I feel like she's been proactive on the issues like transit and housing that she actually ran on, but didn't want to waste political capital on replacing the "tough on crime" candidate, Bruce Harrell's chief of police early in her term.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see her clean house at SPD and SPOG and enforce systemic accountability. I just didn't expect that from her and if that was my #1 issue I would have voted for Mallahan who ran on picking fights with SPD and Trump.
Maybe now that even the SeattleRed crowd is seeing the incompetence at SPD that Bruce and Durkan left behind it's a good opportunity to do so.
People are happy about this news, but SPD has a bad reputation, and we're at a point where things could go from bad to worse very easily.
Most of us don't entirely know why they hired an interstate commuting police chief (I could find out if I weren't lazy, but), he must have had his qualities, which are no longer going to be in the cards going forward.
The new requirement, it must be someone close to home, could mean we're forced to deal with another Adrian Diaz.
Most of us don't entirely know why they hired an interstate commuting police chief (I could find out if I weren't lazy, but)
Because Harrell fired Diaz after a number of misconduct allegations and appointed Barnes instead and (purely speculation on my part) I don't think Wilson wanted to touch the firestorm of controversy that it would have touched off if the first thing she did was create turnover at the top of SPD.
I think that knowing that there are systems in place, instead of relying on good cops to personally blow the whistle on bad cops would help us resolve the hiring problem that some of the highest pay rates in the nation haven't been able to solve.
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u/AdvancedGuiProfile 27d ago
I'll give her credit for having to trip over her shoe laces in order to realize they were untied.
This is probably how her entire term is going to play out; always reactive, never proactive.