Four female employees are suing SPD for alleged harassment and sexual discrimination by Chief Adrian Diaz and other leaders. The pod dissects and debates.
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[00:00:00] .
[00:00:01] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice, the only source of balanced
[00:00:15] news about the goings on in the city here of Seattle.
[00:00:18] I'm David Hyde with Erica C. Barnett of Publicola and political consultant Sandeep Kaushik.
[00:00:23] And today we're talking about a lawsuit by several Seattle Police Department female employees
[00:00:29] alleging sexual discrimination and harassment by Chief Diaz and other department leaders.
[00:00:35] Erica C. Barnett, you've also been tracking this story.
[00:00:39] Tell us what's going on.
[00:00:40] What's at stake here?
[00:00:41] So basically the allegations in this tort claim against the city are about primarily
[00:00:46] about Chief Adrian Diaz and Sergeant John O'Neill, who's head of the SPDs communications
[00:00:52] division.
[00:00:53] And they're pretty gross.
[00:00:55] There are allegations about O'Neill sidling up to one of his subordinates and putting
[00:01:02] his leg against hers.
[00:01:03] O'Neill allegedly manipulating another subordinate into a situation where they were having dinner
[00:01:10] alone when she thought that it was going to be a group affair and bragging, according
[00:01:16] to the claim, that he was really good at sex.
[00:01:21] And Chief Diaz allegedly invited another subordinate out to be in his car without a security detail
[00:01:30] on New Year's Eve.
[00:01:31] She was very concerned about that because she said she was worried he would try to
[00:01:34] kiss her.
[00:01:36] And there's a lot more in the claim, but that just kind of gives you a flavor
[00:01:39] of the stuff that these women are alleging and it's for women that they're alleging
[00:01:44] are part of a pattern and practice of behavior from these two men in particular.
[00:01:48] That speaks to the culture SPD in general.
[00:01:52] Sadeep Kashyik, it feels like the stories have been building to this one.
[00:01:57] What are you hearing from insiders in the city of Seattle?
[00:02:01] Not a whole lot.
[00:02:02] I mean, first of all, this lawsuit is pretty fresh.
[00:02:04] It just got filed.
[00:02:08] As Erica says, there are a number of allegations in here about two different sets of allegations.
[00:02:15] One about the Chief Diaz and one about this other command officer, Sergeant O'Neil,
[00:02:23] as well as some allegations against a woman at SPD who's part of the HR department
[00:02:28] as well as I understand it.
[00:02:29] So there's a lot there in these allegations, as Erica says.
[00:02:33] Some of this stuff is pretty serious and taken at face value.
[00:02:36] They do add up to a pretty searing indictment of, at a minimum, some obliviousness on
[00:02:42] the part of the chief to some of the bad goings on in terms of how female officers
[00:02:47] are being treated by their males, at least in some cases by male superiors.
[00:02:53] But they are just at this point, it's a lawsuit that just got filed.
[00:02:59] It's just allegations at this point.
[00:03:01] Chief Diaz has denied the veracity of this stuff.
[00:03:05] And so I think my very preliminary sense of this in terms of the powers at Beard
[00:03:11] City Hall is that people are taking a kind of wait and see attitude and trying to figure
[00:03:16] out how this whole kind of tangled web of allegations and lawsuits and what have you
[00:03:21] are going to sort out.
[00:03:24] I don't think it's that tangled, to be honest.
[00:03:26] I mean, you know, I reported on some of the stuff back in February, not related
[00:03:30] to this lawsuit, which is obviously new, but I mean, it's been building.
[00:03:34] The the allegations against O'Neil, I mean, are pretty well established.
[00:03:39] I've read a lot of the sort of previous EEO cases that were filed, and he does
[00:03:44] tend to file sort of what could be considered retaliatory EEO cases against
[00:03:51] women who have filed cases against him.
[00:03:53] And, you know, I mean, the stuff that's in there is pretty alarming.
[00:03:57] And he essentially, you know, I would say, if not drove out all of the women
[00:04:03] from his division. I mean, certainly they're all gone and two of them who
[00:04:07] are among the plaintiffs in this lawsuit took demotions to get away from him.
[00:04:11] And, you know, I think that, yes, these are it is a new lawsuit.
[00:04:15] But I think the pattern and practice of misogynistic attitudes within SPD,
[00:04:21] as well as things that are more criminal in nature or sexual harassment,
[00:04:28] things like that. I mean, I think that's a pattern that's been pretty well
[00:04:31] established at this point. I don't think we have to say the jury is out on
[00:04:34] whether SPD is a misogynistic culture.
[00:04:36] It is. And whether it's a bad place for women to work, women are saying that it
[00:04:40] is. And, you know, I tend to believe them just like I would believe anybody
[00:04:44] who said, you know, my job is shitty because of the men who are, you know,
[00:04:48] who are making it shitty.
[00:04:50] There's also a practice of sort of not letting women advance up the ranks.
[00:04:54] The power dynamic at SPD is quite clear.
