Text messages obtained by KIRO 7 cast light on the interactions between top officials in Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s office and Seattle’s police department in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Seattle Center in July.
The messages reveal internal debates over messaging, when leaders acknowledged that communications had broken down, and provide some insight into why it took over four hours for officials to address the public.
Throughout the night, the mayor’s team seemed both aware that the public and the media had noticed the delay in communications, and frustrated with it themselves.
“This is a massive f******* disaster,” one staffer wrote, calling the incident “a hit to public trust.”
After reviewing dozens of pages, KIRO 7 has found the messages help fill in some, but not all, of the questions as to what happened in the hours between when shots were first fired and when the mayor, police chief, governor, and county executive addressed the public shortly before 11 pm that night.
According to messages sent and received by Mayor Katie Wilson and her team, the mayor became aware of the shooting shortly after shots were first fired around 6 pm on Sunday, July 27.
The messages also show Shon Barnes, who was at the time Chief of the SPD but has since been asked to step down from his role, was involved in the response to the shooting minutes after shots were fired.
Most of the text messages between Mayor Katie Wilson and her staff took place in group chats on both iMessage and Microsoft Teams. Both chats primarily focused on how and when the mayor would address the public.
The messages reveal that Mayor Katie Wilson advocated for and asked to appear at the scene earlier in the night, but her team decided against it out of concern for her safety and because the police department directed that the area was not yet secure in the first couple of hours after the shooting.
Wilson also seemed concerned about the perception of her absence, writing “I am sure KOMO would love to spin the absent mayor story.”
Later messages reveal that Seattle Center was declared “contained” almost three hours before leaders addressed the public.
Messages also suggest that Governor Ferguson and Congresswoman Jayapal both arrived at the center before Wilson. As reporters waited for the address to start, the delay was explained by saying the department was waiting for “dignitaries” to arrive. It is unclear whether this referred to Wilson or other state leaders.
Whether or not Wilson would appear at the site of the shooting was not the only topic of debate amongst mayoral staffers.
In a message to Alison Holcomb, director of public safety, Jonah Spangenthal, the city’s interim press secretary and internal communications manager, said Alert Seattle, the city’s official emergency communications system, was not activated during the shooting because the police department, the mayor’s office, or the city could not decide whose job it was to start the system. “It was everyone’s job and no one’s job,” he wrote.
In the same message, he questioned whether he would still be working with the mayor in the near future, although the messages do not clearly explain why he was concerned about losing his job.
When KIRO 7 reached out to Spangenthal, we received an automated email message saying he no longer worked at the mayor’s office.
Along with not activating the city’s alert system, staffers expressed frustration with how long it was taking SPD to get information out to the public.
“It’s f****** embarrassing that SPD has waited HOURS to put anything out”, Spangenthal wrote in a group chat.
“Well, we’re not!” Interim Communications Director for the Mayor’s Office, Dawn Schellenberg, answered.
At least some of the frustration the mayor’s office felt with the police department seemed to stem from their access to information not yet known to the public, but that the office didn’t want to post about or announce before the department did, to protect the investigation.
Messages suggest the mayor’s office knew the identities of the victims and the deceased for over an hour before that information was released to the public.
KIRO 7 learned it had heard from sources at the time of the shooting some information about the victims but was only able to confirm all of it when Seattle Fire posted on X.com shortly after 8 pm that night.
Notably absent from the messages the city allowed KIRO 7 access to is any communication between the mayor and the police chief the night of the shooting.
Based only on the messages the city shared with KIRO 7, it could be concluded that the Mayor and Chief of police had no direct conversations that night. However, several messages shared with the media have been redacted, suggesting that the material the city is willing to share may not be the full extent of the communications leaders had with each other that night.
KIRO 7 reached out to the mayor’s office to ask about Wilson’s contact with Barnes, but as of Friday evening, we have yet to hear back.