Seattle has a new police chief: Shon Barnes

On paper, Shon Barnes brings a wealth of experience and education to his new job as Seattle police chief: He’s a former history teacher, holds a doctorate and is considered a “next generation” leader by his mentors and peers.

In person, he brings something else: optimism.

In a department that has been recently rocked by lawsuits, scandal and dysfunction, that’s no small thing.

Barnes, 50, settles in as the city’s 38th chief of police on Friday. He will be considered “interim” pending consent of his appointment by the Seattle City Council.

In a wide-ranging interview Thursday, Barnes talked about his priorities: recruitment and retention of officers, crime prevention and officer safety and well-being. His goal, he said, is to establish a “culture of excellence and procedural justice within” the Seattle Police Department.

The department is currently down about 350 officers, but Barnes said the city’s recruitment efforts are expected to add as many as 150 officers over the next year.

He called the deficit a “hurdle” to achieving his crime prevention goals. “But it’s certainly not an obstacle,” Barnes said.

The new job is a big jump for Barnes. He is taking over a department more than twice the size of the one he led in Madison, Wisconsin — roughly 1,000 sworn officers in Seattle compared with 500 in Madison — in a much larger city with a much higher crime rate. Madison’s crime rate is about 34 per 1,000 residents; Seattle’s is about 114 crimes per 1,000 residents. Madison has a population of 280,000 people. Seattle has 755,000 residents.

‘Fresh perspective’

Barnes promises to offer a “fresh perspective” on policing in Seattle — a city he had never been to before his recruitment — and expects the lessons he learned as a police officer and commander in Greensboro, N.C., and as a chief in Madison to translate easily to operating a major metropolitan department.

“Let me be clear, there is a size bias in policing,” Barnes said with a chuckle.

Working at midsized departments up until now, he said, allowed him to continue his education, obtain advanced training in the field and earn a doctorate in management.

“I’ve been able to build my toolbox, which, if you will, will really lend itself to this job,” he said. “I am a lifelong learner. I’m my best self when I’m solving problems and when I’m learning.”

Barnes, as a Black man raised in the South and a police officer, said his perspective on race and policing is based on a culture of respect and developing a culture “where certain things are unacceptable: certain phrases, how we speak to one another, the manner in which we behave,” he said.

Barnes said he did his dissertation on racial profiling in traffic stops, and recognizes that some communities had no trust in the police — in Seattle or elsewhere. Addressing those divisions within the department will be reflected in the community, he believes.

“I do believe that if we treat each other well internally, that also bleeds out to how we treat people externally,” Barnes said.

The first step to addressing racism and racial tensions is to “acknowledge that it is a problem,” he said.

Among the solutions, he said, “is making sure I can give people an opportunity to put themselves in proximity with people who don’t look like them when there is not a call for service.”

He comes to Seattle on the heels of handling a national tragedy in Madison — a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in which three people died, including the perpetrator — and both congratulations and praise from Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, who called Barnes a “steady, forward-thinking leader throughout his tenure.”

An outsider

Barnes is the first outsider to lead the Seattle Police Department since Kathleen O’Toole, a former Boston police commissioner who was appointed Seattle chief by former Mayor Ed Murray in 2014. O’Toole’s job was to overcome internal resistance to sweeping changes made necessary to settle a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division against the city and the Police Department in 2012.

Barnes said O’Toole is a mentor and that she urged him to apply for the Seattle job and was his champion during the selection process.

It appears Barnes will preside over the dismissal of the last vestiges of a 2012 consent decree resulting from a Department of Justice investigation that found SPD officers routinely used unconstitutional levels of force during arrests. A federal judge has said he will likely dismiss the decree once the city adopts a constitutional crowd-control ordinance.

Barnes will likely be the first chief to run the department under the provisions brought about by 13 years of litigation without a federal monitor and judge looking over his shoulder.

While that may seem a long time, Barnes — who has consulted with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division — said that in the scheme of the complex civil rights litigation that accompanies federal oversight, SPD has demonstrated “a lot of growth and a lot of hard work.”

O’Toole left in 2018 and was succeeded by two internal chiefs, Carmen Best and Adrian Diaz, who proved to be disappointments.

Best was blamed for failing to control her troops and abandoning the East Precinct during the 2020 George Floyd protests, ending in a lawsuit that concluded Best had deleted tens of thousands of texts involving her decisions during the protests. She resigned in 2020.

She was followed by her deputy, Diaz, who spent four years at the helm — two as interim chief before being appointed by Mayor Bruce Harrell to the position permanently. His tenure was marked by command-staff discord and a string of discrimination lawsuits that led to his demotion in May. His time with the Police Department officially ended last month when Harrell fired him after an investigation concluded he had lied about a likelyaffair with a former TV anchor, whom he appointed his chief of staff. Diaz has filed a $10 million claim against the city.

The city was given fair warning more than four years ago that the department would benefit from outside leadership. Merrick Bobb, who had just resigned after eight years as the court-appointed monitor overseeing the consent decree, urged the department to look for an outside chief to take over after Best’s resignation.

In a letter written just days after Diaz was appointed interim chief in September 2020, Bob said the department was at a “nadir” following the violent protests and that the department “desperately needs a new chief from outside the organization to put it back together. It needs leadership.”

From Madison to Seattle

This is the third time in two years Barnes has sought a police chief position outside of Madison. In October, Barnes was one of two finalists for police chief in San Jose, Calif. In 2023, Barnes was one of three finalists for the Chicago Police Department’s next police superintendent.

Seattle received 57 applications for the job, which were narrowed down to 44 “qualified candidates.” Ultimately, three finalists emerged: Barnes; Nicholas Augustine, assistant chief of the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland; and Emada Tingirides, deputy chief with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Barnes said he plans to set clear priorities for the department as his first action as chief and will have chosen his command staff within the first 100 days on the job. “Everything is on the table,” including the possibility of bringing in others from outside the Seattle Police Department.

Barnes’ philosophy on leadership and accountability come from his upbringing. His mother had him when she was young, and he spent a lot of time with his grandmother, who lived on a small North Carolina farm without indoor plumbing or running water. She had a high school education, and his grandfather had graduated from the sixth grade.

“She had nine children and sent her firstborn son to the University of Wisconsin in Madison,” he said of his grandmother. “How in the world did she do that?”

“It’s because they believed that you could do something greater than what you see,” he continued.

His mother moved them to community housing, where Barnes said he was a “latchkey kid” while she attended college to improve their lot.

His grandma passed away, but Barnes still considers her among his “north stars” — the people who he cares about and whose opinions of him matter. His mother, wife and son are among them.

During the emotional days following the Abundant Life Christian School shooting, Barnes came under fire from critics. His response was leavened by the thought that “my son is watching me and I have to always handle myself with dignity and class.”

“I care more about my north stars than I do getting in petty beefs and arguments with people,” he said.

“I am fully committed to doing an excellent job here,” Barnes said. “It won’t be easy, but nothing I’ve ever done in the 50 years I’ve been on this planet has been easy, but I do think I’m going to do a great job.”