[00:04:57] And I think it, you know, as I've mentioned before, I mean, this is why
[00:05:01] they can't get to 30 percent women, which is allegedly their goal in the next
[00:05:06] six years. I reported recently that in their in their latest class of recruits,
[00:05:12] the people who passed the test to kind of go on to the next stage of being
[00:05:17] SPD officers, 7 percent were women, 7 percent.
[00:05:20] That was also reflected in the number who who applied.
[00:05:23] It was like 9 percent. So there is a reason that women don't want to be
[00:05:27] cops in this in this particular department.
[00:05:30] I think we're seeing it in these allegations.
[00:05:32] It's just not a great place for women to be and they don't feel comfortable
[00:05:34] there.
[00:05:35] So, look, I do think some of the allegations made against O'Neill are
[00:05:39] serious and certainly paint a picture of him as a kind of, you know,
[00:05:43] rogue out of bounds boss that's been engaging in sexually harassing
[00:05:49] kinds of behaviors. Right.
[00:05:50] But I think it's also really important that we note here that that
[00:05:54] there have been previous sort of complaints filed against O'Neill by some
[00:05:57] of these women that have been investigated and dismissed.
[00:06:00] Right. Well, let's talk about Rebecca.
[00:06:03] Well, if you let me sort of sort of go on and finish my point, like I said,
[00:06:06] these are serious allegations, but they're sort of allegations at this
[00:06:10] point. And I think two things here could be true simultaneously.
[00:06:14] One, I'm not sure I'd go all the way to where you go, Erica,
[00:06:17] about saying it's a settled issue that SPD is deeply misogynistic
[00:06:23] sexist organization. Nonetheless, I think it's very plausible
[00:06:27] that they have some pretty serious cultural problems at SPD in terms of how
[00:06:31] women are treated in the organization.
[00:06:32] You really think it's a question whether SPD is misogynistic culture?
[00:06:37] What is your evidence to the contrary?
[00:06:40] Look, I think I'm mostly agreeing with you here is that I do think we
[00:06:45] know SPD has cultural problems.
[00:06:46] Right. And I think that that almost certainly does include how women are
[00:06:51] treated in the department vis-Ă -vis men.
[00:06:54] And it would not surprise me at all if some of these allegations that are
[00:06:57] being or all of these allegations that are being made against either O'Neill
[00:07:00] or Diaz turn out to be substantiated.
[00:07:03] Right. But there needs to be some due process here.
[00:07:06] And these things do need to be investigated and adjudicated before we
[00:07:09] start condemning people to the fires of sort of misogynistic hell.
[00:07:14] Right. Like, I don't think it's I don't think you have to condemn
[00:07:18] people to hell to say that misogyny is a cultural problem within society
[00:07:23] at large. And I agree with you.
[00:07:24] It is a problem within society.
[00:07:26] It's not like that.
[00:07:27] And, you know, within every large organization, there are there
[00:07:31] there are issues around misogyny.
[00:07:34] Right. I don't disagree with you about that.
[00:07:36] Is it is it is SPD like a hundred times worse than any other
[00:07:40] organization? I don't know yet.
[00:07:41] Here what we've got is really specific examples of illegal,
[00:07:46] if they're true, gender discrimination.
[00:07:47] I mean, all kinds of examples of illegal activity within within SPD.
[00:07:52] I mean, it's not just a cultural problem.
[00:07:55] It's it's not legal.
[00:07:56] Right. Of course.
[00:07:58] But related to O'Neill, let's be really clear here.
[00:08:00] There have been some previous allegations filed against him
[00:08:04] that have gone through an investigation process.
[00:08:07] And my understanding is that they were not not sustained.
[00:08:10] That doesn't mean he didn't do it right.
[00:08:12] But it but it but it does mean we've got to we've got to at least
[00:08:15] pay attention to some of that.
[00:08:16] So let's go to, you know, one of the issues that was raised
[00:08:19] in these lawsuits is that the EEO investigator,
[00:08:23] Rebecca McKechnie, often sort of not only sides with the men
[00:08:28] who are being accused of harassment, you know, discrimination, et cetera,
[00:08:32] but, you know, is very, you know, aggressive in interviewing
[00:08:38] the women and sort of turning things back around on them
[00:08:40] and accusing them of somehow misbehaving.
[00:08:42] And I've read a lot of transcripts of her interviews with women
[00:08:45] who have made these allegations, and they are very much along the lines
[00:08:48] of So are you sure that you're not imagining it or did you do anything?
[00:08:54] Or why didn't you tell anybody at the time?
[00:08:56] I mean, it's it is classic, classic, you know,
[00:09:00] victim blaming style behavior that I think you see in HR departments everywhere.
[00:09:05] I mean, Cindy, if you're saying, oh, my God, HR,
[00:09:07] HR investigated it and they said it was unfounded.
[00:09:09] So therefore it didn't happen.
[00:09:11] I didn't say therefore it didn't happen.
[00:09:12] But I said, OK, well, take note of the fact that there have been
[00:09:15] some investigations, right?
[00:09:17] The fact that women aren't taken seriously should not be used
[00:09:19] as precedent for not taking women seriously in the future.
