. But I will say this is how I approach a tax conversation. First of all, it should be driven by what services do we want to fund. This is a city that cares about high-quality services, and this is a city that wants to fund those things. When we are talking about taxes, we are merely talking about the mechanism that allows us to, through government, provide the things that we want. Whether it’s transit or childcare or environmental programs or parks. Those are things that people want, and we have to start the conversation so that it’s tied to what is it that we’re trying to do.
Secondly, we do have, now it may be the number two most regressive tax system, thanks to action that the state took. [Editors note – Ms. Farrell statement is Washington state had the most regressive system prior to most recent legislative session]. So the city now needs to be working as a partner to have access to more tools that are fundamentally progressive and focused on expecting the very wealthiest to be paying their fair share. As you mentioned, the very wealthiest pay only 3% of their overall income into taxes, and for the very lowest income [it’s]17%. So the city needs to be a partner in really aggressively changing that. That is something that is a value of mine that also animates my opinion around taxes.
David Obelcz:
What programs would you cut if you were mayor?
Jessyn Farrell: That is a question that you have to be looking at in that broad sense of what is it that we are trying to do. And, if you are talking about transit, if you are talking about parks programming, if you are talking about funding for homelessness services, I think the broad point is that we are not doing enough. Now, there are things that we need to be looking at. And I named a few, particularly in the public safety conversation. We can be looking at a lot of different ways to do better traffic outcomes, safer traffic outcomes without the use of officers. So that’s a place where we need to be looking at as a place to cut. Also, the idea around crisis response and who we’re asking to go at a time of crisis, that’s something that we can look at changing.
So there are things that we can be doing to change how we’re spending money in the city. But it has to be tied with what are our objectives, what makes a great livable city. As mayor, I will say, I have been a legislator. I have worked at the executive level in government before, and every single expenditure matters. And you have to go through every single line item with a fine-tooth comb because that is really about delivering services for the city. So I will go through, I will commit to delivering budgets that have that attention to detail and are focused on delivering the things that we want in this city.
David Obelcz: Jessyn, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate it. I know our viewers have appreciated hearing about your platform and your vision for Seattle for 2021 and beyond.
[AUBURN] – (MTN) Family, friends, activists, politicians, and community leaders gathered in the parking lot where Jesse Sarey was shot by Auburn police officer Jeff Nelson two years ago to hold a candlelight vigil. Sarey was gunned down by officer Nelson on May 31, 2019, in an interaction that ended with Sarey dead of two gunshot wounds. Nelson was charged with second-degree murder and first-degree assault in the shooting and is the first officer to be charged under Washington’s I-940.
Elaine Simons, Sarey’s foster mother, has become an outspoken champion of his cause and the public face for the Sarey family. Other families who have experienced police violence were on hand to stand in support and tell their stories of loved ones lost.
Friends and family did a balloon release after a four-second pause, to remember the four seconds it took between Nelson’s first shot and his third.
On May 31, 2019, officer Nelson responded to a call about Sarey, who was homeless and struggled with mental illness. When Nelson arrived Sarey was calm, sitting on a curb and chewing on ice cubes. Nelson attempted to take Sarey into custody and a short struggle ensued. Nelson fired one shot which struck Sarey in the chest and was fatal. When he went to fire his second shot his service weapon jammed, forcing Nelson to clear the round and fire a third shot in the head.
Nelson had been with the Auburn Police Department for 11 years, serving as a K9 officer. During his tenure, he was involved in 3 fatal officer shootings, including Sarey. In 2017, Isaiah Obet was shot and killed by Nelson with the same chest and head combination. The city of 85,000 paid a $1.25 million settlement to Obet’s family 4 days after Nelson was arraigned on criminal charges in the Sarey case.
Nelson’s next hearing is on June 3 and his trial is scheduled to start in October 2021.
[OLYMPIA] – (MTN) Lawyer and criminal justice expert Laura Nirider and longtime criminal legal advocate Jason Flom join the chorus of those celebrating the passage of a new law today which will prevent wrongful convictions and protect the integrity of criminal cases. The new law, signed by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, requires law enforcement officers to electronically record custodial interrogations if the interrogation involves a juvenile or is related to a felony.
The new law, sponsored by Representative Strom Peterson (D — Edmonds), has been supported by Nirider, Flom, and a number of advocacy groups, including the Uniform Law commission and the Washington Innocence Project. Peterson was inspired to write the legislation after hearing an episode of Lava for Good Podcasts’ that tells the story of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two intellectually disabled half-brothers who were recently awarded $75 million by a North Carolina jury after spending decades behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit.
With its signing,
Washington joins 27 other states, Washington D.C., and federal agencies
(including the FBI) in requiring the taping of suspect interviews. According to
the National Registry of Exonerations, 12 people in Washington state alone have
been wrongfully convicted after confessing to crimes they didn’t commit.
“Twenty-nine percent of
the people who have been proven innocent through DNA exonerations have
confessed to crimes they didn’t commit,” said Nirider, a Clinical Professor of
Law and co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern
University Pritzker School of Law, as well as a host of the Wrongful Conviction:
False Confessions podcast. “This legislation is a key step towards ending
the epidemic of wrongful convictions that plagues our justice system.”
Flom welcomed the law as a desperately needed change. “False confessions are a significant problem in our criminal legal system — and a common cause of wrongful convictions,” he said. “From juveniles to those with mental health issues, there are far too many who are highly susceptible to the coercive interrogation techniques often used to extract confessions. This legislation will provide an irrefutable record of what went on behind those closed doors. I extend a sincere thanks to Governor Inslee, Representative Peterson, and the other lawmakers who supported this bill.”
The legislation, which will go into effect on January 1, 2022.
[SEATTLE] – (MTN) The Seattle Office of Police Accountability released findings on 15 more investigations related to protests motivated by the death of George Floyd in May of 2020. Of the 15 cases, 2 were “partially sustained,” and 3 resulted in “management action.” Additionally, the OPA recommends a total ban on the use of blast balls for crowd control.
The batch of reports recommends an officer receive disciplinary action and 7 more to get additional training. In many cases, the OPA concluded that officers pushed the limits of appropriate conduct but did not violate policy. In other cases, reports stated they could not identify the specific officer who violated department policy, preventing disciplinary action.
The most critical finding regards the use of blast balls. Several reports documented injuries sustained by people by the devices, despite evolving policy in their use. In one case where a protester was seriously injured, and the incident was captured on video the OPA concluded, “For these reasons, OPA herein amplifies its previous Management Action Recommendations and recommends that, unless SPD can show compelling evidence that blast balls can be used in a safe, non-indiscriminate manner that takes into account how blast balls functionally deploy and largely eliminates the risk of harm to non-violent parties, this tool be banned in its entirety.
“OPA reaches this conclusion based on the belief that, even if its outstanding recommendations concerning blast balls are all implemented (i.e., no overhand throws or deployments at persons unless an imminent harm to person standard is met), there is no guarantee that bad outcomes will not still result.”
The last time Seattle Police used one for crowd control was on December 18, 2020, at Cal Anderson Park during a homeless sweep. That incident was live-streamed by Converge Media.
The officer recommended for disciplinary action was involved in an August 12, 2020, incident where they drove an unmarked police vehicle aggressively at a group of protesters outside of Cal Anderson Park. The incident was caught on two separate videos. One video shows protesters scattering, including jumping over hedges and a wall to avoid being struck. The OPA concluded that the officer drove approximately 80 feet on the sidewalk before exiting back to the street to avoid hitting a bus shelter.
The officer who was driving during that incident did not cooperate with the OPA during the investigation. The OPA referenced the case for criminal charges to the Seattle Police Department, which concluded they could not build a case beyond “a reasonable doubt.”
Another investigation has resulted in the opening of a new case. The OPA concluded that an arrest made on June 8, 2020, was without probable cause. However, the officer that processed the arrest was not the arresting officer. An investigation into the arresting officer has been opened by the OPA.
We reviewed the 15 reports released today and provided a summary of findings, as well as links to the original reports.
Case 2020OPA-0430– Excessive Force – blast balls, 40MM launcher used on protesters – June 8, 2020
An individual reported an unknown officer targeted him with a tear gas canister and a 40MM blue-tipped round. The OPA determined the complaint is not sustained in part because OPA was unable to identify the deployment specifically referenced by the complainant, so the OPA cannot determine whether or not it was an appropriate use of force.
Case 2020OPA-0451 – Excessive Force – blast ball buttock injury and pepper spray – June 8, 2020
An individual reported an unknown Seattle Police Department employee deployed crowd control weapons, including a blast ball and pepper spray without warning, causing injury. The OPA determined the complaint is “not sustained” because of the significant number of individuals present at the time of the deployment, the dark conditions, and the placement of umbrellas that prevented individual demonstrators from being identified.
