When Mayor Bruce Harrell took office, he summarized his plan for transforming the Seattle Police Department by saying it was all about hiring “the right number and the right kind of officer.” That sound bite, repeated often, reflects a persistent delusion among liberal police reformers that reduces policing’s ills to a matter of mere personnel. According to this view, the path to reform entails weeding out the “bad apples” and recruiting a diverse new generation of cops with a “guardian mindset” and a community-centered outlook.
During the protests over the murder of George Floyd, we heard renewed calls to hire more women officers, who police reformers claim are less likely to use excessive force and more likely to de-escalate. SPD subsequently signed on to the 30 by 30 Pledge, vowing to take steps to increase its proportion of women officers to 30 percent by 2030. It isn’t going so well.
Women officers feature prominently in SPD’s recruiting materials and make up 40% of the “Meet Our Officers” profiles on the department’s webpage, but they account for only 14.4% of sworn officers, just above the national average.
The issue appears to be retention, not recruitment. From 2017 to 2022, women comprised 17% of recruits annually on average, yet the proportion of women officers fell by 1 percentage point during that period.
An SPD spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Before new blood spurs an imagined “culture change,” the “right kind of officer” must first survive in the department’s existing culture. Lawsuits, Office of Police Accountability (OPA) records, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints testify to the mistreatment women face at the department, revealing the harsh reality that SPD just doesn’t seem like a great place for women to work. Among other things, this reality frustrates the City’s efforts to wash away the department’s problems with gestures toward diversity and inclusion.
New Suits
Right now, the City simultaneously faces two high-profile discrimination lawsuits. Denise Bouldin, the public face of the department’s community policing efforts, is suing the City for “daily” racial and gender discrimination. In early January, one of the department’s most senior woman commanders filed a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination after SPD Chief Adrian Diaz unceremoniously demoted her from assistant chief, a position she has held since 2018.
In that latter suit, Capt. Deanna Noellette claims that Diaz has a “history of misogyny,” noting one incident in which he reportedly responded to her concerns about women playing flag football with male officers by suggesting the women could participate as cheerleaders.
The makeup of Diaz’s command team represents one of the suit’s key pieces of evidence. With the exception of one woman assistant chief, SPD top leadership is now entirely composed of men, all of whom are significantly less experienced. Noellette, first promoted to captain a decade ago, now reports to Asst. Chief Daniel Nelson, who was only a lieutenant for less than three years before Diaz tapped him as interim assistant chief. Asst. Chief Tyrone Davis held a lieutenant’s rank for just two years before taking over Special Operations.
In 2022, the City settled a suit by former SPD Lieutenant Christine Robbin for $270,000. Robbin alleged she faced discrimination and “workplace bullying” from then Assistant Chief Eric Greening, whom she claims berated her, humiliated her, and relieved her of duty on several occasions. Robbin was passed over for a promotion to a job considered a stepping stone to captain. That promotion was given to a male lieutenant who allegedly “did not want the position” against the wishes of Robbin’s precinct captain, who had hand-picked her for the job. Robbin alleged that Greening held a vendetta against her for an earlier complaint she filed with the Office of Civil Rights.
Not Just the Top Brass
Work life appears no easier for women further down the chain of command, either. According to a 2022 OPA investigation, a junior woman officer received unwanted attention from a veteran cop that she described as “stalkerish.” She said the officer, Det. Greg Tomlinson, did things that set off her “creep-o-meter,” such as manufacturing reasons to bump into her, pulling strings to get them assigned together, and writing a bizarre letter to her ailing father.
The OPA found Tomlinson didn’t cross the legal threshold for stalking or for violating sexual harassment policies because he didn’t hold rank over her. However, he is a senior officer with prestigious task force assignments, status, and connections, which he apparently used to try to win her affection. The woman officer was later the subject of a frivolous OPA complaint about her lying during the investigation. She had walked back some of her statements—no doubt feeling some pressure. The officer told the OPA that she didn’t want to be “that female officer who complained,” or “that female officer who got special treatment” because a male officer was interested in her.
Another woman officer was allegedly harassed and stalked on the job by her estranged husband, Brian Rees, who is also an SPD officer, according to an affidavit she filed in Snohomish County. The two separated following some conflicts that escalated into violence, she wrote. Rees reportedly would lurk at the precinct where she worked, because he was convinced she was dating another officer. She said he showed up at her new apartment in the middle of the night, accusing her of dating her partner. Rees told her if she were seeing anyone at the precinct, there would be “problems,” and she was scared there would be a “physical confrontation,” according to the affidavit.
