SEATTLE — A demoted Seattle police commander who sued the city for alleged discrimination, accusing police Chief Adrian Diaz of unfairly blaming him for the infamous “pink umbrella incident” during 2020’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, has settled his case.
An agreement signed by Capt. Steve Hirjak in September requires the city to pay Hirjak and his attorney’s firm about $600,000, in installments, to settle the lawsuit. As part of the settlement, the city must promote Hirjak back to assistant chief on March 1, 2024, and he must then immediately resign.
The settlement said Hirjak would receive back wages and damages (totaling $54,814, according to the Seattle city attorney’s office) and $250,000 in other compensation. It said his attorney’s firm would receive $300,000 in attorney’s fees and costs.
Hirjak and his attorney, Toby Marshall, declined to comment on the agreement, as did a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office.
Hirjak, 54, joined the Seattle Police Department in 1993 and became the department’s first Asian American assistant chief in 2018. In his 2021 lawsuit, he said Diaz made him the scapegoat for the misconduct of another commander, Lt. John Brooks, who ordered officers in riot gear to deploy tear gas and blast balls into a crowd of protesters on Capitol Hill on June 1, 2020.
The incident, which erupted near the department’s East Precinct after an officer’s tug of war with a demonstrator over a pink umbrella, was captured on video, including by Converge Media’s Omari Salisbury, and was shared widely, drawing public outrage as a seminal moment in Seattle’s protests.
A subsequent investigation by the city’s Office of Police Accountability determined Brooks had broken crowd dispersal protocols with the actions he ordered against a largely nonviolent crowd. But Diaz overruled the OPA’s recommendations. The chief instead blamed and demoted Hirjak, who was the city’s overall incident commander for the demonstrations at the time of the incident. Hirjak saw his $241,363 salary cut by $37,000.
Preceded by a $5.5 million claim for damages (under state law, such claims must be filed before a city can be sued), Hirjak’s lawsuit alleged his demotion was discriminatory and resulted in “lower pay, loss of reputation, diminution of future career opportunities, and emotional distress.”
The suit said Diaz (who became chief after the 2020 protests) and Carmen Best (who was chief during the protests) falsely blamed and mistreated him while ignoring and even promoting other white commanders who engaged in improper conduct. It said Brooks racked up 14 misconduct complaints during the protests and was promoted to captain, and it said commanders responsible for abandoning the East Precinct went undisciplined.
The suit alleged Hirjak faced retaliation after filing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint about his demotion. It said he “suffered shame and embarrassment because of his demotion … as well as harm to his future job prospects and standing in the community.”
The suit’s settlement said an outside investigator retained by the city found no evidence that Hirjak was subjected to racial discrimination or retaliation, as he alleged. The settlement said Hirjak and the city were agreeing to end the case without any admission of wrongdoing or unlawful conduct.
