(Image: SPD)
New Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes chose the look of a civilian executive as he was introduced to the city with media interviews and press releases this week.
Barnes has promised to hit the ground running. “I want to have my command staff fully set within the first 100 days,” Barnes said during a TV interview, according to the SPD’s announcement of the start of his command. “We will be making sure we’re establishing a culture of excellence and procedural justice within the department. People need to know their voices matter.”
With the arrival of Barnes, Mayor Bruce Harrell has placed an outsider at the top of the Seattle Police Department. His selection marks the first time the city has turned to someone from outside the department for years. Chief Kathleen O’Toole who stepped down in 2017 after leading SPD for four years after coming to the city from Boston, assisted in the selection of Barnes, the city says.
The former Madison, Wisconsin chief now leads a force with just over 1,000 sworn officers that just barely reversed a long trend of hiring struggles. The department reports it made 84 successful hires in 2024 — one more officer than it lost.
Barnes says he is beginning his Seattle command with support for growing the city’s CARE mental and behavioral health emergencies team and restoring investments in school resource officers, according to media reports. In the official SPD announcement, Barnes said his priorities “include recruitment and retention; crime prevention; employee safety and wellness; community engagement; and creating new community partnerships.”
Former King County Sheriff Sue Rahr, meanwhile, now steps aside after an effective eight-month interim run leading the department while making it clear she did not want the full-time job.
The selection of Barnes comes after Seattle finally parted ways with its last chief. Adrian Diaz has been fired after hanging on for months after being removed from the job while an investigation into an alleged improper sexual relationship with his chief of staff was concluded.
Diaz’s run as chief began in 2020 after Carmen Best’s decision to resign over what she said were frustrations with efforts to lay off police officers following criticism of her response to her handling of CHOP and the 2020 protests. Best said she could not be part of any layoffs. Then-Mayor Jenny Durkan piled on, levying heavy criticism on the city council.
Harrell’s office has touted statistics from Barnes’s time leading the Madison department including a 67% decrease in homicides, a 40% decrease in auto thefts, and a 19% decrease in reports of shots fired so far in 2024, “as well as advancing strategies to build an inclusive police service where 28% of officers are women.”
Barnes is Black and has over 12 years of police command-level experience, including patrol, training, and recruitment, and served as “a civilian police accountability executive” in Chicago, where he helped meet the training plan requirements of a federal consent decree.
To start 2025 as he begins his campaign for a second term leading the city and adds Barnes to the city’s leadership, Harrell has said the “surge” in applications for the department is a sign “Seattle is seeing meaningful improvements” despite a nationwide challenge in police recruiting.
Paying cops more is also helping. Seattle ranked 29th in the region to start 2024 for base pay for its new recruits an issue the bonus program won’t address. The city and the Seattle Police Officers Guild arrived at a new contract last spring that boosted pay 23%.
The city says new recruits now start at a $103,000 a year salary with a $7,500 hiring incentive, and qualified lateral transfers from another agency start at $116,000 with a $50,000 incentive.
While the numbers indicate progress on hiring new cops, Seattle has seen surges in crime and a reduction in service from its police force. In the East Precinct, response times for the lowest priority 911 calls have climbed above one hour. Meanwhile, a surge in gun violence, shootings, and homicides that started during the pandemic has not fully subsided.
Calls for the return of support school resource officers have grown in Seattle after gun violence incidents including last year’s killing of a student during a lunch hour altercation in the parking lot of Garfield HIgh School.
Barnes says he supports having more officers in schools in experience shaped by recent tragedy. His selection came amidst the Madison Police Department’s response and investigation to the Abundant Life Christian School shooting.
Meanwhile, growth of the city’s CARE team will include a new facility on Capitol Hill. CHS reported here on the effort to establish a new CARE team service center in a former bank on Broadway.
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