Five months after Seattle, Washington set a new homicide record, Police Chief Adrian Diaz is out as the top cop, and former King County Sheriff Sue Rahr has been named interim chief while a nationwide search gets underway for a permanent replacement.
Rahr, known as a no-nonsense administrator who left the sheriff’s office to take command at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, where she emphasized the job of police officers as “guardians, not warriors.”
Seattle is the headquarters of the Northwest’s most active and wealthy gun prohibition lobbying organization, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. This group has been behind the state’s march toward stricter gun control laws over the past ten years, and has remained silent as the number of homicides in the city has tripled while the number of murders statewide has doubled since gun laws became increasingly restrictive.
Data from the FBI Uniform Crime Report and the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs show Washington posted 172 murders in 2014, the year voters passed anti-gun Initiative 594, mandating so-called “universal background checks.” In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, the state logged 394 slayings.
In Seattle, there were 23 homicides in 2014 and last year, there were 73.
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, has been highly critical of Evergreen State gun control efforts, recently calling state gun control an “absolute failure.”
Over the same 10-year period, Evergreen State citizens have responded in two ways. Many have moved to friendlier states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona. The number of active concealed pistol licenses has climbed from 478,584 on Jan. 2, 2015 to 695,321 on May 1 of this year, a rise of 216,737 carry licenses in a state considered politically “blue” with a Legislature and Governor’s office dominated by Democrats over the past four decades.
The Seattle Police Department has lost hundreds of officers over the past four years and seems incapable of recruiting new officers, possibly due to widespread belief the Seattle municipal government, especially the city council, does not support law enforcement.
The big problem facing Diaz appears to be a number of lawsuits filed against him and the city amid allegations of sexism, harassment and discrimination, according to KING News, the local NBC affiliate. Diaz has been with the Seattle Police Department for more than two decades, working up through the ranks to the top spot following the resignation of respected former Chief Carmen Best in August 2020—the “summer of love” in Seattle which was marked by violent protests, as noted by the Associated Press, and the month-long creation of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) zone following the death of George Floyd while under restraint by police in Minneapolis, Minn.—where he remained chief until Wednesday. He was sworn in as permanent chief under Mayor Bruce Harrell in January 2023.
Harrell, a Democrat, is a gun control proponent who has publicly called for repeal of Washington’s nearly-40-year-old preemption law which places authority for gun regulation in the hands of the Legislature. Harrell wants to establish his own gun laws in Seattle.
Rahr came out of retirement to take the interim position. According to KOMO News, the local ABC affiliate, she has told Harrell she is not interested in becoming the permanent police chief. She served as sheriff for about seven years (2005-2012) before taking the job at the Criminal Justice Training Center.
Rahr also served on former President Barack Obama’s task force on 21st Century policing, according to KING. She is highly respected for her leadership and innovative approach to law enforcement.