[00:09:23] And so I think that that argument is pretty invalid if, in fact,
[00:09:28] you know, as these four women are alleging,
[00:09:31] the EEO investigator did not take these women seriously
[00:09:34] and sided with the men and the department for which she works.
[00:09:38] So I don't think you can.
[00:09:39] I really don't think that's a particularly valid argument
[00:09:42] when you look at the facts of the cases.
[00:09:44] Well, and the facts of the cases are, you know,
[00:09:46] you have an investigator who is questioning the women,
[00:09:49] who is siding allegedly.
[00:09:51] And I have seen examples of it.
[00:09:52] So in some cases, definitely not allegedly,
[00:09:55] you know, seeming to side with the men who they are accusing.
[00:09:59] And so, yeah, I just don't think, you know,
[00:10:02] it wasn't taken seriously in the past should be
[00:10:06] should be an argument for not taking it seriously now.
[00:10:08] Well, I'm very likely these these allegations are going to get
[00:10:12] adjudicated now in a court of law and we'll see what happens with them.
[00:10:15] But again, the larger point I was trying to make here is
[00:10:17] I think two things can simultaneously be true about SVD.
[00:10:22] One, that it has a cultural problem, right?
[00:10:24] On multiple levels, which includes a strain of misogyny
[00:10:29] that runs through the culture of SVD.
[00:10:31] That seems very plausible to me, right?
[00:10:32] It is a a male dominated, you know, quasi militaristic organization
[00:10:38] or however you want to describe it.
[00:10:39] And so it's not that big a leap to think that
[00:10:43] that there would be sort of behaviors on the part of senior male leaders
[00:10:46] that are out of bounds or at David, to your point,
[00:10:50] aren't just bad culturally, but but are illegal.
[00:10:54] Right. And and certainly
[00:10:57] constituting civil sexual harassment, if not beyond that. Right.
[00:11:01] So that could well be true.
[00:11:03] But I know another thing about SVD's culture
[00:11:06] that is definitely true as well, which is that SVD has a tradition
[00:11:11] of internal, like kind of snake pit,
[00:11:15] vicious, like sort of backbiting,
[00:11:19] factionalism and attacks that have happened. Right.
[00:11:22] I actually think.
[00:11:23] And you're saying that the tiny percentage of women are the snakes?
[00:11:26] No. What I'm saying is there was a previous KUW story
[00:11:30] that I thought was extremely weak in its evidence
[00:11:36] that sort of essentially reported on
[00:11:39] rumors that the chief, Adrian Diaz, was allegedly having an affair
[00:11:44] with one of his subordinates, right?
[00:11:47] The the the officer who was running the or at least advising him
[00:11:52] on communications.
[00:11:53] And I read that story and I thought the evidence was insanely thin.
[00:11:58] I have no idea. Maybe he's having an affair.
[00:11:59] Maybe he's not. I don't know.
[00:12:01] But I mean, I thought that's what's what's as does the lawsuit.
[00:12:06] It was a KUW story and I thought that was super dubious
[00:12:10] and that they they hung their KUW hung their hat on doing the story
[00:12:14] on the fact that these rumors existed and that they were pervasive.
[00:12:17] And so they did report on them as rumors.
[00:12:20] But I'm like kind of like,
[00:12:22] yeah, how does that get past the we should write this as a story
[00:12:26] if you don't really have to?
[00:12:27] Well, leaving that aside, I mean, we've talked about that before.
[00:12:30] I don't think that that has anything to do
[00:12:35] with the mountains of evidence that, you know, that have amassed
[00:12:39] about, you know, not just these specific allegations.
[00:12:43] There's a, you know, I mean, you should read the claim for damages.
[00:12:46] Another allegation is that Diaz, you know, because they didn't provide
[00:12:49] a dressing room for women on the floor that O'Neill
[00:12:52] in the comms office worked on.
[00:12:54] One of the women had to change her clothes in her cubicle.
[00:12:57] And Diaz made a point, according to this lawsuit, of walking by
[00:13:01] when she was changing.
[00:13:02] You know, I mean, there's just there's allegation after allegation.
[00:13:05] I feel like you're going out of your way, Sunday, to sort of
[00:13:10] make up a scenario in which these allegations are like not even plausible.
[00:13:15] I mean, I said they're not plausible.
[00:13:16] I said they're totally plausible.
[00:13:17] Now, I'm saying I'm saying I'm saying that you are also
[00:13:20] making up a scenario in which all these women are just,
[00:13:22] you know, sort of making this stuff up because you didn't
[00:13:25] because you thought this KUOW story was thin.
[00:13:27] Well, let me give you another example of so
[00:13:31] there's a history between one of the one of the women making allegations
[00:13:34] about Chief Diaz, who has filed a previous lawsuit is Diana Nolette.
[00:13:38] Diana Nolette has her own kind of history,
[00:13:41] some of which I think is kind of checkered.
[00:13:42] You can go back and look up Diana's role in the Chop Chazz stuff
[00:13:45] and some of the misinformation that was put out at that time.
[00:13:48] But they have a history like they were competitors to become chief,
[00:13:52] I guess, and and and Diaz demoted her after he got the chief role.
