McGinn Jumps, Stumbles Over Shark
  • McGinn Jumps, Stumbles Over Shark

The mayor just appointed John Diaz, who oversaw the most miserable failure of accountability and response to misconduct in SPD's recent history, as Seattle's next police chief. At a press conference in City Hall, currently underway, Mike McGinn cites the hunt for Maurice Clemmons as a reason to pick interim Chief Diaz for the position permanently. He hasn't said anything about Diaz overseeing a force that allowed an egregious act of police misconduct to go uninvestigated for a week and allow the officer to stay on the street until the issue blew up in the news. Nor does he mention that Diaz is responsible for an opaque department that has fought police transparency and reduced access to police reports, behind a growing problem of neighborhoods irritated that police are less and less accessible, and oversaw a department conducting a crackdown last fall on bars.

Cienna will have more later.