The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
The Emerald has discovered that Mayor Bruce Harrell received small personal campaign donations from both the CEO of and a department director within ShotSpotter — a gunfire detection system that Harrell has been championing for almost 10 years — in both his 2013 mayoral campaign and his 2021 mayoral campaign.
(This article was originally published on Real Change News and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
For Carolyn E. Bick, journalism must be confrontational and challenge the status quo, even if that risks losing access to powerful people and institutions.
The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
A year ago today, the Emerald published its first story on a whistleblower complaint filed against the Office of Inspector General (OIG). That complaint contained serious allegations — including warnings from OIG leadership to staff to avoid criticizing the OPA in writing — not only against Inspector General Lisa Judge but also against now-former Deputy Inspector General Amy Tsai and now-former Office of Police Accountability (OPA) Dir. Andrew Myerberg.
The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
Author’s Note: This article is one of two released today that discuss issues related to the Office of Police Accountability’s (OPA) contact log complaint classification. Complaints designated as “contact log” are not subject to investigation and are effectively “closed” according to the OPA manual.
This article addresses the OPA’s misclassifications of what appear to be serious, investigation-worthy allegations as contact log complaints. Documents obtained by the Emerald show that these allegations include retaliation and bias, as well as more than 40 complaints against Seattle Police Officer Guild (SPOG) President Mike Solan, grouped together as one complaint and classified as a contact log.
The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
Author’s Note: This article is one of two released today that both discuss issues related to the Office of Police Accountability’s (OPA) contact log complaint classification. Complaints designated as “contact log” are not subject to investigation and are effectively “closed” according to the OPA manual.
This article addresses some of the content of a March 2022 meeting among the federal monitor, members of the monitoring team, and a local lawyer and her colleague attempting to shine light on sexual abuse allegations against Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers. Based on the available evidence, it appears that allegations regarding officer sexual misconduct may exist as “contact log” complaints. However, the federal monitor appears to have dismissed this potential source of sexual abuse data without looking at any of the available contact log complaints.
Member of Federal Monitoring Team Put Onus on Local Lawyer to Reproduce Data, Protect Complainants
by Carolyn Bick
The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
The Emerald has learned that the Community Police Commission has apparently either lost or destroyed survey data pointing to allegations of sexual abuse by Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers.
City Refuses to Answer Essential Questions About Publicly Funded Investigation
by Carolyn Bick
The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
The Emerald has obtained multiple documents that show that former Office of Police Accountability (OPA) Dir. Andrew Myerberg appears to have withheld key information from the Office of Inspector General — the OPA’s accountability partner agency tasked with certifying OPA investigations — by submitting a case for certification and later adding information to the case report. In doing so, and in drawing conclusions from said information, Myerberg appears to have subverted not only the OPA’s own rules and procedures but also the City’s 2017 Accountability Ordinance.
The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
Despite the City bumping up the date for its public OPA director candidate forum several weeks from June 23 to today, June 8, at 6:30 p.m. with little notice to the public ahead of time, the Emerald received over the past several weeks — and yesterday, submitted — a host of questions and comments from readers in response to a public call for reader input a couple of months ago.
The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
In the late morning of June 11, 2020, shortly before 11 a.m., the Seattle Police Department (SPD) released a video of its now-former Chief Carmen Best relaying a message to officers, following the internal and public fallout of the Seattle police’s decision to abandon the East Precinct.
In that video, Best claimed that SPD had received reports of armed people patrolling the area, and that these same armed people “may be demanding payment from business owners in exchange for some of that protection. We’ve also heard that they may be demanding to see identification for people who live in the area. This is not legal.”
But about 17 hours earlier, at 6:10 p.m. on June 10, 2020, Best — along with several other high-ranking City officials, including a host of core mayoral staffers, as well as SPD Assistant Chief Thomas Mahaffey and now-interim Chief Adrian Diaz — received an updated ground intelligence report email from then-acting Dir. of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Laurel Nelson. The report specifically stated that the above claims about extortion and identification demands were untrue, per an OEM staffer’s site visit to investigate the claims.
The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.
During interviews with the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) in 2021, after her retirement, former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best told investigators she was not involved in plans to abandon the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct on June 8, 2020. But text messages obtained by the Emerald tell another story.
According to texts between Best and Assistant Police Chief Lesley Cordner, it appears that Best was in contact with former Mayor Jenny Durkan about the Seattle Police Department (SPD) removing items from the East Precinct and that she was aware, on the morning of June 8, 2020, of a plan to remove firearms, ammunition, and evidence from the building by 5 p.m. that day. (Note: The Emerald has redacted phone numbers that appeared in the above-linked text log transcript.)