[00:13:57] So I just think there's some fraught history internally here.
[00:14:00] And we've heard from
[00:14:02] there are, first of all, several lawsuits and allegations and all this stuff.
[00:14:07] So leaving aside the most current one, there's one previous one,
[00:14:10] I think, from Diana Nolette.
[00:14:12] So. I just think we've heard from one side of
[00:14:17] this situation, right?
[00:14:20] And you're right.
[00:14:21] There are some very serious allegations that are being put forward.
[00:14:24] And there's there looks to be with some detail.
[00:14:28] But all I'm saying is that.
[00:14:31] We've heard from one side, the other side is denying it.
[00:14:33] Diaz has denied these charges.
[00:14:35] I want to hear what he has to say in his defense
[00:14:38] before I rush to judgment on this.
[00:14:40] I don't think that's so crazy.
[00:14:41] I don't think you have to rush to judgment to say that one side
[00:14:45] seems to, I mean, first of all, not have a lot of incentive,
[00:14:50] you know, culturally, I mean, you know,
[00:14:52] you're reminding me a lot of the sort of response to all kinds of claims
[00:14:57] by women in the past, you know, about harassment, assault, etc.
[00:15:00] You know, just in general, not at SPD that, you know, oh, well,
[00:15:04] they're doing this because it's, you know, fun or it's retaliatory.
[00:15:08] I mean, the fact is you get attacked when you bring forward
[00:15:12] allegations of this sort, it is career ruining.
[00:15:15] As you said, there is a culture of rumors and SPD.
[00:15:17] A lot of times the rumors are that women at SPD
[00:15:21] have had sex with men to try to climb the career ladder, so to speak.
[00:15:26] And, you know, and so it is not advantageous to women
[00:15:30] to bring forward sexual, you know, sexual discrimination
[00:15:34] and harassment claims.
[00:15:36] And so I don't know what the incentive would be to constantly,
[00:15:39] you know, be making all this stuff up.
[00:15:41] This lawsuit is hardly the first time
[00:15:43] women have come forward with complaints about O'Neill
[00:15:46] and about the culture in general and about specific things.
[00:15:50] I mean, there was the report that SPD was forced to release
[00:15:53] when KUOW reported on it about just lots of women talking about
[00:15:57] horrible things that they had had to deal with.
[00:15:59] They didn't sue. They spoke anonymously.
[00:16:02] And they were very much in keeping with the kind of allegations
[00:16:06] that are in this lawsuit.
[00:16:08] It is brave to come forward.
[00:16:10] It is not a fun publicity stunt where everybody is going to like you.
[00:16:14] I didn't say it was a publicity stunt or that they was doing it
[00:16:17] out of some sense of misguided sense of fun.
[00:16:21] I don't know where you're kind of pulling that out of your ass.
[00:16:24] You're saying that you're sort of saying that the two sides are equivalent.
[00:16:27] No, I am saying that these are serious allegations.
[00:16:33] They deserve to be taken seriously and investigated seriously,
[00:16:36] but there needs to be a due process.
[00:16:38] We do need to hear from the accused before we make a determination
[00:16:44] that everything being said is true.
[00:16:45] And I don't think that I in fact, I think the fact that that to some extent
[00:16:51] we want to talk about the larger national picture and what's happened
[00:16:54] in previous years with some of the stuff around college campuses
[00:16:57] and Title 9 and stuff.
[00:16:58] I do think some of that stuff has gone too far in eviscerating due process.
[00:17:02] Well, I don't know how we started talking about college campuses.
[00:17:04] Well, you're the one that keeps trying to bring it to this larger,
[00:17:08] you know, these larger sort of cultural issues about how we handle
[00:17:11] and generally handle accusations of sexual harassment.
[00:17:16] Well, I think that you're never going to I don't think this is ever
[00:17:18] going to meet the standard that you're wanting because so far
[00:17:21] and I think this will continue to be true.
[00:17:23] Diaz and SPD have clamped down.
[00:17:26] They they have lawyers, you know, responding for them,
[00:17:28] saying that all these allegations are lies.
[00:17:31] I don't think you're going to get, you know, a counter narrative.
[00:17:34] I don't think this is going to go to trial.
[00:17:36] You know, it's a tort claim.
[00:17:38] And so I don't think you're going to get a full counter narrative
[00:17:41] from from the city, from Diaz, from, you know, from Herald
[00:17:45] about what happened.
[00:17:47] I mean, it's just you're never going to if that's your standard.
[00:17:49] I mean, you're going to always have questions about this
[00:17:51] because they're never going to come out with with detailed,
[00:17:54] you know, responses to every single allegation.
[00:17:56] Are you saying anything more than basically we should keep calling these
[00:17:59] alleged, alleged, alleged?
[00:18:02] These are alleged crimes.
[00:18:04] Well, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:05] I mean, I guess. Right. Yeah.
[00:18:07] As journalistic practice.
[00:18:09] Well, I mean, beyond journalistic practice, just in terms of what we think
[00:18:11] as as beyond how journalists cover it.
[00:18:15] I think the question of how we should sit.
