Decision on whether to fire 2 officers at Capitol during Jan. 6 riot will now fall to SPD chief

On Thursday, Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability recommended that two officers be fired for trespassing on the U.S. Capitol grounds during the January 6 riot. But it will now fall to interim Chief Adrian Diaz to decide whether that recommendation is carried out, with Diaz expected to issue his ruling soon.

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The OPA’s investigation looked into the status of six total SPD officers who were in Washington, D.C. on January 6. Three officers were cleared of any wrongdoing, while the investigation into a fourth officer was inconclusive.

For the two who the OPA recommended be fired, still images provided by the FBI appeared to indicate that they were standing in a restricted area “directly next to the wall of the Capitol Building” while rioters were scaling walls and scaffoldings, and beginning to illegally breach the building. While neither officer attempted to enter the Capitol building themselves, OPA Director Andrew Myerberg’s ruling centered around their presence in an area prohibited to the public, and their lack of action while others were breaking the law.

“That they were direct witnesses to people defiling the seat of American democracy and assaulting fellow law enforcement officers — and did nothing — makes this all the more egregious,” Myerberg said.

Seattle’s disciplinary process for police officers makes it so that the OPA can only recommend disciplinary action, leaving it up to the chief to make the final call after the accused are given a union-mandated Loudermill hearing to plead their case to their employer.

If Diaz sides with the OPA’s recommendation to terminate the two officers, the officers are then able to file a grievance and have an arbitrator make a final decision on whether to either uphold the chief’s ruling, or overturn it.

In a statement issued by SPD on Thursday, the department indicated that Chief Diaz plans to make his decision “within the next 30 days,” having previously vowed to “hold accountable any SPD officer involved in the insurrection, including disciplinary action up to and including termination.”

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That said, the department also emphasized its larger, overarching goal to allow the disciplinary process to play out by the book.

“While we hear a call for swifter action, the consequences – as we have seen around the country – of undercutting due process serve only to undermine accountability,” its statement reads.

That process took centerstage recently, when Diaz reversed the OPA’s findings in a case involving a clash between Seattle protesters and police, where an officer was alleged to have incited an incident that culminated in the dispersal of tear gas and blast balls.

At the time, his decision to break from the OPA’s ruling was centered around the fact that he believed the officer should not have been held responsible for a decision that ultimately fell to an SPD incident commander at the scene. That commander was later demoted by Diaz for his actions during the incident.

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