The officer told her lieutenant, Matthew Allen, that Rees’s behavior left her “upset and frightened,” but her superiors did little to stop him. Rees was involuntarily transferred but continued to show up at the precinct and wander around for hours after his shift. They did not trespass him from the precinct or facilitate the return of her belongings in a way that respected her comfort or safety, according to the affidavit.
Command arranged for him to bring her belongings to the precinct without consulting her, a scenario she found “embarrassing.” Rees only brought half of the stuff, and Allen encouraged her to get the rest directly from him in the parking lot of the Everett Police Department, though the prospect made her uncomfortable. Unsurprisingly, the woman left the department a few years later. Rees was promoted to sergeant, and Allen became the captain of the West Precinct.
Other male officers have troubling histories that could make them terrifying prospective coworkers for women. Several current SPD officers have faced credible accusations of domestic violence, stalking, and inappropriate behavior, but they remain on the department’s payroll.
Ofc. Daniel Perez-Puga threatened to slash his ex’s tires and allegedly assaulted her. He received a lengthy suspension but wasn’t fired. Another officer, Andrew Swartz, has been on paid leave for more than two years while under investigation for claims that he stalked his ex-girlfriend using an electronic tracking device. Though OPA sustained allegations last fall, he still appears on the roster.
A DV court stripped Officer Benjamin Stanford of his firearm, calling him a high risk for violence. His wife alleged he pushed her down while she was carrying their infant son. In a suspiciously fast investigation, the OPA cleared Stanford without speaking to his wife or any other witnesses who submitted statements supporting her petition for a protective order.
Higher up the chain, Sgt. Scott Moss was arrested after police responded to find his wife with cuts on her hand. He was later acquitted because his wife would not cooperate with the prosecution. Moss wasn’t charged for another incident in which he allegedly assaulted his teen son. He is now a captain.
Some officers have also shown a questionable sense of boundaries vis-à-vis women and yet managed to keep their jobs. Officer Daniel Aguirre only received a training referral for “converting a police contact with a DV victim into a romantic relationship” and helping her retrieve property from her ex. In a similar vein, Officer Marcus Jones was suspended for sliding into the DMs of a DV victim’s girlfriend. Officer Micah Smith used police records to get the phone number of an EMT and sent her unwanted texts, claiming he involuntarily committed people just to see her.
It’s reasonable to assume that a department so tolerant of the way its cops treat civilians might also have a light touch when it comes to disciplining the sexual harassment of its female officers. Indeed, self-described “predator” John Knight groped and harassed female officers in the training section for nearly a decade before he was terminated and charged with sexual assault. John Brooks, the supervisor who oversaw the unit, became a captain.
The department has its work cut out for it if it wants to reach its goal of having 30% women officers in six years. Though SPD’s “women-focused recruiting” materials are chock full of women in uniform smiling, the actual experience of women officers at the department seems decidedly less cheerful. If a woman does somehow survive the boys club of policing and claws her way to the top after years of working cheek-by-jowl with sex pests and abusers, the best she can hope for is getting belittled, passed over, and kicked off a glass cliff. That’s hardly an appealing sales pitch.
“… the best she can hope for is getting belittled, passed over, and kicked off a glass cliff. That’s hardly an appealing sales pitch.”
You forgot, “receiving constant harassment from an activist City Council until she quits.”
‘Carmen Best, Seattle’s first Black police chief, is leaving her post on Wednesday, in the midst of protests against police brutality in her city and across the country.
‘Best announced her resignation last month after the city council approved a proposal to slash the police department budget by $4 million and cut as many as 100 officers from the force. The council had at one point considered cutting the budget in half.
‘”I believe 100% that they were putting me in a position destined to fail. Cutting a police department that already had low staffing numbers, that was already struggling to keep up with the demand,” Best said in an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered on Wednesday. “How are we going to provide for adequate public safety in that environment?”’
(https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/09/02/908808713/outgoing-seattle-police-chief-felt-destined-to-fail-after-cuts-and-public-backla#:~:text=Ducey%2FGetty%20Images-,Seattle%20Police%20Chief%20Carmen%20Best%20announces%20her%20resignation%20at%20a,council%20to%20defund%20her%20department.)