[00:18:16] How do you clear? I've said alleged because they are.
[00:18:19] Yeah. But how we as sort of engaged Seattle,
[00:18:23] you know, citizens should think about this stuff, right?
[00:18:26] Or how should the mayor and the council respond to this stuff?
[00:18:30] Right. I think those are all implicated in whether we make
[00:18:36] a kind of out of the gate assumption that all of this is true
[00:18:39] or whether we say, well, let's wait for a little bit more unearthed.
[00:18:44] We're going to start to form opinions about the likelihood
[00:18:47] that something true based on the preponderance of the accusation,
[00:18:51] the number of accusations people are going to start to sort of make judgments.
[00:18:55] I mean, it's hard to get a fair trial sometimes when people rush
[00:18:57] to judgment, as you say, but but people are going to people are going to judge.
[00:19:01] I will say, I mean, both of you, it sounds like both of you
[00:19:03] are in agreement that.
[00:19:05] You know, journalistic practice should still involve using the word alleged
[00:19:10] and reporting should still involve that, you know, innocent until proven guilty.
[00:19:14] I remember a few years ago when Jussie Smollett was allegedly attacked,
[00:19:18] NPR got all kinds of shit for using the word alleged.
[00:19:21] But it sounds like there's no disagreement here about, you know,
[00:19:24] that's a fine journalistic practice to still believe in due process
[00:19:27] and innocent until proven guilty.
[00:19:29] So so I'm trying to understand how you guys even disagree.
[00:19:32] Well, let me just tell you, if I could, a quick story about this is less about
[00:19:36] it's not about this this particular lawsuit stuff, but just about SPD
[00:19:40] and their culture. Right.
[00:19:41] And the kind of Hall or Hall of Mirrors quality that kind of exists there.
[00:19:45] So seven, eight years ago, back when Ed Murray was mayor, right,
[00:19:49] and was in the midst of his his scandal issues.
[00:19:52] Right at the height of it, the story came out, got covered by the Seattle
[00:19:55] Times and a bunch of TV stations that alleged that there had been
[00:19:59] an incident at Ed Murray's house where, you know, he had
[00:20:03] had some kind of rough trade sexual encounter with some,
[00:20:07] you know, gay hustler guy that he threw out of the house.
[00:20:10] And then the guy was trying to get in the house and cops got called
[00:20:13] and they came and, you know, there was this half naked man on his front lawn.
[00:20:17] I don't know if, Erica, whether you remember this, but it was a it got
[00:20:19] a ton of coverage at the time.
[00:20:22] And Ed flatly denied it.
[00:20:24] In fact, there were like four.
[00:20:25] It was during Pride Week.
[00:20:27] There were four or five other people at his house that night who were
[00:20:30] they were all there having a glass of wine.
[00:20:31] What had really happened was a couple of people,
[00:20:35] kind of random people had come to his door and asked to use the bathroom
[00:20:39] and he had said no, but they wouldn't leave.
[00:20:41] And then anyway, it wasn't true.
[00:20:44] But I heard from several reporters after that incident
[00:20:48] that Spog, the Seattle Police Officers Guild, had been pushing
[00:20:53] this story for months in advance, right, as a way of sort of attacking
[00:20:57] the mayor and undermining.
[00:20:58] And so that just gives me pause when I look back
[00:21:02] when I saw the the the story about these rumors
[00:21:05] about the chief having an affair, there's a speculation on my part.
[00:21:08] But I couldn't help but think, is this something that goes to like Spog's
[00:21:13] issues with the current chief, like that they're kind of kind of spreading?
[00:21:17] I don't know that that's totally speculation on my part.
[00:21:20] But I am I just have learned over the years that you've got to be
[00:21:23] very, very careful when shit comes up about allegations
[00:21:26] between various sort of factions and people at SPD.
[00:21:29] Yeah, I would say that, David, I don't remember what your original question was.
[00:21:33] It was something about the alleged nature versus
[00:21:36] versus jumping to.
[00:21:38] Oh, I was asking, given the fact that you both are using the word alleged,
[00:21:41] I was trying to say, yeah, how do you really disagree?
[00:21:44] Is there really much disagreement here?
[00:21:46] Thanks, thanks, because I think Sandeep kind of got off the point
[00:21:49] with Spog a little bit.
[00:21:51] So I think the reason we disagree is, you know, to to to Sandeep's
[00:21:55] anecdote, I don't think that Spog is telling these women
[00:22:00] to make specific allegations that are extremely detailed
[00:22:04] and extremely in line with allegations that were were in the study
[00:22:09] that SPD did where women described very similar, if not identical, scenarios.
[00:22:14] I'm the only woman on this podcast, so I will just speak for women here
[00:22:18] and say that a lot of these scenarios are familiar to me
[00:22:21] as a woman who has been in the workforce and, you know,
[00:22:24] was a young woman once and got harassed a lot.
[00:22:28] And so I don't think that these that it requires a Spog plant.
[00:22:33] I think it's a very different scenario than, you know,
[00:22:36] someone starting rumors about, you know, for example,
[00:22:40] you know, Diaz coming around while a woman is changing in her cubicle.
