SEATTLE — Findings about coordinated lying by Seattle police officers at a crucial moment during 2020’s racial justice protests have raised questions and concerns, ahead of a City Council meeting on the matter, about the incident and how it was investigated.
They’ve also drawn attention to a policy that allows officers to lie under certain circumstances, to the reality that the police don’t track when officers do so, and to the possibility so-called ruses could be curtailed.
Because ruses aren’t tracked, there’s no way for the Police Department to say how many times officers use deception over a certain period of time or to review such incidents in a comprehensive way.
Councilmember Lisa Herbold, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, said at a briefing Monday that she’s asked the Police Department to develop a new documentation requirement and that she’s asked for more information about the Office of Police Accountability investigation into the June 8, 2020, incident in which officers faked radio chatter about a group of right-wing extremists roaming the city looking for confrontation.
“I know there are concerns that the investigation itself was not sufficient,” she said.
Herbold’s committee is scheduled to discuss the case with OPA Director Andrew Myerberg on Tuesday morning, with a public comment period at the start of the remote meeting.
Herbold has asked the city’s Office of Inspector General, which certified the investigation as sufficient, for details on that decision, she said Monday.
Though state law allows for ruses, Inspector General Lisa Judge is interested in whether a renewed look at the efficacy of ruses is needed, given the damage that dishonesty can do to public trust, Herbold added.
In a Twitter post after the findings related to the 2020 incident were released last week, Councilmember Tammy Morales called for an outside investigation and “real accountability.”
An OPA closed-case summary confirmed last week that officers had broadcast chatter about a nonexistent group of Proud Boys marching around downtown and heading toward Black Lives Matter protesters on Capitol Hill, where the police had hours earlier abandoned the East Precinct. Police employees admitted to OPA that they wanted to deceive protesters monitoring the airwaves.
But the investigation failed to identify all of the officers involved and to pinpoint who in particular decided they should reference the Proud Boys. Myerberg recommended no discipline for the officers who took part in hours of chatter, nor for an assistant chief of patrol operations who knew a disinformation effort was underway. He recommended discipline only for two supervisors, both of whom have already left the department.
The investigation didn’t connect the radio chatter with any other misinformation or disinformation by the police during the protests, and Myerberg didn’t immediately recommend any changes to the department’s policy on lying, which contains wide loopholes.
Under that policy, employees must be truthful in all communications, except when lying is necessary: For an assignment, such as undercover; to acquire information for a criminal investigation; because there’s an exigent threat to life safety or public safety.
Myerberg decided that none of those exceptions applied to the Proud Boys chatter. It was an “improper ruse” that violated the department’s policies on discretion and truthfulness and which “added fuel to the fire” on June 8, 2020, hours after the department had abandoned the East Precinct and as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone formed, Myerberg determined.
Supervisors gone
Myerberg didn’t sustain allegations of policy violations against four officers who were identified by the investigation as having taken part in the Proud Boys chatter. The OPA director instead sustained allegations against a captain who said he came up with the idea of transmitting fake chatter, and against an officer who supervised the operation. Both said they didn’t come up with the idea to reference the Proud Boys in the chatter and both have since left the department.
On Monday, the Police Department didn’t provide the dates when the captain, identified by The Seattle Times as Bryan Grenon, and the officer, referred to in the report as “Named Employee #2,” left the department.
The OPA investigation began in late 2020, spurred by inquiries by Converge Media journalist Omari Salisbury, and was completed by September 2021. Myerberg waited several months to issue findings. Last week, he said the case was less of a priority than some others.
OPA relied on an audio recording of the chatter compiled and shared online by activists, including Matt “Spek” Watson; there was no official police recording. The investigation focused on radio transmissions made until 10:14 p.m., identifying four of five officers involved.
The chatter continued past midnight, however, and two additional call signs were used by officers, according to a longer audio recording shared by Watson, who questioned the authenticity of the transmissions at the time.
Myerberg concluded the effort lacked adequate guidelines (officers said they weren’t told what to say or not say), was inadequately supervised (officers said they’d never participated in a similar effort before) and was inadequately documented (there was no after-action report and no list of participants).
Asked how the public should view an outcome with no discipline recommended for current employees, Myerberg replied, “I’m sure this won’t satisfy everyone who looks at it, but I do think the transparency is the most important aspect.”
Interim police Chief Adrian Diaz has not reviewed the OPA case for disciplinary rulings. Asked Monday whether Diaz could sustain allegations and impose discipline against the officers whom Myerberg cleared or against Tom Mahaffey, the assistant chief of patrol operations who knew officers were broadcasting fake chatter, the Police Department referred those questions to the city attorney’s office.
OPA concentrated narrowly on the Proud Boys radio chatter. The agency didn’t attempt to calculate the effect of the ruse combined with other tactics that activists have said were meant to undermine the protests.
OPA has jurisdiction over individual incidents of misconduct and is required to look at each incident independently, Myerberg said.
“A systemic look at overall department misinformation/disinformation” can be carried out by the city’s Office of Inspector General, which is still in the process of conducting a big-picture review of the department’s response to the summer 2020 protests, he said.
Lying not tracked
Mark Grba, a civilian who conducted the OPA investigation into the Proud Boys chatter and is no longer working for OPA, said a lack of documentation by the Police Department slowed down and complicated his work. He had to identify the officers involved without a list and had no paperwork to support or refute what they told him.
“I’m glad this has come to light, but I’m as frustrated as the public is to not really know everything about what happened,” Grba said Monday, declining to answer specific questions about the case.
Ruses may already be documented as officers write up paperwork like probable cause reports, said Brian Maxey, the Police Department’s chief operation officer. But there’s currently no stand-alone requirement for deception in particular to be documented, he said.
After last week’s findings were released, Diaz asked Maxey “to review our policy and make recommendations for tightening it up, with specific attention to documentation and supervisory review,” Maxey said. Diaz wants to “avoid situations like this in the future,” said Maxey, who served as COO from 2015 to 2018 and was rehired this month.
“I’m confident that a documentation requirement will be added to the policy once it has been redrafted,” Myerberg said.
The last time the Police Department was cited for an improper ruse, in 2019, OPA recommended better training for officers. Instead, the department incorporated some ruse-related training into “legal refresher” training for sergeants, who then relayed the information to officers at roll calls.