Sadly, SPD is having trouble recruiting any officier–let alone females.
Perhaps it’s because of City Councilmembers like Teresa Mosqueda who encouraged Seattle police officers to stick their guns in their mouths and kill themselves.
Perhaps it’s because Kshama Sawant created a toxic work environment for women in the SPD and called for Chief Carmen Best’s salary to be cut by 40%. What would anyone do if your boss cut your salary by 40%?
Perhaps it’s because pro-crime Tammy Morales pushed to fire 50% of Seattle police officers–extremely toxic.
Luckily we are rid of lunatics like Sawant, Herbold, Mosqueda, and Andrew Lewis. And, Tammy Morales is basic the Donald Trump of Seattle (meaning, no one respects or listens to her blather. Well, expect for the feeble-minded. )
Thus, I bet recruiting both male and female Police officers will improve.
Of course the usual clowns are here completely ignoring all the malfeasance cited in the article and instead focusing, yet again, on how mean former Councilmembers were. No no no it wasn’t being sexually harassed and assaulted on the job by coworkers it was those nasty progressives that made all the women officers quit!
@1 Best retired at the perfect time to maximize her pension don’t be a sucker. Plus if she was really so weak as to resign because of some political rhetoric she wasn’t cut out for the job anyway.
@2 now explain why NYPD are having the same retention issues despite having a cop as mayor
@3: I wasn’t ignoring the information in the article; I was noting the Stranger was ignoring how abuse of female officers went all of the way to the top, and included the elected officials legally charged with budget and oversight of the entire department. (Go ahead — tell us you simply do not understand how that behavior could possibly have contributed in any way, shape, or form towards creating the abusively toxic atmosphere described in the article. We’ll believe you.)
“Best retired at the perfect time to maximize her pension…”
So, you’re saying those Council Members chose exactly the wrong time to harass and antagonize her? Yeah, it’s like there’s a problem or three with making major policy changes in a wholly reactive manner. Who knew?
“Plus if she was really so weak as to resign because of some political rhetoric she wasn’t cut out for the job anyway.”
Amazingly, given the topic is the 2020 Seattle City Council, it wasn’t just preening, posturing, performative, virtue-signaling empty rhetoric. Here, I’ll copy-paste it slower for you this time:
“…city council approved a proposal to slash the police department budget by $4 million and cut as many as 100 officers from the force.”
As someone who was far more familiar than you with being a female police officer noted, right then at that time, she was being set up to fail. So she departed. With her maxed-out pension. Good for her.
Seattle will be damned lucky if the SPD recovers by 2030.
@5 she said she quit because she was “being set up to fail” like Trump says all the legal cases against him are witch hunts. Only the naive or ignorant believe either public statement
@6: Again, less rhetoric, more reality, even more slowwwwwwly for you this time:
“…city council approved a proposal to slash the police department budget by $4 million and cut as many as 100 officers from the force.”
Recall this was in context of the BLM protests, where riots broke out on Capitol Hill (not the CD, not Rainier Valley, not West Seattle) in response to murderous police brutality in Minnesota. (Not Seattle.) Chief Best was expected to keep order in those conditions with far fewer resources? Any sane person would’ve quit under those circumstances, maxxed-out pension or no.
And the misogynist elements within the SPD took careful note of this example the City Council set for them. Recall this Council wasn’t a bunch of racist old white guys, but woke activist social-justice warrior buzzword buzzword f’n buzzword BINGO, which made their very clear lesson to the SPD’s misogynists that much more potent.
Seattle will be damned lucky if the SPD recovers by 2030.
@3 — “@1 Best retired at the perfect time to maximize her pension don’t be a sucker.”
Tell us you don’t understand how LEOFF 2 works without telling us how LEOFF 2 works. Best didn’t “maximize her pension” by retiring. Every additional year she worked she would gain a pension benefit. LEOFF 2 (and PERS 2, and TERS 2, and PSERS 2) pay beneficiaries 2% for each year of service. Every year Best kept working is an additional 2%.
She retired at 28 years of service, which means she gets 56% of her highest 60 consecutive months of salary. Say she stayed on until she had 35 years of service. She’d then have retired with 70% of her high 5.
