By Catalina Gaitán
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — In a report published Monday, the Seattle Police Department blamed budget constraints and distractions from elected officials for the hourslong delay in publicly communicating information about the Bite of Seattle shooting on July 26.
Interim police Chief Andre Sayles and Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis are scheduled to present the report Tuesday morning to the City Council’s public safety committee, outlining what went well — and what didn’t — in the shooting’s aftermath.
The police department’s 17-page “after action report” said officers standing less than 100 feet away from where gunfire broke out at Seattle Center had one of the shooters in custody within 30 seconds. But, the report says, an ensuing “convergence” of senior and elected officials distracted police from making decisions at the scene and quickly releasing information to the public, while ongoing budget constraints led to fewer officers staffing the event.
“The instincts were right,” the report concluded. “Now resource the rest of the response the same way.”
The report is the latest attempt by a public agency to explain the city’s fumbled public response to the mass shooting, which killed three people and injured at least four others.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and police officials faced intense criticism for their responses to the shooting, including leaving people in fear and in the dark for five hours before making their first public statements about what happened, and Wilson erroneously reporting that two suspects were in custody.
Five days later, Wilson requested the resignation of then-police Chief Shon Barnes, who was in Dallas attending a conference at the time of the shooting.
In its report, the Police Department said the public information briefing should have occurred before an 8:30 p.m. internal briefing between police commanders and Barnes and a 9 p.m. briefing between police and elected officials.
Moreover, the department had seven police supervisors and 29 officers staffing the event, which drew thousands of attendees to Seattle Center. The agency’s report attributed the low number to budget constraints.
The agency made recommendations in its report for improving their response to potential future mass shootings:
* Designate an on-scene police spokesperson who is authorized to issue public safety alerts.
* Pre-authorize the use of drones during mass casualty incidents and active-suspect scenarios.
* Separate the police chief’s tactical role” from their duties as a liaison to the mayor’s office.
Among the Police Department’s “lessons learned” was to reconcile the number of reported casualties before releasing that information publicly, and ensuring coordination between senior and elected officials does not pull police commanders’ attention away from the scene.
“Officers positioned close to the crowd stopped the threat in seconds,” the report says. “The gaps identified here — aerial support policy and public information timing — sit downstream of that response.
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