Case 2020OPA-0467 – Excessive Force – officers falsely arrested, dragged woman having seizure – July 25, 2020
Multiple people reported they were arrested for no reason, subject to excessive force. Additionally, the complaint alleged the Seattle Police Department intentionally did not provide medical attention to a person having a seizure. There was an additional complaint that Seattle police did not properly secure the person’s property having a seizure.
Four officers were named in the case, with 9 allegations against them.
The first officer was investigating for violating 16.130 for requirements on providing medical aid.
The second officer was investigated for violating 8.200 using force only when authorized.
The third officer was investigated for violating 6.010, requiring probable cause to make an arrest, 8.200, and 16.130.
The fourth officer was investigated for violating 6.010, 8.200, 16.130, and 11.050, officer requirements to secure detainee property.
The OPA determined that only the fourth officer, referenced as “named employee #4,” should receive a training referral regarding securing a detainee’s property.
“OPA finds that, once NE#1 took Complainant #1 into his custody, he was responsible for her property. However, OPA recognizes that this was a quick moving situation and that NE#4 reasonably believed that he exigently needed to move Complainant #1 to another location. OPA also notes that NE#4 did return to the scene and collect property that he believed belonged to complainant. While this was incorrect, he acted in good faith when he did so. For these reasons and under the circumstances, OPA concludes that a Training Referral is the appropriate result.”
Case 2020OPA-0495 – Excessive Force – blast ball injury to protester – no date for the incident provided
An individual reported that a police officer shot a stun grenade (blast ball) that exploded and “harmed the protester.” It also alleges that when another person came to render aid, that person was arrested by a second police officer.
The first officer was investigated for violating 14.090, making individual decisions on the use of pepper spray (OC) and blast balls consistent with Title 8 Use of Force policy and providing aid to subjects exposed to pepper spray or blast balls, when feasible.
The second officer was investigated for violating 6.010, requiring probable cause to make an arrest, 8.200, and 16.130.
There were two significant findings in this investigation. First, the OPA calls for the complete banning of blast balls as a crowd control device. The report stated that the use of a blast ball complied with 14.090. However, it was apparent by the injuries to the victim and video of the incident and that even with changes in use of force guidance, there is no way to “guarantee bad outcomes will not still result.”
The second outcome involves the second officer and the arrest of the second individual. The report states, “OPA struggles to understand why this arrest was made. While the Subject had remained in the area after a dispersal order had been given, he was moving. In addition, at the time of his arrest, he was not willfully disobeying orders to engage in malfeasance, but was trying to shield Witness #1, who was on the ground and injured, from further harm. Given this, the Subject should not have been arrested.”
Despite this finding, the person arrested was detained by a different officer. That unnamed third officer handed off the detainee to the officer investigated by the OPA to process the arrest. Although the report concluded 6.010 was violated, the officer did “not know the exact reasons for why the arrest was made, and there is no indication that he spoke to the arresting officer about this.”
This investigation has opened up an additional OPA case against a third Seattle police officer. The report did not provide the new case number.
Case 2020OPA-0515 – Officer drove onto sidewalk, nearly hitting protesters – August 12, 2020
Three officers were named in this high-profile case that was captured on video outside of Cal Anderson Park. Two officers were found to have violated department policy. One has received a written reprimand, and another has discipline pending.
The first officer was investigated for violating 5.001 employees should strive to be professional. The employee was found to have violated the policy and is receiving a written reprimand.
The second officer was investigated for violating 5.001, 5.001 requiring adherence to laws, city policy, and department policy, 13.030, officers may drive in an emergency response only when the need outweighs the risk. A fourth violation of 5.001, employees may use discretion, was removed from the investigation. The employee was found to have violated 2 of the 3 policies.
A third officer was investigating for violating 5.001 employees should strive to be professional, and it concluded the allegation was “not sustained.”
The report details the August 12 incident where an unmarked SPD vehicle drove up on the sidewalk and traveled for 80 feet toward protesters scattered, including one jumping over a wall. The officer under disciplinary action did not cooperate with the OPA investigation, refusing to testify per the report.
The OPA referred the officer’s actions to the Seattle Police Traffic Division for criminal investigation. The traffic division concluded a criminal case could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and referenced the case back to the OPA.
The OPA concluded that even if the officer’s claim that they were chasing suspects that were shining strobe lights in their face, “the risk he took simply to apprehend individuals using a strobe light were dangerous, ill advised, and, as was shown by the numerous complaints and public concern this incident generated, undermined public trust and confidence.”
The officer will also be disciplined for his comments captured on video. “Calling a fleeing subject a roach, referring to Seattle pejoratively as “fucking dirty,” and telling community members that his job is to “babysit” for “200 grand” is unacceptable. This is particularly the case given NE#2’s role as a supervisor.”
Case 2020OPA-0522 – Officer played “Bad Boys” song, taunting protesters – no date for the incident provided
Two officers were referenced in this complaint. Despite a conclusion that the allegations are “not sustained,” both officers were reference for additional training.
A Seattle Police Department van was observed by an individual playing the song Bad Boys by Inner Circle, made famous by the reality TV show COPS. She went to the East Precinct to express her concern about the incident. A sergeant came out to talk to her and “downplayed” the incident.
The investigation revealed the sergeant that spoke to the person about the issue was a passenger in the van. The OPA report states, “NE#2 should not have been the supervisor assigned to speak with the complainant about her concerns as NE#2 was involved in the potential misconduct. NE#2 should have recognized this, recused herself, and had another supervisor handle the complaint. This was the case even given how chaotic the day was.”
The report calls for the van’s driver and the sergeant to “be informed that their conduct was outside of the Department’s expectations and should not be repeated. Lastly, the Named Employees should be notified that future similar conduct will result in a Sustained finding and the imposition of discipline.”
The sergeant was also found to require retraining not to be involved in complaints when “she is involved.”
Case 2020OPA-0569 – Excessive Force – officers tackle male in Cal Anderson Park – September 1, 2020
An individual reported that a police officer failed to de-escalate before using force and applied excessive force during the arrest of a demonstrator.
In that incident, police told a person within Cal Anderson Park during a homeless sweep to stop walking. One officer grabbed the person’s backpack from behind, and another officer tackled the individual when they pulled away. Based on the bodycam video, the report concluded that the use of force of justified and at an appropriate level.
Case 2020OPA-0585 – Excessive Force – officer shoved woman who hit her head – September 7, 2020
A person claimed that an officer failed to de-escalate and used excessive force when the officer pushed a demonstrator. The OPA also investigated that the officer “may have been dishonest” when he denied making any physical contact with the demonstrator.
According to the report, two people complained about the incident, but not the women pushed by the officer. The OPA could not identify the person in the complaint, complicating the investigation. The incident was captured on Twitter and two bodycams, but none of the videos were conclusive. The OPA states they hired an outside expert to analyze and enhance the video.
The OPA believes that the officer likely did make physical contact with the protester; however, it cannot conclusively prove it. The report states, “Ultimately, OPA finds the expert analysis to be persuasive. The expert, despite using sophisticated technology to analyze, refine, and slow down the video, could not conclusively identify whether or not NE#1 pushed the Subject. This report serves to prevent OPA from meeting its burden of proof to establish misconduct on NE#1’s part. Accordingly, and while OPA retains significant concerns about this case, OPA cannot definitively prove that NE#1 pushed the Subject.”
Case 2020OPA-0586 – Officer antagonized protesters – no date for the incident provided
The OPA received a complaint that an officer engaged in a “back and forth” with demonstrators that were unprofessional and escalatory.
The lengthy report outlines a series of exchanges with the officer and multiple protesters. The incident, captured on video outside of the King County Jail, was reported by a third party to the OPA.
The officer was referred for additional training with the report concluding, “his failure to end the discussion once it was clearly unproductive. He should be advised of other manners in which he could have handled the interaction and should be given any retraining that his chain of command deems necessary.”
Case 2020OPA-0587 – Excessive Force – officers charge at protesters outside of SPOG – September 7, 2020
The lengthy investigation and report involve 7 different officers during the Labor Day protest outside of SPOG. In total, the 7 officers were accused of 9 policy violations.
The report states in justification of the actions of Seattle Police that day, “SPD’s Computer Assisted Dispatch (CAD) report of the incident, which collated updates added to the call’s incident number, reflected that, at approximately 6:07 PM, SPD’s Intelligence Unit reported that the “signal to act” within the crowd would be a plume of white smoke. At 6:09 PM, Intelligence reported that a male in the crowd wearing tan clothing and a pink bandana possessed approximately twelve Molotov cocktails in a box of Corona beer. OPA’s analysis of security video after the fact showed an individual visible at the right of the crowd and carrying a box matching later photographs of the box of Molotov cocktails recovered at the incident scene. This individual was, in fact, wearing a dark blue or gray hoodie and tan gloves.”
