Chief Barnes, left, looks on at a ceremony marking the promotion of Tietjen at the East Precinct (Image: SPD)
Chief Shon Barnes has named an officer with a questionable record on Capitol HIll to lead the East Precinct.
The Seattle Police Department announced the promotion of Michael Tietjen to East Precinct Commander last month.
UPDATE 11:20 AM: Publicola reports that Chief Barnes is removing Tietjen and will assign a new commander following criticism of the promotion and “a crisis of confidence among our LGBTQIA+ community members.”
Publicola reports this week that, despite a history of department violations, Tietjen was selected to replace Doug Raguso, a acting commander who had been active in improving the precinct’s relationship with Capitol Hill’s LGBTQ and nightlife business communities.
In August 2020, CHS reported as one of the incidents was caught on video when an SPD sergeant was placed on administrative leave after being caught driving an SUV onto a sidewalk and nearly striking a group of protesters and comparing them to cockroaches.
Publicola reports Tietjen was reassigned to a new precinct after that incident and details another incident in which Tietjen was disciplined after “four officers, including him, pulled up on a trans woman who was walking along the sidewalk and allegedly harassed her by asking her if she ‘had a dick under’ her skirt.”
Tietjen’s promotion came as part of the selection of three new precinct commanders by Barnes announced last month including leaders in the West and South Precincts.
“Their advancement is not only a reflection of personal achievement but also a testament to the values of dedication, integrity, and leadership that we need at every level of this department,” Barnes said in the announcement.
CHS has asked SPD for more information on the selection of Tietjen and how the Office of Police Accountability findings involving Tietjen-related investigations in the East Precinct were considered by the chief.
UPDATE 10/10/2025: SPD has provided a statement on the selection — and reversal.
In the statement, SPD command makes a pledge you my have thought would already be compulsory, promising “a full review of the person’s history” before future promotions:
This summer, SPD proudly continued to build support and collaboration across the community of Seattle through extensive neighborhood meetings and district public safety forums.
After a recent standard promotion process where we promoted several highly qualified candidates, we received additional information and feedback that had not been previously surfaced. As Mayor Harrell has said, we are a learning organization, and the SPD executive team took this as an opportunity to improve the process.
Moving forward, promotional decisions will feature a full review of the person’s history to ensure we place the right candidate in the right position. As a department, we are committed to bolstering relationships throughout Seattle and continuous improvement.
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Don’t worry about the hurriedly rushed-in CCTV system in our neighborhood guys…this degenerate is now in charge of the footage!!! Thanks Joy! Thanks Bruce!!
Gee, no wonder the students at Garfield don’t want these creeps anywhere near their school!
2020 was a tense and crazy time on Capitol Hill. The police response was definitely problematic, and I understand the concern around these incidents. The radicalized activists that occupied the neighborhood, resulting in several murders, many assaults including on police officers, and millions of dollars in damages weren’t exactly angels either. I hope we all learned something from the 2020 CHAZ/CHOP folly and the de-policing that followed and are committed to doing better in 2025. While these past incidents are troubling, I suspect it isn’t the full story. Let’s give him a chance and see if he can restore order to Capitol Hill. Since his promotion, I have already seen an improvement in the neighborhood in the last two months with long festering issues finally being addressed. Conditions deteriorated substantially under the leadership of the previous East Precinct commander, and I am glad to see him gone. If this trend continues and there are no more homophobic issues, I will give the new guy the benefit of the doubt.
What are you talking about? This is the guy who attacks the very people he is entrusted to protect. I live two blocks away from the precinct and just a couple of weeks ago a trans woman was bashed into the sidewalk in front of our building by group of hoodlums. If Tietjen was driving by, I imagine he would have been cheering them along.
If there had been improvements in this neighborhood as a result of his assignment, I sure as hell haven’t seen them. The neighborhood is still struggling, except now the guy they put in charge of it is a hoodlum himself. Good riddance. How about bringing in someone with a smidge of decency and humanity in them for a change?
Is it fair to judge people for what we *imagine* they would do?
wow…that’s quite a rant. You’ve been proven wrong, again.
The new boss at the east precinct got fired because he’s pond scum for a cop.
From Publicola:
“That same summer, Tietjen was reprimanded for failing to act when he was in an SUV full of police who allegedly harassed a trans woman, asking her if she “had a dick under” her skirt. Tiejten has a child who is part of the LGBTQ+ community, from whom he is estranged.”
How about seeing if he can reconcile with his own flesh and blood before giving him the “benefit of the doubt”
I am usually on the pro-law inforcement side, but this is why the SPD connot get support from the community. Sadly the SPD cannot police itself, how can they be trusted? This guy is an obvious homophobe, never should have been promoted above sgt and should have been demoted, but the SPD union is just too strong and too homophobic and racist. And don’t want to hear about it is just a few bad apples. This guy is one of the rotten apples. I am all for a well funded SPD if it is capable of weeding out the bad apples and doing the job. So far they are not capable or willing to try.
Even if it is “a few bad apples…” the second half of that phrase is “…spoils the bunch!!!” Gotta throw them all out and get a whole new batch of apples if you want to be sure you won’t accidentally get another apple that’s rotten to the core.
That phrase gets misused so often by supporters of the police who want to paint over their systemic crimes as being perpetrated by just a few individual violent offenders, when in reality, the system of policing in our country needs to be completely reformed based on all evidence gathered by civil rights watch groups, from violent incidents, to bottom of the barrel clearance rates, to Blue Flu–and the ease of locating the “few bad apples” in each department all across the US due to their heinous actions, year after year, is indicative of a serious culture problem coming from within the US policing structure and training programs as a whole.
For one, we could stop sending local police departments to Israel to get trained by the IOF in the implementation of fascist crowd control tactics.
Interesting. Tietjen showed up at the last CHCC meeting and was very receptive to concerns; he specifically seemed to be interfacing with the CPC oversight team (also at the meeting) quite well.