Now if your argument is that she “maximized her pension” by retiring instead of being fucked over by the council when they tried to drastically reduce the salary of the first Black woman to ever be chief of police, I agree! But be clear about what you mean.
Had the council not tried to drastically reduce the salary of the first Black woman to be SPD chief, she probably would have stuck around, because additional years of service would have increased her pension benefits. But because the council decided to try to reduce the salary of the first Black woman to be chief — something they’d never done with the long list of White men who had been chief — she understandably got fed up and quit.
“Plus if she was really so weak as to resign because of some political rhetoric she wasn’t cut out for the job anyway.”
Yeah, how dare a Black woman get fed up with disparate treatment. She should have just quietly accepted the blatant racism, right?
@8 right, she quit because Council was talking about cutting her pay, not because she was “being set up to fail.” So we agree.
@7 she was planning to quit well before Council passed that proposal (which was vetoed by Durkan anyway). Speaking of “less rhetoric more reality.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-police-chief-carmen-best-asked-for-pension-estimates-2-weeks-before-announcing-retirement/
Trouble recruiting women? How bout trouble recruiting any warm body dumb enough to put their health and safety at risk for nothing.
Thank Seattle’s lefty-prog, semi-communist Seattle council.
@9 — 1. I appreciate the acknowledgement that you were lying when you said Best “maximized her pension.”
The article you posted says Best researched her retirement benefits after Sawant’s proposal to drastically cut her salary, which is the opposite of your assertion that she was planning to quit before.
It would probably be a good idea to stop lying about stuff.
@3, @6, @9: That, years later, we’re still making impassioned (and, in your case, contrafactual) arguments about the City Council’s negative effects on SPD demonstrates conclusively their actions had absolutely no lasting effects on anybody
@11 work on your reading comprehension, I wrote Best planned to retire before Council passed the proposal to reduce SPD budget and staffing, which is accurate. If you’re gonna throw around accusations best to actually know what you’re talking about.
@12 what’s been demonstrated conclusively is that being confronted with actual facts has absolutely no lasting effect on you
@13: Best investigated (not “planned”) retirement after the Council started actively planning to slash her pay, the pay of her fellow officers, and thus her retirement benefits, as your link @9 clearly states from the very first paragraph:
“Shortly after a plan emerged to cut police salaries, and nearly two weeks before she abruptly announced she would step down, Seattle police Chief Carmen Best asked for a formal accounting of how much her pension would pay her if she retired on Sept. 1.”
[…]
“The day before Best’s request, Councilmember Kshama Sawant announced a proposal to cap annual police salaries at $150,000, which, if enacted, would have slashed Best’s pay by more than $140,000 per year and likely throttled any further prospective increases to her monthly benefit upon retirement.”
So if the Council’s proposal had not been vetoed by Mayor Durkan, then Best would indeed have “maximized her pension,” like you wrote @3 — except that you somehow completely forgot to mention the Council’s action would have been entirely responsible for this capping of her pension. So, let’s repeat it again: it’s reality, not rhetoric, as the reason for Best leaving at the time she did.
Try getting your own facts right — which includes quoting correctly what you yourself have very recently written — before you criticize anyone else on that score.
@14 you said she quit because of “harassment” from the Council and her “being set up to fail,” I said it was just about money. Now you agree it was about money but want to argue about why her compensation would have been reduced, which is irrelevant to the question at hand.
But we’re getting far afield from the topic of the article, which was that SPD male officers display a pattern of antisocial, misogynistic behavior against their own fellow officers as well as the public. That said, since you brought up Chief Best allegedly not wanting to lay off cops, I’m reminded that one cop she explicitly did not want to lay off was none other than Marcus Jones who’s cited in the article as sliding into the DMs of the girlfriend of a victim who he met on duty. Seems like maybe Chief Best wasn’t a great judge of character and we all might actually be lucky she quit.
@15: Yes, cutting her salary, thus her pension, and the salaries and pensions of other SPD officers, was the Council harassing her, and setting her up to fail. Those were the Council’s policymaking actions, not their “rhetoric,” as you had wrongly claimed.
“…why her compensation would have been reduced, which is irrelevant to the question at hand.”