“Two minutes after the report, the call was updated to reflect that there was probable cause to arrest the individual and a targeted arrest was approved by a Lieutenant. As discussed more fully in the context of 2020OPA-0583, the attempted arrest was unsuccessful and the incident devolved into violence towards police officers and uses of force, including less-lethal tools, in response. As this continued, the decision was made the declare the incident a riot and to disperse the crowd.”
On November 26, Malcontent News released an investigation into the events on September 7, raising serious questions about Seattle Police actions on that day. Video captured on body cameras and our team indicated numerous opportunities to arrest the individual with the Corona Beer box if the intent of Seattle Police was only to stop that individual.
The report concluded that the actions of the 7 officers were “lawful and proper.”
Case 2020OPA-0611 – Excessive Force – pepper spray directed at a group – July 19, 2020
In the report, the incident happened outside of the West Precinct with the officer investigated for violating 14.090; an officer may make individual decisions to deploy OC Spray (pepper spray) and Blast Balls consistent with Title 8 – Use of Force.
The report details the events outside of the sally port at the West Precinct, where a riot was declared. The report states that bodycam video supports the officer had bottles, a traffic cone, and a firework thrown at them. It concluded that the use of pepper spray was appropriate.
Case 2020OPA-0613 – Officer pictured posing with pepper spray – September 15, 2020
Three Seattle Police Department officers were investigated after a picture emerged of them on social media laughing during a protest, while one held a bottle of pepper spray. Two officers have been referenced for additional training.
In the incident, a woman was arrested by officers and experienced a broken tibia. A group of protesters who were attempting to de-arrest her were pepper-sprayed and also arrested.
The report concluded that police did not use excessive force and the actions were “lawful and proper.” The report states, “The force was reasonable to effectuate the arrest of the Subject, who failed to comply with officers’ directions to move towards them and went back into the crowd in an attempt to prevent being taken into custody. Given her behavior, force was appropriate to bring her under control. The force was also necessary under the circumstances. Notably, pulling the Subject out of the crowd was a lower level use of force than pepper spraying her or using other lesslethal tools. Moreover, had the officers tried to go into the group to extract her, it likely would have resulted in more harm to the officers and demonstrators. Lastly, the force – pulling the Complainant – was proportional to the threat posed by her actions and those of the other demonstrators who actively prevented her arrest. That the Subject suffered a leg injury is unfortunate, but it does not cause the force to be not proportional or otherwise inconsistent with policy.”
After the arrest, the first officer in the complaint accidentally discharged a fire extinguisher, enveloping the third officer. The officer hit with the fire retardant thought it was pepper spray. The first officer took a picture of the one sprayed with Cold Fire and another officer.
The accidental deployment of the fire extinguisher, the discussion, and photo-taking was captured on bodycams.
The first officer and third officer in the report received a training referral. The report states, “The chain of command for NE#1 and NE#3 should discuss with them their decision to take a photograph during the demonstration. The chain of command should specifically instruct the officers that such actions, even if not intended to demean or insult others, can have this functional result and can diminish public trust and confidence in the Department.”
Case 2020OPA-0644 – Excessive Force – blast ball ankle injury – July 25, 2020
Two officers were investigated for the use of force using blast balls and 40MM less-lethal devices.
In the case of the 40MM less-lethal round that struck a cyclist’s head, the report states the video of the incident could not identify the officer who fired the shot. “If an officer did deploy a 40mm at the head of an individual who was not engaging in any violence, as appeared to be shown by the video, this would clearly violate policy. However, due to OPA’s inability to identify when the force was used and who used it, OPA cannot reach a definitive conclusion on this allegation.”
In the case of the blast ball, the report made a similar conclusion to 2020OPA-0495. The report states, “Given this weighing of the evidence, OPA concludes that, while a close call, NE#1’s deployment did not clearly violate policing. However, as discussed more fully below, OPA believes that it is emblematic of additional revisions that should be made to SPD policies and training. Of additional concern to OPA is the manner in which the blast ball deployed. First, OPA believes that SPD needs to reiterate that officers must roll a blast ball unless they can articulate why another deployment style was necessitated. Here, while NE#1 deployed the blast ball down towards the ground and in an open space, the sidearm deployment may have resulted in the blast ball skipping off the ground and detonating at a higher level than planned.”
Case 2020OPA-0664 – Hostile comments to arrestee – September 15, 2020
Two Seattle Police Department officers were investigated for bias-based policing, professional behavior, and a duty to report alleged policy violations.
The first officer got in a lengthy exchange with a women under arrest. The report states, “NE#1 knelt beside the Subject and stated: “Hey, you guys are committing property destruction in my city. I don’t care if it’s rude or not.” The Subject responded that it was “[her] city too, thank you.” NE#1 replied: “Are you? Were you born here?” The Subject stated that she was. NE#1 said: “me, north Seattle.” The Subject responded: “me too.”
A bias-policing claim was made, and the OPA investigation concluded that the comment, “you guys are committing property destruction in my city,” was not based on race but a general comment about protesters. The second officer present stated he wasn’t paying attention to the conversation but that the woman under arrest “was trying to cooperate.”
One officer in this incident was referred for additional training. The report concludes, “His chain of command should discuss OPA’s findings with him and, reiterate that, regardless of his frustration level, NE#1 needs to avoid these types of interactions. Lastly, NE#1 should be notified that future similar conduct will likely result in the imposition of discipline. This counseling and any associated retraining should be documented.”
Case 2020OPA-0666 – Excessive Force – force during arrest – no date for the incident provided
An SPD officer was investigated for improper use of force on an individual at a demonstration.
A person filed an anonymous complaint stating that during their arrest, the officer twisted their hands despite complying, refused to remove or reposition their mask despite repeated requests, and put his hands in their pockets without asking about gender identification.
Based on the report, the OPA states they reviewed bodycam video of the incident. The OPA report does not explicitly mention the complaint of the hands being twisted. It does conclude they could not determine if the person was having breathing difficulties due to the respirator because it muffled the person’s speech. The bodycam does not show the officer putting their hands in the pocket per the report and recorded the officer asking about gender identification.
The findings were that the officer’s conduct was “lawful and proper.”
Our live webcast from the former Seattle Anarchist Jurisdiction
Content Warning
Editor’s Note: This show contains videos of events that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised. Additionally, our remote connection had issues at a couple of points in the show – we apologize for the experience.
The show from April 29, 2021, featured David Obelcz and our co-host Jennifer Smith.
Mike Solan is unhappy with a police officer’s experience at Chocolati
King County is getting $62 million in federal funds to aid the unhomed
Joe Biden addresses a joint session of Congress
Follow-ups and corrections
Correction on the Bothell stabbing story
Pierce County Council has announced they are pausing the investigation of Sheriff Ed Troyer
Update on the arrest of 73-year old Karen Garner
Royal’lee Wallace murder investigation
Seattle’s Indian population mobilizes to support their homeland during COVID crisis
Kirkland postal carriers start a food drive
Native Americans petition for the return of wild Bison in Montana
[SEATTLE] – (MTN) Malcontent News is conducting a series of interviews with 2021 Seattle mayoral candidates. We have contacted, or are in the process of contacting the most viable candidates, inviting them to answer seven prepared questions. Today we feature Seattle City Council President, Lorena Gonzalez.
For all candidates, the first interview will be about their platform and vision. Prior to the primary election, we will conduct a second round that will focus on differentiation, and challenging positions and visions. Once the final candidates are selected in the primary, we will invite them for one last round of interviews.
All candidates for the first round will be asked the same seven questions, and have received a copy in advance. These questions were created by our editorial board, and are aligned to topics of key interest to the residents of Seattle.
Malcontent News is committed to providing equal time for all candidates, and operating under a “fairness doctrine” for all candidates.
We are publishing a transcript of each interview. Transcripts may be lightly edited to remove, umms, ahhs, pauses, and aid in readability.
Jennifer Smith: Hi malcontents. This is Jennifer and I’m here today with Lorena Gonzalez. She is running for Seattle mayor Hello, Lorena, how are you doing today?
Lorena Gonzalez: I’m doing great, Jennifer. Thanks for having me.
Jennifer Smith: Well, thank you so much for being here with us and being willing to share your platform with our audience. Can I ask you what inspired you to run for mayor?
