From the KUOW report
As he campaigns for reelection, Mayor Bruce Harrell has a gun problem.
KUOW reported new details this week from a 1996 incident where the then 37-year-old lawyer working in Nebraska pulled a gun on a man and a woman in a dispute over a parking spot at an Iowa casino.
“We was like, ‘What the hell is going on?!” the woman, who was eight months pregnant at the time, told KUOW recalling the incident 30 years later. “It scared us.”
KUOW broke the story on Harrell’s 1996 arrest in February but the new reporting provides perspective from the couple on other end of the dispute and details how the case was dismissed and never addressed as Harrell rose at City Hall as a member of the city council and then Seattle’s mayor.
The small incident made news at the time, KUOW reports, because Harrell had been appointed to a housing authority board in Omaha. Harrell admitted to “displaying a gun” but said it was because of death threats he received after the appointment.
After he was arrested and booked in the gun incident, KUOW says Harrell removed his name for consideration for the board. The case, however, was eventually dropped.
Harrell’s spokesperson told KUOW this week the mayor was the victim. “In some ways, this was an introduction to the hostilities the mayor would receive as a public servant, and reminiscent of the treatment and bigotry he has received throughout his life as a biracial person by people of all races and backgrounds who see him as different,” the spokesperson told KUOW.
The spokesperson told KUOW Harrell hired a law firm in 1996 “to write to the casino that Harrell’s constitutional rights were violated because of ‘unreasonable search and seizures based on racial profiling'” but no lawsuit was filed.
The controversy over the incident is tempered by time and distance but will be another talking point in the 2025 election season. CHS reported here on the challenges Harrell and other Seattle incumbents face standing strong against the Trump administration while also not attracting vindictive attention from Washington D.C.
Harrell is shaping his reelection campaign with themes around “common values,” “public safety solutions,” and “proven leadership to stand up for our values.” So far, his field of challengers is limited to candidates with little or no political experience in the city.
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He’s exactly who you thought he was. Guy that would pull a gun on a woman for a parking spot. Total dirtbag.
A black man in Iowa in the mid-90’s?
As the original KOUW article says, the police only gave them a partial report, not the full report.
Dude crying racism for pulling a gun on people. The far left will love him for this in Seattle.
Ok
So the police knew he had a gun
The people knew he had a gun
It was all a racial set up?
That’s the story you are going with as most likely?
Thank you Capitol Hill News for your coverage.The Seattle Times, KING5, KOMO and KIRO only “reported” the initial, very basic info. as well as the Mayor’s spin on his 1996 arrest on gun charges, when they came to light two weeks ago and then they all dropped it. Only Ashley Hiruko at KUOW stayed with the story.
This is why we need public media. We need journalists like Ms. Hiruko who are committed to high journalistic standards and to following the facts, instead of the whims and wishes of the rich and powerful.
Read KUOW’s reporting and you’ll quickly understand that the now-Mayor pulled a gun on three people of very modest means — a pregnant woman, her husband and her mother all over a parking space. The now-Mayor wasn’t approached by a menacing bunch of men whom he felt threatened by — instead he “displayed” his gun because he felt empowered to do so.
Yes, Ashley Hiruko is currently the only journalist in Seattle willing to do real investigative journalism (going beyond both-sides nonsense) AND willing to push back against entrenched interests.
Judging by Harrell’s track record with housing, particularly with whom he sided in the most recent special election, it sounds like the Omaha Housing Authority dodged a bullet in this case.
He’s a fraud. Didn’t need this info to come out to know he’s phony and pathetic. He’s the joke while he fancies himself a comedian, smarter than the rest of us and ego maniac. At least locals are standing up. This place is so passive it can be infuriating! And then that emotion scares people while at the same time claiming to be outspoken and fighting for the people. What? Basackwards place.
No, Harrell does not have a “gun problem.” This is not a 29 year old story about a mayor and a gun. It is a story about Harrell’s lifelong willingness to be a toady for powerful moneyed interests and flagrantly lying and gas lighting when it serves his interests (and the interests he serves).
To the horror of Omaha’s Black community a right wing racist Republican mayor appointed Harrell to the housing authority in 1996. He was seen by the Black community as a toady and carpetbagger (someone who only moved to Omaha a year prior and lived in a wealthy neighborhood).
There were no death threats, just the proper and righteous anger of the Black community. He got into a testosterone fuelled dispute over a parking space and then felt compelled to lie about it then, as he does now. He threatened a Mexican-American family and was perceived, at the time, as being Mexican-American/Hispanic himself.
The police report at the time reveals that Harrell directly denied having a gun — despite three witnesses that saw it and correctly described it — and Harrell never claimed in the police report that he had a gun for protection from supposed death threats until AFTER his arrest and withdrawing from being nominated for the housing authority.
This is fundamentally a story about the consistency of Harrell’s toadyism for moneyed interests, his fragile ego, his bullying, and his willingness to lie knowing that he has escaped accountability for decades.
Thanks for really spelling this out, great comment! Really wild that this wasn’t uncovered during his first mayoral campaign, but as you say it’s par for the course for what he’s done since and really shows the longevity of that pattern.
Seattle needs a truly progressive Mayor for once. We need to end the days of bowing down to corporate interests and put the needs of majority ahead of the needs of the wealthy few. I really hope this news leads to at least one or two serious challengers with a progressive vision for Seattle.
We don’t need a “truly progressive” mayor who will tolerate open air drug markets, homeless camping on streets and parks, and crime in general, all in the name of restorative justice. Harrel has at least made solid progress on cleaning up Seattle. Let’s not return to the progressive psychobabble of Sawant and her ilk.
Has he made solid progress? Most of the programs they are using are ones created by the previous progressive councils, many of which were watered down by corporate capital D Democrat mayors and their administrations that were more interested in the short term gains of the tech industry than actually building out housing and other things Seattle needs. Those industries continue to fight against the basic things we need, like housing and quality schools, that are the root cause of this issue. Have you been to Grants Pass or any other city with a large population of people experiencing homelessness? These are national issues from a false economic recovery to the 2008 housing crisis, a corporate caused opioid epidemic, and then the immense trauma of COVID. Up until recently the 9th circuit ruling made it illegal to outlaw camping, meaning all of those sweeps without adequate shelter and housing is a massive waste of resources. All the while Seattle mayors have fought attempts to make progressive taxation and housing proposals that would actually help address these issues.
Agree! SanFrancisco, Oakland, and Portland have all learned the lessons of having a “truly progressive” mayor. Seattle can learn from those cities and not repeat their mistake.
Those were not truly progressive mayors, they were capital D Democrats cut from the same cloth as the mayors Seattle has had in the same period… I’m talking someone that is not beholden to a corporate party using performative progressivism to obtain power, but truly progressive and working for the people towards positive progressive solutions without backroom dealing or deleting texts.
Another mayor another scandal.