On July 26, Seattle police officers standing approximately 100 feet from the Armory took an alleged Bite of Seattle shooter into custody in 20 to 30 seconds; yet the public waited five hours for the first official public safety briefing. That is not a communications hiccup; that is a leadership failure.
Seattle Police Department’s after-action report, released on Monday, now says it plainly: “Senior and Elected Officials distracted sworn staff from completing timely public safety information and on-scene decision making.”
The first public briefing followed two internal ones — one with commanders and then-Chief Shon Barnes, another with elected officials — rather than preceding them. The report calls it a five-hour public information gap; however, families, vendors, people locked in nearby buildings, and a region watching videos of chaos did not need another closed-door meeting. They needed to know whether the threat was over — plain and simple.
The SPD after action report lists Mayor Katie Wilson, Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt, Gov. Bob Ferguson, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Councilmember Bob Kettle, and others who were on scene at various points throughout the evening. Fine. Dignitaries show up after a mass shooting. That is not the issue.
The issue is who sets the order of business…who decided the public would wait while officials were briefed first? Who allegedly allowed the presence of senior and elected officials to pull sworn staff away from timely alerts and on-scene decisions?
Katie Wilson, you are the mayor of Seattle, the city’s chief executive. Not the governor. Not a member of Congress. Not a former chief sitting in on an internal call. You. If the SPD after action report is accurate, either you allowed that distraction or you failed to stop it.
The Lynnwood Times, located some 20 miles north from the incident, reported radio traffic that night while official silence stretched on for hours.
🚨#BreakingNews 2 killed, toddler among wounded in Seattle Center shooting during Bite of Seattle
Two people were killed and at least four others were wounded, including a toddler, in a shooting Sunday evening at Seattle Center during the annual Bite of Seattle food festival,… pic.twitter.com/nZASrti96R
Officers were already establishing a command post, moving in pairs, treating the grounds as a crime scene, and checking the IMAX after a possible second suspect was reported. A toddler was among the wounded. Two people were dead at the scene; a third would die at Harborview. The public was left to stitch the picture together from scanners, social media, and rumors.
Mayor Wilson, you have been mayor for only a short time. New executives make mistakes. The mistake here was treating public safety information as something that could wait for the “right people” to assemble.
Blaming “senior and elected officials” for information delays is not accountability, it is deflection.
Today, Governor Bob Ferguson, the chief executive of the great state of Washington, who is responsible for the well-being of 8 million souls and an $895 billion economy, had to issue a statement refusing the implied blame of “senior and elected officials” from SPD’s report contributing to delays in messaging to the public.
Gov. Ferguson has a state to run, including wildfire recovery and a budget that does not pause for Seattle’s messaging disputes. Rep. Jayapal is a member of Congress, not Seattle’s incident commander. If they complicated the scene, the person with the authority to manage that complication was you, the mayor of Seattle.
Own the decision making or lack thereof…own the five hours. Say the public should have been briefed before the internal and political briefings, not after. Then implement the report’s recommendations and stop the constant relitigating about who stood where.
This is not high-school he-said, she-said — this is the real world with real-life consequences. We have three people who are dead and at least one suspect remains outstanding. The city cannot afford a mayor who treats a documented communications failure as someone else’s distraction.
This is becoming an embarrassment for your administration and is conveying a lack of confidence in your integrity as a leader.
Own it. Fix it. Move on. And bring justice to the victims and their families!
Mario Lotmore, Publisher of the Lynnwood Times
COMMENTARY DISCLAIMER: The views and comments expressed are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the Lynnwood Times nor any of its affiliates.
Author: Mario Lotmore