Lorena Gonzalez: You know, I get that question a lot. It’s an important question. Listen, I’m running for mayor of Seattle because I really believe in this city. I love the city of Seattle and I know many people, including many of your listeners and Watchers do as well. I have spent most of my life working through many challenges. I first started as a migrant farmworker out in central Washington, where at the young age of eight years old, I earned my first paycheck picking cherries in orchards in central Washington state and living in migrant farm labor camps. And I worked my way through that to eventually becoming a civil rights attorney here in the city of Seattle, representing women, families, children, and people and all sorts of civil rights cases, including in police brutality and racial discrimination cases across the state.
I want to be able to build on that work on the work that I’ve been doing on the city council for the last seven years to really deliver on this civil rights moment to make sure that we’re producing equitable community safety. And I also want to address issues of deep poverty and inequity in our city that are largely along racial lines. We live in a tale of two cities in many ways. And I think my unique lived experience and the fact that I’m still not benefiting from incredible wealth will serve the people well. Particularly those working families and workers in our city who continue to be left out of our economy and who unfortunately end up entering into a cycle of poverty and homelessness. I believe my record and my experience on the city council to deliver on big, bold, progressive ideas is exactly what the city needs in the next mayor as we come out of COVID. And as we look at an equitable economic recovery.
Question one – houselessness crisis
Jennifer Smith: I think that’s an excellent segue into our first question. Seattle is facing an ongoing crisis related to unhomed peoples Washington state experienced a 6.2% increase in homelessness during 2019-2020 and King County spends over $1 billion per year in public and private investment in support of approximately 12,500 houseless people with very disappointing results. If you are elected mayor of Seattle, how would you address this crisis and how do you think your plan would provide aid in resolving this crisis? Both in the short and in the long term.
Lorena Gonzalez: Because this issue is so controversial. I think it’s important to really start from a place of acknowledging where we have common ground. I think that we actually agree on a lot in this space. I think in general, we all agree that we want to create a system and a community in which people aren’t required to live outside because of a lack of housing. We want to be able to use our parks as parks. We want to be able to use our sidewalks and we want to be able to use other public spaces for their intended use. And we don’t want people suffering needlessly in our streets. So I think the reality is there a lot of interventions, a lot of solutions, a lot of ideas that work permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, increasing non congregate shelter options for people that’ll meet their needs, and providing people with mental, behavioral, and substance use disorder, treatment and services and healthcare that is linguistically culturally appropriate is what we know works and it is what we need to keep doing.
The issue has been that we are in a little bit of a log jam because of a lot of different personalities who can’t come together to set aside egos and to just get to work on those solutions. What is different about me is I have significant deep relationships with our city council, with our regional elected leaders, with our state elected leaders, and with our federal elected leaders, to really make a difference in this space and to shepherd forward all of the solutions I just listed in a way that is going to produce more meaningful results. I’m looking forward to being able to lead in that fashion and to walk into that challenge with eyes wide open, but also take advantage of all the opportunities I believe exist about the areas that we agree upon as it relates to addressing the needs of people experiencing homelessness.
Question two – infrastructure and economic recovery
Jennifer Smith: COVID of course has exacerbated the homeless crisis, but it’s also really something we need to discuss in the context of economic recovery and development, as well as addressing Seattle’s crumbling, transit infrastructure, such as the West Seattle bridge. It’s a great importance to many people. Some are also expressing concern about large corporations and many in the workforce, actually leaving Seattle. The question that is threefold, how do you plan on tackling infrastructure, aiding an economic recovery and what concerns do you have about the loss of corporations and workers.
Lorena Gonzalez: COVID is really, especially for communities of color, really highlighted some of the pre-existing inequities and made them worse. I think that COVID has left no households, untouched assuming you don’t live in the one percent in our city. Most households have been impacted in some way. My household is no exception to being touched in a negative way by COVID my own husband who is in the restaurant industry found himself unemployed for the better half of last year and most of this year – and just recently returned to work because of his restaurant finally reopened. So I understand how important it is to support our local economy and to make sure that folks are going to be able to not just make it through the next few months but to actually be able to thrive. So I think it’s important to make sure that we are continuing to provide things like rental assistance and eviction relief and other supports to our local economy to make sure that they can continue to weather the storm and eventually get to a place where we are thriving.
Reopening downtown is critically important. It’s important because there are thousands of workers in the region that rely on those jobs, hotel workers retail workers, other restaurant service, industry workers, arts, and culture workers. They all rely on a bustling moving downtown and that’s why it’s so important for us to continue to ramp up our vaccination efforts and to continue following public health guidelines to make sure we’re not rolling back our economic restrictions. I think this is a really complex issue. We have a little bit more of a storm to weather here before we are going to start seeing some uptick, but we are seeing that people, including corporations in our city, are committed to being here. And I really appreciate those corporations who acknowledge that taking care of their workers is part of a good business strategy. It means that they are going to continue to, in my mind, being good partners to us at the city to help us get workers back to work safely, but also to continue to be good neighbors and help us build the vibrant city that attracts their workers to come here in the first place.
Jennifer Smith: Back to the question of infrastructure for say lives in West Seattle. The other day it is an absolute nightmare up there with construction, and there’s so much being done. How do you plan on addressing issues of infrastructure, especially if we’re looking as an example, the West Seattle bridge
Lorena Gonzalez: Well, I live in West Seattle, so you don’t have to tell me more than once about the impact of the West Seattle bridge. It is the number one issue that people approach me about as I move about in my own community here in West Seattle. It is a regional asset. It was the right thing to close it down because of the significant public safety issues that it posed. But it is proven to all of us how important it is to maintain our infrastructure. Of course, the federal government is looking at funding infrastructure projects. It’s a little unclear to us what bridges will be prioritized. But in the interim at the city, we are looking at strategies to make sure that we’re taking care of our bridge infrastructure, including currently looking at a bonding proposal of up to $100 million to take care of the much-needed infrastructure need of bridges across the city.
So that’s going to be something that the next mayor is going to have to implement and execute on. As a sitting city council member, who’s being asked to vote and consider this strategy, I’ll be ready on day one to implement that as a priority to make sure that no other neighborhood in the city of Seattle is left effectively on an Island and isolated and having to deal with the immense amount of traffic that’s caused by rerouting. It has been really difficult for the entire region to deal with our failed bridge, and we can’t allow it to happen again.
Question three – does Seattle have a crime and/or inequity problem
Jennifer Smith: As a result of protest-related to the murder of George Floyd, for which Derek Chauvin was just convicted on all three counts, police violence and ongoing racial inequality is a major topic. Seattle has a national reputation as crime-ridden, dirty and unsafe. At one point it was labeled by the previous presidential administration as an anarchic jurisdiction. How do you plan on addressing the continuing racial inequality that exists within Seattle, how do you plan to mitigate those and make people see Seattle more favorably?
Lorena Gonzalez: I just want to sort of start by acknowledging how important it is to not only say the words ‘Black Lives Matter,’ but to effectuate those words in our policy and local jurisdictions are the ones who hold the most amount of power to truly transform policy, to produce equitable community safety. And by that, I mean, we have control of our police departments. We have control of their budgets, and we have control of how we leverage our dollars to invest or not in community-based safety initiatives that will help to reduce the need to engage in criminal behavior because of a lack of opportunities. SoI want to acknowledge that this is really important work. It is not going to happen overnight. It’s not going to happen in one mayoral term. It is long and steady work that is really important for the next mayor to fulfill and continue.
I think that the reality is Seattle continues to be a vibrant city. That doesn’t mean that we are crime-free. It does mean that we have an obligation to make sure that we are meeting current public safety needs with the tools that we currently have while also working on continued investment and scaling up of human service-based programs that are really going to produce more equitable community safety. That means that we’re not flipping a switch, right? We’re not flipping a switch overnight on 911 or pulling away from public safety services, but we are doing the slow and steady work of making sure that we are meeting the 911 response needs of the city while also investing in communities who have been starved of investment for far too long. I think that’s just really important work for the next mayor to understand, and to be committed to, and to make difficult decisions about what our police department should and should not be doing in terms of their bodies of work. It is going to be a significant challenge for the next mayoral administration.
Question four – police reform
Jennifer Smith: Speaking about SPD when compared to the West Coast cities of Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Oakland, and San Diego, Seattle has the second-highest cost for police officers tied with Oakland and the second-highest officer per capita behind San Francisco. Additionally, the average officer makes $153,000 a year before benefits, according to the Seattle Times. Despite the large force and supporting budget, Seattle police report, slow response times and claim the issue is a lack of staffing. The budget was cut by approximately 18% and staffing levels were adjusted to support roughly 1,325 officers. How would you define defund the police and what is your position? How do you restore community trust, especially within BIPOC communities with SPD?