[00:22:45] I don't know what Spog would gain out of the fake culture of misogyny.
[00:22:51] Well, it was your example.
[00:22:52] No, no, no. But I'm not.
[00:22:53] I was bringing that example up not to say that I am insinuating that Spog
[00:22:58] put these women out there.
[00:22:59] They're just rumors that are being pushed outside.
[00:23:02] It's so many women, Sandeep.
[00:23:03] It's so many women.
[00:23:05] And when you have a police department
[00:23:08] in which the number of women is declining and in which women feel
[00:23:12] like they, you know, they're being pushed out because, you know,
[00:23:15] they can't go to the all male events or because, you know,
[00:23:19] I mean, one of the one of the parts of the response that SPD made
[00:23:23] to The Times and KUOW that they didn't end up reporting
[00:23:27] was that, you know, they were sort of defending the reason
[00:23:30] that there aren't as many women in SPD as as being
[00:23:35] because in part, the job requires so much physicality
[00:23:39] and physicality is a male attribute,
[00:23:42] which is like one of the oldest, you know, sort of sexist tropes
[00:23:45] in policing and in a lot of male dominated jobs for why,
[00:23:48] you know, why women just aren't up snuff.
[00:23:50] I mean, I think to answer your question, David, where we disagree
[00:23:53] is I think that, you know, you don't have to wait
[00:23:57] for the outcome of a lawsuit and you don't have to wait
[00:24:00] for a detailed point by point rebuttal by Diaz and O'Neill
[00:24:04] that will probably never come to say that SPD has a problem
[00:24:08] with misogyny, it has a problem with gender discrimination,
[00:24:10] it has a problem with harassment that's been documented over and over.
[00:24:13] And I just don't think you can chalk that up to fake rumors.
[00:24:16] Do you think that the council or mayor need to take action now?
[00:24:21] I mean, you seem to think that these allegations are so...
[00:24:23] The council doesn't have any ability to take any action.
[00:24:26] I mean, the council is not in the, you know, in SPD's chain of command.
[00:24:30] Well, they have oversight ability.
[00:24:32] They could call the chief hall the chief.
[00:24:35] You know, I mean, I'm just asking you what you think
[00:24:38] what you think the other powers should be at the city
[00:24:40] where, you know, ought to be doing right now.
[00:24:41] What I would like to see from the council and the mayor
[00:24:44] is a recognition that this is a problem.
[00:24:48] Instead of having these endless meetings, I mean, the council is just like,
[00:24:52] you know, over and over, oh, my God, how can we hire more cops?
[00:24:55] Let's throw more money at them.
[00:24:56] Let's pretend that the problem is a civil service commission
[00:24:58] not acting fast enough and calling them, you know, on the phone,
[00:25:02] you know, and we have to make them feel welcome
[00:25:05] and we have to make them feel loved and we have to make them feel cherished.
[00:25:08] I think that, you know, it would be nice
[00:25:10] if they acknowledged this shit is going on.
[00:25:14] And, you know, and made a point of saying SPD needs to deal with it
[00:25:19] and maybe suggesting some ways in which they could deal with it.
[00:25:22] That is something the council has the power to do.
[00:25:24] And they're not doing it.
[00:25:25] Instead, they're just, you know, sort of
[00:25:28] I'm not going to say the word that I want to say,
[00:25:30] but they are kissing up to SPD in a way that I think,
[00:25:35] you know, you can you can say, you know, it's a desperate situation.
[00:25:39] We have to hire more cops, which I know is what they believe.
[00:25:43] But if you're continuing to ignore this giant and, you know,
[00:25:47] growing elephant in the room, I think it's really kind of a dereliction of duty.
[00:25:50] And I think the mayor should not be sort of defending Diaz
[00:25:55] as if this has already been adjudicated either.
[00:25:57] Didn't the mayor say in response to this?
[00:26:00] I'm reading our office recently transferred an employee to SPD
[00:26:03] to spearhead efforts to address concerns raised in the 30 by 30 report,
[00:26:07] which is about how women are being treated in the police department.
[00:26:11] Right.
[00:26:12] So it sounds like he's doing that.
[00:26:14] I mean, should he also be putting Lieutenant O'Neill on administrative leave
[00:26:19] pending an investigation or something?
[00:26:21] Or what more should the should Harold be doing?
[00:26:23] The mayor can't do that.
[00:26:25] The mayor can't do that.
[00:26:26] He could bring Diaz to do that.
[00:26:28] He could bring pressure on Diaz to do it.
[00:26:31] I mean, yeah, you can put pressure, but that doesn't.
[00:26:33] Yeah, you can't force the police chief to take disciplinary action now.
[00:26:37] Right. It sounds, though, in this statement that the mayor's office
[00:26:40] is acknowledging that there is a problem.
[00:26:42] Well, yes.
[00:26:43] But I think in the case of this particular case,
[00:26:46] I think the mayor should be perhaps making a stronger statement
[00:26:50] that these allegations are extremely concerning
[00:26:53] and that he takes them seriously.
[00:26:57] Time will tell. Right.
