The Seattle Police Department (SPD) is the principal law enforcement agency of the city of Seattle,Washington,United States,except for the campus of the University of Washington,which is under the responsibility of its own police department.
John Francis Timoney was an American policeman and law enforcement executive. He served as Chief of the Miami Police Department from 2003 to 2010. He was previously Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department (1998–2002) and held a variety of positions with the New York Police Department (1967–96),including its Chief of Department and First Deputy Commissioner. He worked for the Ministry of the Interior of Bahrain as a police consultant. Timoney drew both international praise and criticism for his handling of mass protests.
The Memphis Police Department is a law enforcement agency in Tennessee in the United States.
Bruce Allen Harrell is an American politician and attorney serving as the 57th and current mayor of Seattle,Washington. He was a member of the Seattle City Council from 2008 to 2020. From 2016 to 2020,he was president of the city council. He was acting mayor of Seattle from September 13 to 18,2017. He was elected mayor in his own right in the 2021 Seattle mayoral election,becoming the second Black mayor since Norm Rice,and the first African-Asian American mayor of the city.
Jenny Anne Durkan is an American attorney,former federal prosecutor,and politician who served as the 56th mayor of Seattle,Washington. She is the daughter of Martin Durkan. Durkan is a member of the Democratic Party. After earning her Juris Doctor from University of Washington School of Law in 1985,Durkan began practicing law as a criminal defense lawyer and civil litigator. In October 2009,President Barack Obama appointed her United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington. She held that position until September 2014.
The Portland Police Bureau (PPB),officially the Portland Bureau of Police,is the law enforcement agency of the city of Portland,the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. While oversight of Portland's bureaus shifts among the five City Commissioners,the mayor has historically been assigned to the Police Bureau as the police commissioner.
Kshama Sawant is an Indian-American politician and economist who served on the Seattle City Council from 2014 to 2024. She is a member of Socialist Alternative,the first and only member of the party to date to be elected to public office.
The 2017 Seattle mayoral election was held on November 7,2017. It was won by former U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan,who beat civic activist Cary Moon in the general election by 15 percentage points. The two candidates had advanced from an earlier primary election held in August,which ensured that Seattle would have its first female mayor since Bertha Knight Landes was elected in 1926. Municipal elections are officially nonpartisan though most candidates have declared party affiliations.
Nikkita R. Oliver is an American lawyer,non-profit administrator,educator,poet,and politician. They were a candidate for Mayor of Seattle in the 2017 mayoral election,but finished third in the primary with 17% of the vote. Oliver was defeated again in an at-large Seattle city council race in 2021.
Erica Christine Barnett is an American journalist and blogger who covers the city of Seattle. She is known locally within Seattle for her crowdsourced journalism in Seattle.
Starting in May 2020,protests following the murder of George Floyd were held in the city of Portland,Oregon,concurrent with protests in other cities in the United States and around the world. By July 2020,many of the protests,which had been held every day since May 28,drew more than 1,000 participants. Protests continued into August,September,and October 2020,often drawing hundreds.
This is a list of protests over the murder of George Floyd that took place in the state of Washington in 2020.
The city of Seattle experienced protests over the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and 2021. Beginning on May 29,2020,demonstrators took to the streets throughout the city for marches and sit-ins,often of a peaceful nature but which also devolved into riots. Participants expressed opposition to systemic racism,police brutality and violence against people of color.
The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) or Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP),originally Free Capitol Hill and occasionally the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP),was an unlawful occupation protest and self-declared autonomous zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle,Washington. The zone,originally covering two intersections at the corners of Cal Anderson Park and the roads leading up to them,was established on June 8,2020 by persons protesting the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis,Minnesota. The zone was cleared of occupants by police on July 1,2020.
Pine Street is a major east–west street in Seattle,Washington,United States. It travels parallel to Pike Street between Downtown Seattle and the retail core to Capitol Hill,the Central District,and Madrona.
In June 2020,the Trump administration began deploying federal law enforcement forces to select cities in the United States in response to rioting and monument removals amid the George Floyd protests. Federal law enforcement elements were deployed under Operation Legend,Operation Diligent Valor,and the Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT). The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cited an executive order regarding "monuments,memorials and statues" as allowing federal officers to be deployed without the permission of individual U.S. states,as the federal government "has the right to enforce federal laws,investigate crimes and make arrests" within states.
The police abolition movement gained momentum in the U.S. city of Minneapolis during protests of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and culminated in the failed Question 2 ballot measure in 2021 to replace the city's police department with a public safety department. The measure would have removed minimum staffing levels for sworn officers,renamed the Minneapolis Police Department as the Minneapolis Department of Public Safety,and shifted oversight of the new agency from the mayor's office to the city council. It required the support of 51 percent of voters in order to pass. In the Minneapolis municipal election held on November 2,2021,the measure failed with 43.8 percent voting for it and 56.2 percent voting against it.
Omari Salisbury is an American journalist,videographer,and business man from Seattle,Washington who founded Converge Media,a local independent production company for local news and entertainment,in 2017. Salisbury was reporting live for Converge to cover Seattle's protest response to the murder of George Floyd,when he captured the "pink umbrella video" that was described as an early flashpoint of the 2020 protests in Seattle.
A "Black Lives Matter" street mural was painted in Capitol Hill,Seattle,in the U.S. state of Washington in June 2020. Maintained by the Seattle Department of Transportation,the artwork has survived longer than many Black Lives Matter street murals across the United States.