Lorena Gonzalez: I started kind of answering that a little bit on that last question, but I think the concept of defund SPD is for a lack of a better description, it’s an oversimplification of the issue that we’re talking about. I think it’s really important for us to stay focused on a concept of what it looks like to scrutinize police budgets, which historically have not received scrutiny. I know this, I can speak from a place of knowledge because I have served on the city council and it has been incredibly difficult to scrutinize the police budget in large part because there isn’t a lot of transparency. I think it’s important to start there, right? We have a responsibility to take a closer look at every city department’s budget. And just because you’re a police department, [it] doesn’t make you exempt or give you the privilege to not have that level of scrutiny.
The second thing is we’re talking about an allocation and relocation of city dollars to programs that will produce truly equitable communities. Things like gun violence prevention, things like youth engagement. Jobs for youth. Particularly black men between the ages of 18 and 24. These are all programs that we know if we invest in them as the need that exists, they will make a difference. They will interrupt cycles of violence and they will interrupt the cycle of poverty that oftentimes allows our children to be victimized by criminal elements. I think it’s really important for us to have a conversation about, what does it look like to scale up programs that do not require a gun and badge to respond and how do we get our police department back to core law enforcement functions that are appropriate for them to respond to. They are not equipped and don’t have the tools nor I believe, should they be responding to people in a mental health crisis with guns. We should be looking at how do we get to people who are experiencing mental health crises with better systems in place. And once we identify what those systems are, and once we’ve developed those systems, we can start pulling back a law enforcement first approach.
Question five – mental health crisis
Jennifer Smith: Mental health crisis has been one of the things that COVID has shed so much light on. And we recently had a man in the throes of a mental health crisis get shot by SPD on the waterfront. Would you be open to implementing something similar to the STAR program in Colorado, which replaces traditional law enforcement responders with a medic and mental health professional, on some emergency calls as a way to deescalate situations when there is a clear mental health element?
Lorena Gonzalez: I have great news. We have our own version of STAR in the city of Seattle. It’s the Health One Mobile Unit. We have just announced that we have deployed our second unit. But that brings us to a total of two and the need is much greater obviously than a total of two. But that model is exactly what you’ve described. It is designed to respond to people who are in crisis, who don’t need to have necessarily a law enforcement intervention but needs somebody who’s going to help them deescalate and to approach them with the behavioral health needs that they need in order to calm down, take a moment and survive at the end of that experience. I think we need to do more of that kind of work. We need to take that to scale so that we are actually seeing good outcomes for the people who are experiencing a mental health crisis. Obviously, somebody ultimately dying, being killed as a result of being in a mental health crisis. I think we can all agree that that is not the outcome we want to see.I don’t think police officers want that outcome, and I don’t think anyone else in the city wants that outcome as a result of that interaction.
Question six – zoning and Seattle housing crunch
Jennifer Smith: So shifting directions a little bit, I want to talk about land use in Seattle. Eight-Eighty percent of Seattle’s land that is zoned for housing is zoned for single-family housing. Over the last five years, most of the new construction has been centered in the 12% that supports high density. Housing developers and builders focused on small footprint properties with minimal parking and luxury appointments. Housing affordability is a major problem for Seattle, which you already referenced earlier. Do you support changing zoning rules for ADUs and more dense construction to alleviate the housing crisis? And what changes do you support?
Lorena Gonzalez: Let’s start with the fact that Seattle is progressive as we are, is not immune from the vestiges of racial discrimination in our land use policies. In fact we still have defacto redlining across our city and it shows up in the fact that we have effectively banned multifamily housing in a vast majority of the city. Exclusionary zoning laws, like those laws that exist in the city of Seattle, have a direct connection to redlining laws. I think it’s really important for the next mayor, and I’d be committed to doing this to finally reforming our exclusionary zoning laws to allow for increased development capacity in every neighborhood across the city.
We need more housing choices, and we as people of color in this city, deserve an opportunity to be able to live in a neighborhood of our choice. I shouldn’t be excluded from living in a neighborhood by virtue of the fact that I have historically lacked access to wealth and capital and financing to be able to get into a home. Currently, right now, I think we can all agree it is way too expensive for anyone. In my neighborhood, it costs $850,000 to get a small three-bedroom house. That is just not okay. And we have to allow for affordable housing development to occur in areas that aren’t just restricted to urban villages. Everybody has a responsibility to do their part. We all should be absorbing development capacity, and we are way far behind the nation as it relates to this kind of reform. Even President Joe Biden has put as part of his platform, the need to radically reform and abolish exclusionary zoning laws, and I couldn’t agree with him more.
Question seven – taxation
Jennifer Smith: Seattle has a reputation of having high taxes compared to other Washington cities. A number of initiatives have added incremental taxes to fund transit, homeless programs, education, and the general fund. These taxes are small on paper, one 10th of 1%, for example, but most of these taxes are regressive due to Washington state’s tax structure.Will you pledge no new taxes on the citizens of Seattle?
Lorena Gonzalez: I cannot make that pledge. I can make a pledge that I do believe in progressive revenue taxation. I have been a long-time supporter of progressive revenue taxation and do believe that there are people and corporations in the city who can afford to pay more in taxes in the city of Seattle. I think that it’s important for us to acknowledge that not all residents of the city are created equal and we have to be able to craft any future progressive revenue to acknowledge that fact and to try to the greatest extent possible hold harmless our lowest-income residents in the city so that we are not exacerbating the realities of our regressive tax system in the city of Seattle. Our tax code is upside down in the state. We have made some progress in the state legislature this year, which I’m really excited to see the capital gains tax in particular. But I think that we need a lot of help and relief from the state to be able to truly meaningfully provide tax relief for those people in our city who are [at] lowest income and who are being taxed at a disproportionate rate in comparison to our wealthy residents and corporations.
Additional Questions
Jennifer Smith: And we know that Seattle has been home to native peoples long before settlements.Sovereignty is always an issue for both tribes that are nations that are federally recognized and those who are not like the Duwamish. So as mayor of Seattle, how would you continue to support indigenous sovereignty for native peoples living with and around the Seattle area.
Lorena Gonzalez: Tribal relations and representation within a mayoral administration are very important given where we are seated. I think that we through our office of intergovernmental relations used to have a representative who represented the interest of tribes and made sure that we were honoring those really important principles of conferring and consulting with tribes. I also think it’s important for us to remind our colleagues at the state level and at the county level that they have an obligation to do that. We have a native council member now, councilwoman Debra Juarez, and she has done a really tremendous job of making sure that policies are centering the needs of indigenous people in our city and also leveraging her position to influence how other agencies that we work with elate to and interact with and do business with our indigenous community. The last thing I’ll say is that we have an office of economic development. We have many public works projects, and I think it’s really important for all of our public works projects to acknowledge hose land we are on. But I also think it’s really important for us, as part of our community benefits and community workforce agreements, to make a commitment to hiring and creating economic opportunities, whether it’s jobs or business opportunities for indigenous people whose land we,e are benefiting from.
Our live webcast from the former Seattle Anarchist Jurisdiction
Editors Note: There is approximately five minutes of audio problems during our segment on Pinal County Sheriff Julian Navarrette. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The show from April 22, 2021, featured David Obelcz and our co-host Jennifer Smith.
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[SEATTLE] – (MTN) Malcontent News is conducting a series of interviews with 2021 Seattle city council candidates. We have contacted, or are in the process of contacting the most viable candidates, inviting them to answer seven prepared questions. Today we feature Nikkita Oliver (they/them).
For all candidates, the first interview will be about their platform and vision. Prior to the primary election, we will conduct a second round that will focus on differentiation, and challenging positions and visions. Once the final candidates are selected in the primary, we will invite them for one last round of interviews.
All candidates for the first round will be asked the same seven questions, and have received a copy in advance. These questions were created by our editorial board, and are aligned to topics of key interest to the residents of Seattle.
Malcontent News is committed to providing equal time for all candidates, and operating under a “fairness doctrine” of equal time and treatment.
We will be publishing a transcript of each interview. Transcripts may be lightly edited to remove, umms, ahhs, pauses, and aid in readability.
Renee Raketty: As you know, Seattle is facing an ongoing crisis related to unhomed peoples. Washington State experience to 6.2% increase in homelessness during the 2019-2020 year. King County spends over $1 billion per year in public and private investment in support of approximately 12,500 homeless people with disappointing results. If elected to the city council, what would you advocate and support to address this crisis?
Nikiita Oliver: You have a lot of work to do. We’ve been in a state of emergency around the housing crisis and supporting our loved ones who don’t have homes since 2015. A major part of the crisis is we just simply have not built enough housing. We have not actually invested ourselves in that. While we might be spending, within our region, lots of money on services; if we provide services but have nowhere for people to come inside who want to, then what we’re doing is basically saying, ‘We’ll give you some services to survive but we’re not going to support you getting into housing where you’ll have opportunities to thrive.”
