A recently-retired Seattle Police lieutenant made headlines this week for writing a scathing resignation letter to Police Chief Adrian Diaz, ripping his leadership and also that of Mayor Bruce Harrell and the City Council.
Fox News interviewed retired Police Lt. Jessica Taylor, who ended her 23-year career with the department on Aug. 1. A copy of her letter was published online.
“Once upon a time,” Taylor wrote, “my job meant everything to me—my passion, pride and reason for being. Little did I know it harbored a dark secret. Behind the scenes was a breeding ground of lies, deceit, favoritism, and rampant corruption. The department I once trusted turned out to be nothing more than a circus, with boisterous clowns running amok.”
A few lines later, Taylor added, “Chief Diaz, let me tell you, the state of the Seattle Police Department and this city is a disgrace. The toxic mix of the Seattle City Council’s absurdity, the spinelessness of the Mayor, the leniency of the prosecutor’s office, and your failed leadership has accelerated this city’s downhill slide straight to rock bottom.”
Seattle has had significant, high-profile problems since before the 2020 riots and demonstrations which erupted after the death of George Floyd while in custody of police in Minneapolis, Minn. According to reports, the department has lost some 600 commissioned officers over the past three years, leading to what Taylor said in her letter is a city “that once prided itself on progressiveness and prosperity (but) has now become a hotbed for crime and anarchy.”
Seattle has occasionally become the target of blistering criticism from the gun rights community for its efforts to overturn Washington State’s 40-year-old state firearms preemption law, and for adopting gun control policies which have been followed by much higher rates of violent crime.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms blasted the city administration last November following the murder of a student at a Seattle high school. Harrell and Councilwoman Lisa Herbold said the city has “a gun problem” in an effort to deflect public attention away from police manpower shortages and the removal of school resource officers more than two years ago.
In 2015, when Harrell was on the council, the city adopted a gun and ammunition tax to finance a gun violence reduction project. The revenue has never come close to projections, and since the ordinance was adopted the number of homicides in the city has doubled.
Last month, CCRKBA criticized the state legislature and the Seattle-based—and billionaire-backed—gun prohibition lobby which has pushed restrictive gun control laws over the past few years, contending the restrictions would help reduce gun-related violence.
Instead, Washington homicides have increased, making a strong argument that gun control has been an abysmal failure, and only served to penalize law-abiding citizens, while doing nothing to disarm the criminal element.
While much of her 15-page letter is directed at Chief Diaz, Taylor did not spare the city administration.
“The Seattle City Council,” Taylor wrote, “has lost touch with reality and is making decisions that defy common sense and basic logic. Their priority is playing politics and pandering to radical ideologies rather than genuinely serving the city’s and its residents best interests.”
One paragraph later, Taylor states, “It’s infuriating to witness this city’s downfall under the watch of a spineless Mayor and a radical City Council that seems more concerned with pandering to extreme ideologies than actually governing.”
She accused Harrell of disregarding “the rampant lawlessness on our streets” and prioritizing “political correctness over the safety and well-being of its people.”