“Why her compensation would have been reduced,” was the Council’s action, which you somehow completely failed to include in your reason for why she quit when she did. The Council’s action was absolutely relevant, as drastically cutting an employee’s pay forms a completely understandable reason for that employee to leave. Your claim she quit because she just didn’t like their rhetorical clowning again fails, because a better explanation already existed.
“That said, since you brought up Chief Best allegedly not wanting to lay off cops, I’m reminded that one cop she explicitly did not want to lay off was none other than Marcus Jones who’s cited in the article as sliding into the DMs of the girlfriend of a victim who he met on duty. Seems like maybe Chief Best wasn’t a great judge of character and we all might actually be lucky she quit.”
The Council hounded Best into quitting in 2020, and newly-hired Marcus Jones was upset by her leaving. His misbehavior happened in 2021, so I’m guessing her failure to predict the future or read his mind is your problem here? Or maybe the Council’s action, to hound Best into quitting, had a negative influence on Jones that has not been previously recognized? If the latter is true, then it validates what @2 and I wrote about the Council’s role in maintaining or even exacerbating the misogynistic attitudes within SPD.
@16 did you really just suggest that the Council, by slightly reducing the Chief’s salary after which she quit, was responsible for this cop engaging in creepy, borderline predatory internet behavior? Are you for real?
@16: “… the Council, by slightly reducing the Chief’s salary…”
Math is hard! From your link @9:
“… Councilmember Kshama Sawant announced a proposal to cap annual police salaries at $150,000, which, if enacted, would have slashed Best’s pay by more than $140,000 per year and likely throttled any further prospective increases to her monthly benefit upon retirement.”
(They ultimately proved unable to make completely good on that threat, but that was the threat they publicly delivered, and which Best had to take seriously in her planning.)
“…did you really just suggest…”
I didn’t merely suggest it, it stated it was a possibility, which it is. You were the one faulting Best for not predicting every last one of the future effects of the Council’s hounding Best from office. Marcus Jones intended to work for an organization headed by Carmen Best. They were even photographed together, https://divestspd.substack.com/p/cop-gets-lengthy-suspension-for-sending. The Council arbitrarily took that away from him, for no good reason. Who knows what effect that may have had upon the young man?
@18 “Marcus Jones intended to work for an organization headed by Carmen Best. They were even photographed together. The Council arbitrarily took that away from him, for no good reason. Who knows what effect that may have had upon the young man?”
A+ performance art, of all the daily commenters here you’re easily the most fun
good ole wormtongue
more fun than a barrel
of monkees & equally
enlightening. you Go
girl!
@19: Tell us you have no idea how large organizations work, without explicitly admitting you have no idea how large organizations work. (Also, good work on sticking to the Sawantist Party Line, wherein no amount of reckless stupidity by the Council of that period could possibly have any negative effect upon anything.)
@20: What’s your very own personal double-secret definition of “genocide,” again? The one which magically applies only to one side of any conflict you’ve taken sides on? (You know, that one.)
@21 I’m trying to give you a compliment. Obviously nobody thinks an organization’s CEO resigning would turn a line employee into a creepy weirdo, but you made just that argument in almost-believable earnest. You have a real talent
Why can’t SPD recruit women? One word: misogyny.
All I know is Diaz and Harrell inspire a lot of confidence.
@22: It’s more about proper development of an employee, which brings us back to leadership. By your own statements here, the Council engaged in abusive rhetoric against the first female BIPOC SPD Chief in Seattle’s history, ultimately hounding her to quit by threatening her own salary, her own pension, and her ability to hire, to develop, and to retain officers. What lessons should the rest of the SPD have taken from these blatant abuses of the Council’s powers?
You’ve made an entire thread here out of belittling these abuses, claiming it was the victims’ (Best and SPD) fault they didn’t just buck it up and continue doing a good job for the city whose elected leaders were openly despising the SPD’s very existence. Aren’t “progressives” supposed to be “woke” as to the ill effects of such abuses? Why was it ok for women of color on the Council to behave this way? Why are you still victim-blaming, years after voters have shown no tolerance for such victimizing behaviors?
@25 rookie cops need “proper employee development” to not engage in stalking behavior? You’re a treasure
@26
Seafair Pirates
know well what
to do with ‘treasure.’
and for once
I’m on Their side.
@25 Best should have resigned or been fired by the Mayor after the precinct abandonment/CHOP-CHAZ de-policing debacle, so good on the Council for being the only adults in the room.