A huge priority is looking at Seattle’s comprehensive plan for 2024 and addressing issues around exclusionary zoning. The fact that we’ve only been developing density on 12 percent of the land and we need to address the fact that single family zoning — as the way our city is set up now — is not going to allow us to develop enough housing in order to ensure that our loved ones who want to come inside can and to be able to provide enough housing for the missing middle. Displacement and gentrification is also a part of the crisis that we’re facing.
This is the reason why we spend money but it continues to be ineffective. Some answers to this is Seattle getting into housing — actually building social housing that is affordable; that is also nice. People want to live in nice homes and meet the needs of our community members. So [we need to] continuing making more investments in social housing. We can’t continue to rely upon the private market to be our answer to the housing crisis. There’s just not a real incentive for the private market to actually respond to the need. So we need to be willing to actually drive some of the development if we’re going to build $400 million a year for 10 years of affordable housing. We need to figure out, how does our regional plan really work? I think for a lot of folks, they felt Seattle saying, “we are part of a regional plan,” has been a little bit of a cop-out and putting the majority of the work on the county or other cities to respond.
I think the city needs to level up. We have a $6.2 billion budget. We have over 800,000 residents. It is time that we really take accountability and responsibility for the ways in which development and our city and growth have actually been a part of exacerbating the housing crisis. We also need to deal with the fact that our tax structure, the way in which we generate revenue very regressively. It ends up putting the burden of the cost of this new development and the services that we absolutely need to be providing on the backs of those who already pay the most in taxes. Those who pay the least and honestly have benefited the most from the development and growth, continue to not really have to be invested in seeing our city become the healthiest city that it can be.
We are also, probably, going to face a massive eviction crisis. So in addition to the crisis we were already in — COVID-19, the recession, and many people not being able to pay rent or mortgages — means that we also need to figure out how do we stabilize folks who are still in their homes but maybe facing eviction. Continuing to find ways to either cancel rent or do rental support or mortgage support to keep people in their homes; there is going to have to be a combination of responses that come from the city. This is going to require us to really think about our priorities as a city. Are we willing to prioritize people being able to stay home and stay healthy? The way that we do that is going to be investing in things that keep people from losing their homes and investing and building housing rapidly. I know that it’s been a challenge for our city to prioritize this in the past but I think that — with the right folks committed to seeing the interest of our city as a whole be served — we can actually move in that direction.
Nikkita Oliver
Question two – infrastructure and economic recovery
Renee Raketty: As a result of the ongoing COVID pandemic, economic recovery, and development, as well as addressing Seattle’s crumbling transit infrastructure such as the West Seattle Bridge, is of great importance. Moreover, some are expressing concern businesses are leaving Seattle and workers will not return post-COVID. The question then is threefold. How does the council address crumbling infrastructure, aid in economic recovery and development as we move beyond COVID, and what concerns do you have about the loss of business, both large and small, and a loss of jobs within Seattle?
Nikkita Oliver: I think what we really have to grapple with as a city is that we cannot recover back to normal. We actually need to grapple with the fact that our social and economic safety net for most people is one that is ineffective. As a result, that’s why we are seeing such a huge economic crisis because we have not ensured that all people have access to healthcare. We have not ensured that all people have access to affordable housing and we have really failed to ensure that workers are protected. So really thinking about how do we ensure that any employment that the city is involved in are union, prevailing wage jobs. Thinking about the contracts we have, not just in terms of development and construction, but also expanding the conversation about prevailing wages and unionization to other industries that touch the city. There are tons of industries that we do contract work that we could be pushing to actually treat workers right; to have the right working conditions, hazard pay, and to ensure that people have high wage jobs.
This is a really important part of knowing that disasters are going to come. This is not the last time that we see this. As a result, if we’re going to build a social and economic safety net that works for everyone, anything that the city is invested in needs to push contractors or industries that we work with to make sure that people have high-wage jobs that pay healthcare and benefits. That’s just thinking forward in terms of protecting us, protecting people, protecting workers, when an additional crisis does come. The West Seattle Bridge and other bridges, other infrastructure in our city are of huge concern.
The Move Seattle levy expires in 2024. This was a 2015 levy and, in many ways, it’s actually fell short of the promises that taxpayers voted for. So the first thing that I think the city actually has to do when it comes to our crumbling infrastructure is explaining why that levy did not fulfill the promise that we made to voters. That explanation, being a pathway towards saying, “Is it possible to continue this levy? Will you all vote for it again? Here’s the explanation of why it fell short. Here’s how we will address those shortcomings in the future?”
Getting our infrastructure up to par is important for a number of reasons. It’s not just about safety — but it’s also understanding that if we want to be able to keep our maritime and port industries healthy — which are significant jobs in our region and also an important part of moving goods. Not just through Seattle but to other regions in Washington State, including thinking about the eastern part of the state, the fruit basket — then we need to ensure that the infrastructure around the port is solid so that freights can move in and out without issue.
This is also about our environment. When freights are backed up and not able to move through the port in a timely manner; we’re seeing way more pollution, both in terms of exhausts but also noise pollution happening in the neighborhoods that already facing some of the highest levels of pollution. So this is also a health concern.
Addressing our crumbling infrastructure touches a myriad of areas of life from the environment to industry and economic well-being, to also the health of communities that many of these industries are moving through. In 2024, providing that clear explanation on what some of the challenges were: it’s not just the West Seattle Bridge. It’s also thinking about North Seattle and east-west buses; sidewalks for safety. It’s looking at the bridges in other areas of our city that are also deteriorating. We don’t want to see them in the same situation that the West Seattle Bridge is; where it’s been closed down for almost a year.
Then we need to consider thinking about how does this impacts our transit infrastructure. The transit infrastructure also plays a major role in thinking about the well-being of workers; the ability to move through the city or in and out of the city in a way that doesn’t require you to spend two hours of your day doing that. Most of our families can not afford to do that. We have to understand that transit and the accessibility of our city are also tied to the economic well-being of folks.
My concerns are about many of our small businesses. Small businesses that are owned by Black, Indigenous, and people of color who really have suffered through the pandemic without having access to all of the things that allow their businesses to sustain. I’m also thinking about folks who are freelancers, some of whom have been able to get access to unemployment, but for many of whom, it took a very long time to get that access to unemployment. So maybe they’ve become backed up on rent or other types of bills that they’re later going to have to find ways to pay. This is where canceling rent or having rental support programs; finding ways that maybe mortgages can be canceled or mortgage support programs; having a rent stabilization on commercial properties is going to be huge. The city has taken emergency measures that have been really significant in allowing small businesses to continue to function. One of these is folks being able to run their small businesses out of their homes if they have particular detached units. This is a creative option that has not been allowed to exist prior to the pandemic.
One thing the pandemic has shown us is that there are things that we could have done long before that we didn’t do because we said we couldn’t. Then we found out that in a state of emergency that we could. Sustaining some of those measures are going to be key to ensuring that small businesses, freelancers, are able to thrive. Then, moving forward, how are we ensuring that our folks that work in tech: I’m thinking about our Uber drivers or folks that are delivering food, who are a part of our gig economy, what are we doing to ensure that those folks are able to get access to health care and benefits?
We’ve seen through the pandemic that has not been possible for a lot of folks. We need to keep talking about what does it look like to have a gig workers package that ensures those safety measures: hazard pay healthcare benefits. So that again, when disaster does come again — because this is not going to be the last thing we face, the climate catastrophe is really upon us — we need to make sure that people are prepared and they have access to the social and economic safety nets that work.
Question three – does Seattle have a crime and/or inequity problem
Renee Raketty: As a result of the protests related to the murder of George Floyd, police violence and ongoing racial inequality, Seattle has earned a reputation as being a crime-ridden, dirty and unsafe city. At one point the city was even labeled, by the past presidential administration as an anarchist jurisdiction. Do you agree with this view?
Nikkita Oliver: I do not agree with this view. I think in many ways this view is created by mainstream media outlets not telling the whole story. I think it’s really important that we tell whole stories, acknowledge what’s really been happening in our city — which is actually drastically different than that. I’m not sure if you want more detail but I certainly have lots of thoughts in that area.
Renee Raketty: Absolutely. We want to know how are we going to shift perceptions?
Nikkita Oliver: We shift perceptions by building the city we want to see. We don’t control mainstream media but what we do control is the way in which our city continues to move and develop. Some of our elected officials need to actually take accountability for statements that they made during the protest that was then leveraged by media outlets, both locally and nationally, to paint a picture of a city in crisis. That’s not what was happening in our city.
