Saw This One Coming: Mayor Katie Wilson reportedly fired Police Chief Shon Barnes last night, according to Publicola. He was reportedly seen leaving Wilson’s seventh floor office in City Hall after a long meeting. Multiple sources, including a recently retired Seattle Police Department officer, said Barnes called some of his captains with the news last night.
Early Wednesday, Barnes cancelled a half-dozen TV interviews to answer questions about the Seattle Center shooting and his travel schedule. As Publicola has reported, Barnes rents in Seattle while his wife and children live at the family’s home in Chicago. He’s a frequent flyer who has spent at least seven weeks away from Seattle this year according to a partial, edited copy of his schedule obtained by Publicola. He was attending a conference in Dallas during Sunday’s shooting. The dominos really started falling when clips of a heated Barnes dismissing a South Seattle Emerald reporter’s questions about his whereabouts went viral. Barnes told the reporter, Connor Nash, that Publicola’s reporting was “wrong.” Then Barnes’ chief of staff, Alex Ricketts, physically inserted himself between the two. Barnes later said at a press conference that it was a demonstration of his “passion” for the job. Must be a bummer for Barnes to lose this $373,000 a year job. On the bright side, there’s nothing to keep him from his true passion—leaving Seattle.
Yesterday, prosecutors charged the 15-year-old suspect in Sunday’s shooting with first-degree assault with an enhanced firearm. Outgoing Chief Barnes said in a news conference that rounds were missing from the extended magazine in the untraceable ghost gun found on the boy. Per autopsy results, bullets fired from the gun did not hit victims Carlos Israel Sanchez Villalba or Ashley Whitehead. The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office wants to charge the 15-year-old boy as an adult, a legal process that could take months.
Two days after he admitted himself to a Federal Way hospital for alcohol withdrawal, Leon Davis was dying on the linoleum floor while a doctor and nurses watched, pinned under eight officers and crying that he could not breathe. Medical staff had called police after Davis threatened to jump out a window. He died of a heart attack yards from the intensive care unit. The Seattle Times has the story.
Plunging a stake deep in hearts of Seattle NIMBYs, Seattle City Council voted 5-4 Tuesday to keep Seattle’s amateur Loraxes from abusing the environmental review process to stymie growth and upzoning. The bill was Councilmember Eddie Lin’s first piece of legislation since taking office last year. Mayor Wilson said in a statement that she’d sign it into law.
Worse with every word: Boy George used AI to write a pro-Israel pop reggae song.
Nice House of Cards: A recent investigation from Japanese newspaper Nikkei Asia found that tech giants Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that does not appear on balance sheets. All are heavily invested in AI. Experts worry there is a bubble, and that bubble is going to pop.
Unpopular President Unpopular, Polls Show: According to a new AP-NORC poll, most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worthwhile; Donald Trump’s approval rating on Iran has slightly fallen since last month. Now only 34 percent of Americans think Trump is doing a good job. That’s the same approval rating he had after the January 6th insurrection. Voters don’t just disapprove of his political decisions, they also hate his personality. It could’ve been different, Mr. Trump.
It’s a Party: Egypt says it came under attack for the first time since the US launched the Iran war. Authorities there say an unidentified drone caused an explosion at one of its ports near the Suez Canal, demonstrating how an escalating conflict could further impact global trade. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia entered the war for the first time, joining the US for strikes on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
The longer stranded ships idly bob in the Strait of Hormuz, the more likely they are to cause a marine “superspreader” event. While waiting for the war to end, marine microbes, algae, and invertebrates have found a home on their hulls. When the ships leave, they’ll hitch a ride from the Strait to the waters of the world, a problem current regulations cannot handle.
LinkedIn adds “Seems like AI slop” button: That’s literally what the button says, and it allows users to report anything that seems like AI slop. Terrible news for the sloppers: A report from 404Media found an “estimated 41 percent of long form posts and 30 percent of short form posts on LinkedIn are likely AI generated.”
