A Bright Line in the Sand at SPD
When I retired from the Seattle Police Department, I didn’t quietly slip out the back door.
I wrote a 15-page exit letter detailing exactly what had taken root inside the department: politics over policing, optics over reality, and leadership unwilling to push back when the city needed them to.
At the time, the chief was Adrian Diaz.
Many of us hoped that when leadership changed, the department might return to common sense.
Apparently not.
Because here we are again.
Officers are now reportedly being ordered to document the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and threatened with termination if they don’t.
Termination.
For not writing reports about what a federal agency is doing.
Let’s take a breath and apply some basic logic.
Municipal police officers have a job:
✨Respond to crimes.
✨Investigate crimes.
✨Protect the public.
If federal agents commit a crime? Document it. Absolutely.
But sending municipal officers to follow federal agents around generating paperwork for political optics isn’t policing.
It’s theater.
And the audience isn’t the public.
It’s politicians and activists.
While officers are being diverted into this nonsense:
911 calls are still stacking up
violent crime is still happening
officers are still leaving the department in droves
But the political class gets their headlines.
We’ve seen this exact playbook before.
Remember the federal consent decree?
Seattle taxpayers shelled out over $200 million across ten years chasing compliance metrics that eventually morphed into something completely different than the original investigation.
Officers warned leadership.
Unions warned leadership.
Leadership folded.
And the citizens paid the bill.
Now we’re watching another version of the same circus.
Which brings us to the part nobody seems to be saying out loud.
So the guy with the questionable history and polygraph problems is now threatening to fire officers if they don’t go document federal agents doing their jobs?
That’s the policy now?
That’s rich.
Here’s a reality check.
If officers start interfering with federal investigations, federal agents aren’t going to debate you.
They’ll laugh.
And they can arrest you.
Let that sink in.
It’s not policing — it’s political cosplay funded by taxpayers. Yee-haw! 🙄
And it’s a great way to put officers in a position where they could be jammed up for doing something they were ordered to do.
Before policies like this get shoved down to the rank-and-file, someone in leadership might want to check the law before they wreck the department.
Municipal cops don’t police federal agents.
Stay in your own lane.
But the bigger issue is this.
A very bright line has now been drawn in the sand inside SPD.
Officers are being told to participate in a directive that has nothing to do with solving crime and everything to do with political signaling.
The question now isn’t policy.
The question is courage.
Where is the command staff that’s supposed to stand between politics and the rank-and-file?
Where is the leadership that is supposed to say, “No, this is not what policing is.”
Will the Deputy Chief — someone who actually came up through SPD — push back?
Or will she stand there quietly and go along with it like everyone else in the command staff?
History suggests we already know the answer.
But officers should remember something important.
You do have a choice.
You had a choice when politicians tried to force medical decisions on you.
You have a choice now.
Some will cross that line.
Some won’t.
But don’t pretend there isn’t a line.
Because right now it’s painted in bright red across the sand.
So here’s the real question for the officers still wearing the badge:
What are you going to do?
I know exactly what my answer would be.
Without hesitation.
This will absolutely separate the wheat from the chaff.