I understand that there were things that happened in CHOP that caused a lot of pain for people. In fact, those things were happening in other areas of our city — in terms of folks being shot and killed. When we make that issue about just one area of our city, we actually miss the underlying issues that are the reasons why certain types of gun violence are happening. These are economic reasons. These are social reasons. We have areas in Seattle that have been redlined historically; that have experienced exclusionary zoning, are over-policed, and lacked social services. Many of them are also food deserts. They’re not what we would call — in the urban development sphere — communities of opportunity. These neighborhoods are lacking economic opportunity, educational opportunity, and the services that ensure people can thrive.
Nikkita Oliver, candidate for Seat 9 of the Seattle City Council holds their first rally
So while some areas of our city are growing into these urban villages that have grocery stores that have great produce, or have access to medical facilities, and have access to social services; there are other areas of our cities that are being inequitably developed and are not receiving that same attention and growth to ensure that we do the things that actually prevent violence. This is not conjecture, and it’s not me just making up a story. We know that through social science, when people have their basic needs met and they have access to economic and educational opportunities, then violence decreases substantially.
We have communities though who have been historically and presently disenfranchised from the access to that opportunity while the wealth of white folks and our region has continued to grow. Those communities continue to have access to higher earner jobs. The wealth of Black communities has actually continued to decrease.
I think that we absolutely want to change this weird narrative that’s happened around Seattle and show who we really are. I’ve also talked to people in the suburbs of Seattle and they say things like, “Oh, Seattle, traffic’s too bad.” This kind of complaining about Seattle. I want to change that narrative too.
Question four – police reform
Renee Raketty: Renee Raketty: (15:03) Compared to the West Coast cities, such as San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Oakland, and San Diego. Seattle has the second-highest cost per police officer tied with Oakland and the second-highest officer per capita behind San Francisco. Additionally, the average officer makes $153,000 a year before benefits, according to the Seattle Times. Despite this large force and supporting budget, Seattle police reports, low response times and they claim the issue to be a lack of staff. The budget was cut by approximately 18% and staffing levels were adjusted to support roughly 1,325 officers. How would you define defund the police? What is your position on that and how, as a member of the city council, do you restore community trust and SPD?
Nikkita Oliver: “Defund the police” is also ‘invest in the community.’ I think it’s really important not to separate those two from each other. I think it’s also important to acknowledge that our current system of public safety does not create safety for everyone. In fact, there are many communities that are actually less safe when they call the police. There are communities that are actually afraid to call the police when they’re actually in need of support. I think we also have to acknowledge that we do not have the myriad of services that we need to ensure that people are safer. Police are not typically doing what we think. I think a lot of folks have it in their minds, maybe from movies or TV, that police are all day responding to violent crime and violent calls. The reality is a lot of what police officers are doing are responding to things involving property or maybe parking issues or even noise complaints. That is the majority.
In Seattle, I think 1.3% of the calls that come through 911 are quote/unquote, “violent crime.” So that’s actually a very small percentage. I think we’ve also seen and I know you’ve seen this, having been out at the protest. There will be an obscene amount of police officers at the protest and then later we’ll find out that something else was happening in the city but the Seattle Police Department will say that they had very slow response times. I would wonder how are they prioritizing what’s important for their presence to be at.
That being said, I do have to go back to the underpinning thing here. Our system of public safety is not one that works for everyone. We’ve heard this time and time again, it’s not new information. It’s not new as of 2020. In fact, these are conversations that people have been having for a long time about public safety and what really makes the community safe. An 18 percent defund of a police department that has one of the highest budgets in the entire United States really is not that much. SPD’s budget prior to this last budget cycle was $410 million. They often actually spent over that budget and would be asking the council for additional dollars in addition to receiving money from groups like the Seattle Foundation giving dollars to the Police Foundation that then gave money to the department to buy more equipment. There are also additional dollars, including federal dollars, that come into the SPD on a regular basis. So I don’t believe that they’re actually hurting for money.
What is hurting for financial resources are community-based responses to intervening with harm and responding to harm when it happens. I’m thinking about what do people do when they’re in domestic violence situations and they do not believe that calling the police is going to make it safer. This was my own life at one point in time with a partner of mine. I did not feel like I could call the police for support because — at the time — I was dating a six-foot-seven Black man and did not think that calling the police was going to make our situation any better. In fact, it worried me that something might happen to him and his life if I did that, and is that a burden I wanted to carry?
I am not the only Black person who has ever been in that situation and thought about that. I’m certainly not the only person. There are families who also are afraid to call the cops when their loved ones are having mental health crises. We know that this is happening. We also know that the police are ill-equipped to respond to these types of situations. Why aren’t we not investing more of our public safety budget in ensuring that we have the resources that can meet a multiplicity of needs, knowing that most of the things that people call 911 who actually do not need an armed officer to come to the door?
My goal is, my hope as a city council member, is that we can actually continue building upon the things that we know work; mental health supports, people who can respond to mental health crises. I’m thinking right now about Tommy Le, whose family just received a big settlement but will never receive Tommy back, who was in the midst of a mental health crisis. Charleena Lyles was in the midst of a mental health crisis. Charleena could still be here with us if we had the right support. How are we doing the work of learning from these tragedies to actually be doing the things that we know work for community members?
That’s my goal — prioritizing our public safety budget to actually do the things that make the community safe in terms of our ability to respond to a mental health crisis, domestic violence, to intervene, and stop violence before it occurs — because that would be the ideal.
This is the last part of this. Police are often called after harm has already occurred. So it is already a reactionary measure to public safety. What would it look like if we built a city where we built the priorities of our public safety system around preventing and intervening harm, rather than responding once it’s already happened. We could actually keep a lot of people out of the criminal punishment system, which is a broader system that needs to be addressed in relationship to policing. We could prevent a lot of harm to families and people in our city if we approach public safety from that place instead.
Question five – mental health crisis
Renee Raketty: I’m glad you brought up mental health. Let’s talk about that for a second because I do think it’s an important issue. One of many things that COVID has shed light on is the ongoing mental health crisis in this country. Seattle is not exempt from this of course. Recently, a man in the throes of a mental health crisis was fatally wounded by the SPD near the Seattle waterfront. Washington State has consistently ranked towards the bottom for public health services for the mentally ill. What would you do as a member of the city council to address this mental health crisis?
Nikkita Oliver: The incident you mentioned hits close to home because he was a student at Seattle University where I teach. I think people read these stories and they forget that folks are actually in our communities that are having crisises and then have deadly encounters with police. What can we do?
So as we continue the work around defunding and investing — divesting and investing into structures that work — we can actually invest in mental health professionals and intervention services that actually work. I’ve had to call for a county Mental Health Professional (MHP), a county MHP before and it’s taken 24 hours before that MHP has been able to respond to the crisis that I’ve been in with a client. Often what this means is myself or family members of this person ended up having to stay with them 24/7. In some instances, following them around the city to try to keep them safe or avoid an interaction with police. Sometimes it still ends up in an interaction with police.
The fact that we invest so much money in a system that is not able to actually respond to the needs we know are most emergent is not only fiscally irresponsible but it’s also socially irresponsible. So I think finding ways financially to beef up our mental health professional options — whether that’s looking at programs like Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets. I’m not saying specifically CAHOOTS because that model was developed in a particular context and all models that develop one place can not just be transferred to another place. We need to be thoughtful about how we develop more mental health supports in the city. That’s what defunding is actually about. It is about finding the thing to invest in that actually will do the work that we need. We know that mental health has always been something that people need response to but the recession and the pandemic have certainly exacerbated the mental health crisis that we’re facing.
We do have organizations that are able to support folks in crisis but we certainly don’t have enough of them. When you have to wait 24 hours or more before someone is able to meet you, what that likely means is that your loved one has probably spun out much farther than they were 24 hours prior. It’s even harder to do the work of mitigating harm and ensuring that that person gets the supports. The other thing is I think we need to work better with our hospitals. I’ve gone to the hospital with folks wanting to admit theirselves for support. The process of doing that comes with a lot of stigma. It’s a very cumbersome process. You often have to prove that you are suicidal or other things that will make them want to bring you into the hospital. So we need to change that process. If someone comes to you saying they need help, we should just get them help.
Nikkita Oliver
The third issue that is attached to that though is we just simply do not have enough beds, mental health professionals, or mental health supports in our region. So when people do go to the hospital saying they would like to get support, they’re often told there isn’t a bed for them. How can we be providing more of those spaces within the city using the budget we have to do that and actually investing in the things that work. The last thing I would say, I keep coming back to healthcare, but we don’t have full spectrum healthcare for some folks. As a result, when they seek out mental health supports they’re not able to pay for it. Is there a way for the city and, I would put the county in there to partner [with us], because the county does do a lot of public health work, can we be developing ways that people can access mental health supports prior to being in crisis that doesn’t require them to have health insurance — knowing that ultimately when we can get people mental health supports early on, we actually make everyone, including that person, much safer
Question six – zoning and Seattle housing crunch
Renee Raketty: Affordability is a major problem for Seattle. 88% of Seattle’s land that is zoned for housing is zoned for single family units. Over the last five years, most of the new construction has been centered in the 12% that supports high density, housing developers and builders focused on small footprint, footprint properties with the minimum parking and luxury appointments.
