The Seattle Police Department is preparing to release its own cache of internal text messages and Microsoft Teams communications from the night of the deadly Bite of Seattle mass shooting, a disclosure Interim Police Chief Andre Sayles says could come by the end of this week and may further expose the nearly five-hour communications collapse that followed the attack.
Sayles revealed the pending release during a media availability on Monday, following a bloody Labor Day weekend in Seattles Belltown neighborhood that left three people dead and three others wounded. According to The Post Millennial, the chiefs comments signal that the public may soon see how the citys police leadership actually communicated during one of the most consequential public safety failures in recent Seattle history.
The announcement from SPD arrives just days after Seattle Mayor Katie Wilsons office made public hundreds of internal messages related to the July 26 shooting at the Bite of Seattle, a popular summer festival that turned into a crime scene when gunfire killed three people and injured four others, including a 2-year-old child. Those records, while offering a rare look inside the mayors office during a crisis, also raised serious questions about political priorities, messaging strategies, and the absence of timely, clear information for a frightened public.
Pressed on Monday about when SPD would fulfill records requests submitted by journalists, Sayles said the department had already begun gathering its own internal communications. We actually on Friday were working through our own collection of our text messages, team messages and so forth, Sayles said. I think hopefully by this week, at the end of this week, we should have our information released out to the media that put in those public disclosure requests.
Unlike the mayors office, which released its records on its own initiative rather than in response to a formal public disclosure request, SPD appears to be moving more deliberately. That slower pace, while frustrating to transparency advocates, reflects a concern that partial or selectively curated disclosures could further erode public trust in a department already under intense political and ideological scrutiny.
Asked whether SPD also needed to wait for a formal records request before releasing its messages, Sayles emphasized that his priority was completeness and accuracy, not speed or political optics. My biggest thing is I want to make sure we have all that information, Sayles said. I don't want it to be where we put out information, and then there's three or four people's text messages missing. I want to make sure we have everything, we put it all out, and it's all accurate, and the timelines are there for what we have.
The timeline has become the central point of contention since the shooting, and for good reason. Gunfire erupted at Seattle Center at approximately 6 pm, yet city officials did not face reporters until shortly before 11 pm, leaving residents and festivalgoers in an information vacuum for nearly five hours.
The records released by Wilson's office on Friday depict an administration preoccupied with messaging, the mayor's physical location, and how her absence might be perceived by the media, even as reporters and the public waited for basic facts. The communications show a political operation acutely aware of how a progressive mayor might be portrayed in the aftermath of a mass shooting, but far less focused on promptly informing citizens about immediate safety concerns.
Wilson learned of the shooting shortly after it occurred and repeatedly debated, with her staff, whether she should go to Seattle Center. At one point, after being told that KOMO was reporting that she and members of the City Council were expected at the scene, Wilson wrote, I'm sure they would love to spin an absent mayor story.
Her staff weighed the optics and the risks, citing safety concerns because the scene had not initially been fully secured. Yet the messages indicate that Seattle Center was considered contained nearly three hours before officials finally appeared before cameras, raising the question of whether political calculations, rather than public safety, drove the delay.
The records also reveal deep frustration within Wilson's office over SPD's lack of public communication, a striking detail given the mayors own delayed appearance. It's f*cking embarrassing that SPD has waited HOURS to put anything out, then-interim press secretary Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote, capturing the exasperation inside City Hall as the vacuum of information grew.
Interim Communications Director Dawn Schellenberg responded, Well, we're not! signaling that the mayors team saw itself as more proactive than the police department. Yet the mayor's office soon ran into its own credibility problems as it struggled to provide accurate, verified information to the public in real time.
Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt flagged a serious error in a statement from Wilson's office that claimed two suspects were in custody when, in reality, only one had been arrested. The statement says 2 suspects in custody. This is not accurate. Please revise, Surratt wrote, underscoring the dangers of rushing out information without proper confirmation.
When Schellenberg later questioned the release of inaccurate information, Spangenthal-Lee responded with a casualness that will likely trouble many residents. I mean I'm not really worried about it, he wrote, before adding, Sh*t happens. We still put out 100 percent more information than spd.