[00:26:58] We'll see. We'll see how much he defends Diaz.
[00:27:01] He's been, I believe, a pretty strong defender of Diaz in the past.
[00:27:06] And Diaz has kept his job through a number of really trying times
[00:27:12] because the mayor has stood by him, I think.
[00:27:14] So, you know, we'll see.
[00:27:15] But I think he could be more more forceful in saying,
[00:27:17] you know, I am concerned by these allegations.
[00:27:20] The women at SPD also matter to me, in addition to the chief.
[00:27:23] And I will just make one other point from this KOW story
[00:27:26] that we haven't discussed, which is that I think it was Ted Buck's
[00:27:30] comment, his lawyer, that Diaz understands discrimination
[00:27:33] because he's Hispanic and so he understands the discrimination
[00:27:37] against women and, you know, the sexist practices, etc.
[00:27:40] He understands exactly what that's like.
[00:27:43] And it reminds me of in 2020, during the George Floyd protests,
[00:27:48] Jenny Durkin made a comment to a group of black representatives
[00:27:52] from from the Black Lives Matter protest that, you know,
[00:27:55] she understood what it was like.
[00:27:57] I'm paraphrasing, but essentially that she understood
[00:27:59] what it was like to be black because she is a lesbian
[00:28:03] and was also, you know, the victim of discrimination.
[00:28:06] And, you know, I think I think the ridiculousness
[00:28:09] of those statements speaks for itself.
[00:28:11] But, you know, Chief Diaz does not know what it's like to be a woman.
[00:28:15] He does not know what it's like to be subjected to misogynistic behavior
[00:28:19] and culture. And I almost couldn't believe that somebody said that
[00:28:23] on the record because it's just such an outrageous statement.
[00:28:27] Sandeep, before we end here, can I just also get you back to that question?
[00:28:31] Turn it back onto yourself.
[00:28:32] I mean, the language that Harold's put out is pretty.
[00:28:37] Boiler plate, it's kind of bureaucratic.
[00:28:39] Eric is saying, and I'm reading it.
[00:28:41] She's right. You know, should this be a little bit more forceful
[00:28:45] and sort of acknowledging the seriousness of these claims?
[00:28:47] You know, should should should the city be doing a little bit more
[00:28:50] given what's out there or you just think it's all it should be?
[00:28:54] Wait and see. Yeah.
[00:28:55] Well, look, there are not only sort of political issues at play here,
[00:28:58] but there are legal ones as well.
[00:29:00] I think they're putting out it is a little boilerplate,
[00:29:03] but they're putting out an acknowledgment that there have been
[00:29:05] some serious allegations made and they're saying we're going to wait.
[00:29:09] And let those get investigated, which is probably a smart
[00:29:12] and legally prudent thing for them to do.
[00:29:14] You know, could the mayor go beyond that and say, you know,
[00:29:16] I do think there are further concerns about the culture of SPD.
[00:29:20] Yeah, maybe.
[00:29:21] And that might not be a bad thing for him to do.
[00:29:23] I don't I don't have any problem with it if he did that.
[00:29:27] But I'm not freaked out that he hasn't, you know,
[00:29:30] kind of hopped all over this thing to start pounding the table saying
[00:29:33] I'm going to make huge changes because I believe everything that's been alleged.
[00:29:37] I don't think anybody.
[00:29:38] Yeah, nobody said that, Sunday.
[00:29:39] That's such a I mean, that's such a straw man.
[00:29:41] What you said, you've you've paid a lot of the other side.
[00:29:44] What I have said so far, but I will just repeat it and say again
[00:29:49] that the mayor could make a strong statement
[00:29:52] that the culture in SPD is troubling and that these allegations
[00:29:57] are serious and concerning.
[00:29:59] I did not say the mayor should pound the table
[00:30:02] and or that I was going crazy.
[00:30:04] I did not say that the mayor should say that all these allegations are true.
[00:30:06] That would be legally irresponsible as well as ridiculous.
[00:30:09] Serious and concerning. I'm with you.
[00:30:11] I think that's totally fine.
[00:30:12] The mayor should say that they're serious and concerning
[00:30:14] and they should be investigated.
[00:30:15] I'm with you on that.
[00:30:17] I mean, it is a we should take allegations of this nature seriously.
[00:30:21] Yeah, it says that. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:23] So I mean, I don't know.
[00:30:25] You know, I feel like like, OK, if you want him to say serious
[00:30:28] and concerning, fine.
[00:30:29] I mean, I think that there is I think there's a real problem
[00:30:33] at the culture of us in the culture of SPD.
[00:30:36] And I think that the city, the mayor, the city council
[00:30:39] have not publicly taken it seriously.
[00:30:41] And I think that's a problem.
[00:30:43] I mean, I think it's a problem, not just, you know, because I think that,
[00:30:47] you know, it's far past time for, you know, some of these male
[00:30:51] institutions to stop being so goddamn misogynistic.
[00:30:54] But it's also a problem in hiring.
[00:30:56] I mean, you know, as I say over and over again,
[00:30:58] I mean, it's half the population, you know, even getting it up to 30
[00:31:02] percent would essentially solve their problem, their hiring problem.