Nikkita Oliver: I know most people don’t probably whouldn’t believe this but this is actually one of the issues I’m most excited to work on. I think a lot of folks see me as just the police person. To be honest, our legacy of exclusionary zoning is contributing to so many of the problems that we’re facing in the city. There’s a book called The Color of Law that really digs into how housing is a determinant of how people thrive. It’s a determinant of whether or not communities experience high rates of violence. It’s a determinant of whether or not communities are over-policed. Housing plays a big role in that.
We have really, chosen not to turn and face our legacy of exclusionary zoning. Our current zoning pattern has created a bifurcated city. Two-thirds of our residential land is not accessible to all but those who have the highest incomes, which is a serious issue. So we need to be changing our zoning as we approach this 2024 comprehensive plan to be building a mix of housing and residential patterns that allows more people to live in more places throughout the city.
There are a number of reports that have come out that have actually recommended us addressing our zoning issues. I think it’s very important that we do it. There are examples of cities like Portland, which has a residential infill project where they have basically re-legalized the missing middle or missing middle housing citywide. This allows for a diversity of housing structures to exist in the city. Seattle has committed itself, in a lot of ways, to building urban villages. So we need to both expand our current urban villages but also be strategic about the places where we build new ones.
There is transit infrastructure being built throughout the city and there are areas that need more transit infrastructure and those would be areas that would be right for urban villages but it cannot continue to happen on the same 12% of land. We have 85%of the developing happening on 12 % of the land, which is really unacceptable.
We also cannot do it in our industrial lands [and] there’s been some talk about building affordable housing in our industrial lands. There are place-based industries that happen in those spaces that cannot happen anywhere else. So it doesn’t make sense to build there, not to mention our industrial land areas are also very much food deserts. We don’t know about the toxicity of the area and the long-term impacts that would have on folks. I’m really excited to work on our comprehensive plan for 2024. It is a huge chance to do zoning reform; to make significant strides on housing affordability.
It is also an opportunity to address our climate crisis. With all the new housing that we would build, we can build it green. We can be thinking about our sustainable infrastructure. We can be building transit in a way that helps us reach our climate goals. Having more people, being able to travel within the area that they live by foot or by bike or by bus or by light rail will make a significant decrease on the things that we’re facing with the climate crisis. So I’m really excited to work on this particular issue and also believe that housing, fundamentally, is a major determinant of the things that we’re seeing and housing in our area. This is something, again, we have to grapple with.
[It] has been highly racialized based on who is getting the wealth and income games in our city. Who’s getting access to high earner jobs. The last part of this is also anti-displacement and anti-gentrification strategies that ensure that people can stay in place. I’m thinking about our seniors who as property taxes increase cannot afford to keep their homes. I’m thinking about young people who have grown up here who may not be getting into those pipelines in the higher end of jobs and, as a result, will either spend the rest of their life as renters — though many of them cannot afford that — or they’ll never get to have any type of home ownership.
So we also need to think about co-op models, community land trust, as ways of ensuring that people can also build equity. Equity is how a lot of white folks have been able to build their legacies; send their children to college. Many Black, native, Latinx folks have been excluded from building equity through home ownership. So thinking about co-ops and community land trust is also a huge opportunity to be able to open up that opportunity for equity and wealth building that many communities based on race have been excluded from.
Renee Raketty: Do you support changing zoning rules for [Additional Dwelling Units] ADUs and more dense construction to alleviate the housing crisis? How dense and where would you support ADU development?
Nikkita Oliver: I support changing zoning rules for 80 years and more dense construction to alleviate the housing crisis. ADU’s are an opportunity to build another diversity of housing and build housing for the missing middle but that cannot be our only answer. There has to be much [more] diversity of housing options that we’re doing the work of presenting. So, you know, thinking of quadplexes and other things that can be built. I know that a lot of folks then will push back and say, “What about the character of our communities?” I understand that and also we’re in the midst of a huge affordability and housing crisis. If we continue to allow things to go the rate we’re going, then we’re going to be building a city just for a few and exlude the many. Accepting that density is going to be something that equitably needs to be taken on by all neighborhoods is just a really important factor of building our city in a just an equitable way that is accessible to everyone. Having areas of land that are just fully excluded for some people is not acceptable. That’s not an inclusive city. That is not a city that has a race and social justice initiative.
We need to be reckoning with the fact that our very first comprehensive plan that was put in place in the 1920’s was done so in collaboration with someone by the name of Harland Bartholomew. Harlan Bartholomew was a known segregationist and basically helped us develop our first version of these exclusionary zones that went in place. And then in the 1980’s, we did a huge down-zone that then prevented even more families moving into certain places. So if we’re going to have a city that makes it so everyone who works here can live here, then, we’re going to have to take density on equitably.
Renee Raketty: How do you combat gentrification while also meeting housing needs?
Nikkita Oliver: I think it’s about how you build and it is about acknowledging who doesn’t have access to the housing. There are anti-displacement strategies we can put in place. This is where co-op models and community land trusts are important. This is also where the city getting into housing is key. We have many reports, the Seattle Growth Strategy white paper, the Neighborhoods for All executive summary actually all outlined for us that we know which neighborhoods are most at risk of gentrification and displacement. Yet, [when] we have started our building, the places that we build density; we have built their first. So our strategy is off.
We need to be starting in spaces where we know we will have the least amount of impact while simultaneously doing those things that help keep people in place. This is where thinking about our seniors and the rising cost of property taxes is really important. What are we doing to help folks on fixed incomes be able to maintain their homes? How are we doing one-to-one, replacement of housing? So if we tear down a building that is affordable, are we putting up that one-to-one ratio of affordable units and ensuring that people can come back. Now, that is also really challenging.
I know they’ve said at Yesler Terrace there’s a 100 percent rate of people returning back but that’s of those who wanted to return back. Many people when they left Yesler Terrace, when we literally sold off public land — which I don’t think we should have done — had [to] move. You know that they’d already moved somewhere else, started living in that place, and then chose not to move back because it wasn’t necessarily the best decision for them at that time. So really thinking about when we do tear down buildings that are affordable, are we doing our best job to ensure that folks have a real ability to move back into that space?
Are we preserving our public lands so that we, as a city, can continue to get involved in that? Are we doing the anti-displacement work of addressing rising property taxes and supporting people in staying in their homes? Again, this is where the development needs to be taken on more equitably. We know where folks are living that are most at risk of being displaced. Why do we as a city continue to build density in those areas first rather than prioritizing other areas of the city where, when development is received, people likely won’t be displaced?
Question seven – taxation
Renee Raketty: Seattle has a reputation for having high taxes compared to other Washington cities. A number of initiatives through the years have added incremental taxes to fund transit, homeless programs, education, and the general fund. These taxes are small on paper. A number of one-tenth of one percent taxes have been passed by voters and supported by the Council as an example. Most of these taxes are regressive due to Washington state’s tax structure. Will you pledge no new taxes on the citizens on Seattle? What programs would you want to see cut if you are on the Council?
Nikitta Oliver: I don’t think I can 100% pledge no new taxes on all of the citizens of Seattle or all of the residents, I should say. There are wealthy folks in our communities that don’t pay their fair share in taxes. There are corporations that don’t pay their fair share in taxes. I think that there are taxes to be put in place. I think it’s important for those folks to be paying.
What I can commit to is doing the work of not putting more taxes on those who already pay more and finding ways to eliminate our regressive tax structure which requires that as the city of Seattle to actually be a part of pushing our state Legislature to make those change. [To] do it in a way that doesn’t remove the ability of cities or localities to continue to put in place their own taxes on big business or the wealthy. Our tax structure is very regressive and the wealthiest amongst us pay anywhere from zero to two percent in taxes. Those who have the least pay somewhere from zero to 17 percent. I just don’t think that is acceptable.
We need to do the work of addressing our regressive tax system. There are taxes that we can continue to address around big business that could be augmented or grown. I think we should grow those taxes because our city does need to generate more revenue to meet the immense amount of social needs that exist. We know that when we meet those social needs our city as a whole will be safer.
Renee Raketty: Nikkita, I want to thank you so much. I’m glad that our [readers] will have a chance to hear your positions, understand them more fully, and be able to make a decision in this election.
Nikkita Oliver: Thank you. I appreciate sharing space with you. Thank you so much.
David Obelcz contributed to this story.
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