SPD Chief: ‘One of the most important things was the use of cameras’ in arrests of two homicide suspects

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) conducted swift arrests for suspects in connection with two separate homicides last weekend that devastated the Seattle community.

A 25-year-old employee at The Growler Guys taproom in Lake City was found dead early Saturday morning, one day before a 19-year-old transgender student at the University of Washington (UW) was stabbed to death in a laundry room at Nordheim Court Apartments, located north of University Village.

“I think the main thing is just the teamwork that we’ve implemented here since my arrival, having officers, investigators, and detectives come out along with our patrol response. We’ve done a lot of training. We’ve done a lot of collaboration, changed leadership a little bit, and so it really all matters,” SPD Chief Shon Barnes said on “The Gee and Ursula Show.” “But one of the most important things was the use of cameras that we will often scour the neighborhoods for, and cameras that were inside the business, as well as cameras that were inside the laundry room where this unfortunate incident occurred near the UW campus.”

A 20-year-old man was arrested Monday in connection with the death of the taproom employee. Two days later, the man suspected of fatally stabbing a 19-year-old UW student turned himself in to the Bellevue police.

“If not for the cameras, how long could this alleged suspect have been out on the streets?” KIRO host Gee Scott asked.

“This person could have been walking around for a very, very long time while we wait for fingerprints to come back, while we wait for DNA and trace evidence to come back, which we all collect,” Barnes said. “No homicide, as I was always taught, is ever solved by any one thing. There’s usually a combination of things, but certainly the cameras help to point us in the right direction and to identify a suspect quickly.”

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson limits CCTV use for 2026 World Cup

SPD announced it will not tap into closed-caption television (CCTV) cameras to monitor the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans expected to travel to the city during this summer’s World Cup, unless an incident is deemed a credible threat.

“We got the impression that if you had your way, you would have all cameras on during the World Cup,” KIRO host Ursula Reutin said. “Has anything changed since our last conversation with you on that front?”

“Let me say that any police officer and any police chief in the country will tell you that more information is better than less information in our efforts to keep people safe, and that is just a fundamental principle of criminal justice,” Barnes answered. “What has changed is that we’re working on a brief for the mayor that we intend to deliver sometime in June regarding the definition and our ability to understand what is a credible threat. We’re going to deliver that brief to the mayor, and then we will hopefully be in a place where we can have the cameras activated prior to the FIFA World Cup.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.