[00:31:05] But right now, it's under 10 percent.
[00:31:07] And the reason in part is because SPD is seen as a bad place
[00:31:11] for women to work for reasons such as this.
[00:31:14] It's always in the headlines for things like that report
[00:31:18] about the culture of misogyny, this lawsuit,
[00:31:20] the stuff I reported on back in February.
[00:31:22] And, you know, you can say, oh, well, it all could be incorrect
[00:31:25] and it all could be made up and the women could be lying.
[00:31:28] But when you have an accumulation of headlines,
[00:31:31] I think the preponderance of evidence is the opposite.
[00:31:33] So, yeah, I just I think that they should be concerned
[00:31:36] just because, you know, they're not going to get their numbers up
[00:31:38] if they can't hire women.
[00:31:40] Look, I think I think where I agree with you is I agree
[00:31:43] that SPD has cultural issues.
[00:31:45] And, you know, of course, in any organization,
[00:31:48] there's going to be issues of sexism and misogyny
[00:31:50] that have to be dealt with in any large organization, SPD included.
[00:31:54] So all of that. Sure.
[00:31:56] But I also know that SPD's cultural problem
[00:32:00] includes things like like factionalism,
[00:32:03] like personality conflicts, like weird internal power dynamics
[00:32:07] that have happened.
[00:32:08] And in the swirl of all of that stuff,
[00:32:12] exactly what's going on with each of these specific allegations,
[00:32:15] I don't know yet.
[00:32:17] And I think we need to wait and see how the investigations take place
[00:32:22] or the legal proceedings take place on these before we come to an
[00:32:25] ultimate conclusion about whether any specific one of these
[00:32:29] allegations is true or not true.
[00:32:31] I mean, people can still believe like at dinner,
[00:32:34] O'Neill discusses his dating history and said something
[00:32:36] to the effect of I'm really good at sex.
[00:32:38] We're probably not going to have a videotape proving where the other
[00:32:41] whether or not that happened.
[00:32:42] So people are going to make their judgments about it,
[00:32:45] which, by the way, is kind of a I know this is serious,
[00:32:48] but but that one actually kind of made me laugh to say
[00:32:51] because who says that?
[00:32:53] That's that's that's an interesting comment.
[00:32:55] Men say that again.
[00:32:57] And I mean, I will say, you know, too, like to Sunday's point,
[00:33:02] factions within SPD are not protected classes and women are
[00:33:05] protected class.
[00:33:06] And there's not a law against discrimination against a faction
[00:33:10] that likes Diaz versus a faction that doesn't.
[00:33:12] But women actually do have legal protections against this stuff
[00:33:16] that should be taken seriously.
[00:33:17] I just think that when you're when you're when you're a chief,
[00:33:20] that's an ally.
[00:33:21] When you're a chief at SPD,
[00:33:23] there are a lot of people wanting to bury knives in your back.
[00:33:26] Just as a general, that's been the history of like sort of the
[00:33:28] the power dynamics at SPD, at least in the 10, 12 years
[00:33:32] that I've been I've been following it.
[00:33:34] And so I don't yet 100 percent know what's going on here.
[00:33:38] There's a serious allegations.
[00:33:40] Let's see how the
[00:33:42] you know, they will be adjudicated.
[00:33:44] You're never going to get satisfaction.
[00:33:45] I think we could be I think this could be.
[00:33:47] Maybe we may never know.
[00:33:48] It'll be settled for some amount of money.
[00:33:51] And and you will still be saying, I don't know if it ever happened.
[00:33:54] I mean, who can say we didn't have it on videotape?
[00:33:56] So who knows?
[00:33:57] Erica, what's the next step here?
[00:33:58] I mean, I think the next step is that this tort claim moves forward.
[00:34:01] And in the meantime, I think the next step is going to be seeing
[00:34:04] what, if anything, Harrell says or does beyond, you know,
[00:34:08] his sort of anodyne statement that he made and, you know,
[00:34:10] whether this comes up at the city council, you know, Bob Kettle
[00:34:14] is the chair of the council's Public Safety Committee.
[00:34:16] And he is still sort of in the mode where he talks
[00:34:20] about the culture of permissiveness in the city at every meeting.
[00:34:23] I don't know that he is particularly, you know, worked up
[00:34:26] about the culture of misogyny within SPD itself.
[00:34:30] But, you know, that's that that is something that they may have
[00:34:34] to address at some point.
[00:34:36] I hope so.
[00:34:37] Erica gets that last word, Bob Kettle.
[00:34:39] This one is threatening to boil over.
[00:34:40] So you should be paying attention to it.
[00:34:43] Just with a terrible, terrible that.
[00:34:46] That's it for another edition of Seattle Nice.
[00:34:48] I'm David Hyde with Erica C.
[00:34:50] Barnett and Sandeep Kashyik.
[00:34:51] Quinn Waller is our editor.
[00:34:54] Thanks to everybody who's donating to Seattle Nice at Patreon
[00:34:57] and to everyone else.
[00:34:58] Thanks so much for listening.