Another message shed light on why Seattle's AlertSeattle emergency notification system was never activated, even as a mass shooting unfolded at one of the citys largest and most heavily attended summer events. Spangenthal-Lee described responsibility for activating the system as everyone's job and no one's job, a damning admission that suggests a lack of clear authority and accountability in a city that has repeatedly promised improved emergency preparedness.
Despite the volume of messages released, the mayor's records appear to leave significant gaps in the narrative of what happened that night. Former Police Chief Adrian Diazs successor, Chief Harold Barnes, was later asked to resign by Wilson and replaced on an interim basis by Sayles, a move that many observers see as part of a broader reshuffling of blame rather than a serious reckoning with policy failures.
Wilson has since announced new emergency communications protocols that require direct contact between the mayor and the police chief during major incidents and aim to provide information to the media within one hour when possible. Those reforms, while welcome on paper, raise the obvious question of why such basic standards were not already in place in a city that has spent years under progressive leadership promising reform, transparency, and accountability.
Wilson has maintained that she did not realize, in the midst of the shooting, how little information SPD was providing to the public and that, had she known, she would have pushed for an immediate briefing. That claim, however, sits uneasily alongside the messages showing her staff obsessing over media narratives and the risk of an absent mayor storyline while the public remained in the dark.
Sayles was asked Monday whether the messages released by Wilson's office accurately reflected SPD's actions that night, a key question as competing narratives emerge from City Hall and the police department. He said he had not yet completed that comparison, citing the demands of the violent Labor Day weekend.
I have gone through all of them, Sayles said, explaining that the recent surge in violent crime had prevented him from fully piecing together the records and aligning them with SPDs own documentation. My job is going to be seeing what the mayor's office put out and then looking at the information that we have from what we did on that Sunday night, he said, suggesting that the departments forthcoming release may challenge or complicate the mayors version of events.
The SPD records could also clarify one of the most contentious questions surrounding the delayed press conference: whether police were instructed to wait for elected officials, described as dignitaries, before beginning the briefing. That allegation, if substantiated, would reinforce concerns that political theater took precedence over timely communication with the public in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting.
Wilson has denied that her administration told SPD to delay the briefing for dignitaries, insisting that no such directive came from her office. However, SPD Detective Brian Pritchard later wrote that during internal police team briefings, officers were told they were waiting for dignitaries to arrive, a direct contradiction that underscores the need for an independent, fact-based review.
The mayor's newly released messages show that Gov. Bob Ferguson and Rep. Pramila Jayapal arrived at Seattle Center before Wilson. Reporters waiting for the briefing were told there was a delay while dignitaries arrived, though the records do not clearly identify which officials were being referenced in that explanation.
Sayles was also asked Monday whether he would permit Pritchard to testify at the Seattle City Council's Public Safety Committee hearing later this month, a forum that could bring uncomfortable truths into public view. Sayles said he had not yet made a final decision, citing concerns about protecting the detective after Pritchard discussed personal matters in his email.
But when informed that Pritchard had indicated he was willing to testify, Sayles signaled a willingness to accommodate that request. When I talk to Detective Pritchard and he gives me the thumbs up and he's willing to be there, I'll have Detective Pritchard there, Sayles said. Once he says, Chief, I'm ready to go, I'll be there standing right next to him.
Wilson has asked Seattle's Office of Inspector General to review the city's response and the communications failures surrounding the shooting, an acknowledgment that the citys progressive leadership did not meet the basic expectations of transparency and competence on the night of the attack. On Monday, she defended her office's decision to release the texts and said the administration was now really focused on moving forward.
For many residents, however, the central issue is not simply moving on but understanding how a city that prides itself on enlightened governance could allow a five-hour information blackout during a mass casualty event. As SPD prepares to release its own records, the contrast between political messaging and operational reality may become even sharper, and the question will be whether Seattles leaders are prepared to prioritize public safety and honest communication over image management and partisan narratives.
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