Harger: Three people are dead at the Bite of Seattle. A two-year-old was shot. The city deserved better than what came next

Do better.

Two words. Because this is a city that deserves answers, and clarity, and transparency. And right now, we’re not getting that.

It was a beautiful day in Seattle. The Bite of Seattle, by all accounts, had been uneventful. Hundreds of thousands of people from around the region. Good food, the Seattle Center, families. A summer Sunday in one of the most beautiful cities in America.

And then gunfire broke out. People died — three of them.

Police now say at least two people were shooting at each other in the middle of Seattle Center, in broad daylight, surrounded by families. A 19-year-old man, who investigators believe was one of the shooters, was killed at the scene. A 44-year-old man was killed. A 56-year-old woman died at Harborview after surgery.

Two innocent people, dead in a crossfire they had nothing to do with.

Four others, including a two-year-old boy, were shot. A toddler. It was so bad you can hear it on the dispatch audio, someone asking for a tourniquet small enough for a child that age. Witnessed by hundreds. The immediate aftermath shared by thousands, if not millions, online. Blood on the ground. Vendors abandoned their booths. Shoes left behind as people ran. A fence knocked down by the crowd trying to get out.

Last month, Seattle celebrated its first murder-free June in more than 50 years. I wrote about it. I praised the department. I praised the trend. Twenty-six days later, three people are dead at the Seattle Center, and a toddler is in the hospital.

The first question in a mass shooting is simple. It took five hours to answer

Bob Calkins is a retired Washington State Patrol public information officer. He’s spent a career handling crisis communications for one of the state’s largest law enforcement agencies. He posted an analysis of the city’s response on Facebook.

The first thing Calkins pointed out is that a mass shooting always begins with a simple, two-part question: was this a random shooter targeting people indiscriminately, or was this a confrontation between armed individuals shooting at each other? The answer to that question determines whether every bar, restaurant, and grocery store in the city needs to close. Whether there’s an ongoing threat to the public, or whether the immediate danger has passed.

You don’t need five hours to figure that out. Officers on the scene knew the answer long before anyone shared it.

Instead, nearby residents didn’t know what was happening. Was this an ongoing threat? Had it been neutralized? The people whose job it is to provide direct, clear information to the public were not providing it.

‘What you know, as you know it.’ That’s the standard. SPD didn’t meet it

In a Facebook post, Calkins laid out the basic rule of crisis communication: share what you know, as you know it. The operative word is “know.” You can’t guess or speculate. That requires discipline. But you also don’t need to know everything before you say anything. Do we know the caliber of the guns? No. Detectives will figure that out. But you can tell a terrified public whether the threat is ongoing, and you can do it in minutes, not hours.

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) has had this problem before. Calkins said the agency has excellent public information officers, but a history of detectives lowering a cone of silence over major incidents while they sort out details that the public doesn’t need immediately. The nuts and bolts can wait. Whether your family is safe cannot.

Someone decided to hold the information. The question is who

Much of that delay, it turns out, was connected to dignitaries wanting to be present at the briefing. Governor Bob Ferguson. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

A police public information officer told reporters waiting outside the Museum of Pop Culture that the delay was to wait for dignitaries to arrive. Mayor Wilson denied it at Monday’s press conference, saying she was at a different location with Ferguson and Jayapal, waiting for SPD to clear the nearby IMAX theater after reports a second suspect may have run inside.

“As soon as we coordinated with SPD and agreed that it was time to talk to the media, as soon as we knew that we were going to be doing that, I, Governor Ferguson and Congresswoman Jayapal arrived on the scene within minutes,” Wilson said.

Those two accounts don’t match. Somebody is wrong, and the public deserves to know who.

I suspect Ferguson and Jayapal would have wanted SPD to hold a press briefing about whether there was a public threat sooner than five hours after the shooting, and would have wanted to be present for a fuller press conference later in the evening. I don’t believe they’d want critical safety information held back so they could stand in the background giving statements about how awful this is and what a great response there was.

But Calkins raised something that is a concern. Governor Ferguson’s office requires state agencies to get media releases approved before they go out. Axios reported earlier this year that this policy has produced real delays inside state agencies, with one former communications manager calling it “grueling” and a “continual barrier.” Calkins, who worked under Governor Inslee’s communications team for years, says that team routinely trusted the expertise of agency PIOs. They didn’t sit on information. They didn’t require approval before facts could reach the public.

If Mayor Wilson has adopted a similar approval requirement for city agencies, that would explain the five-hour vapor lock. It would mean SPD’s public information officers, people who know how to do this job, were muzzled by the higher-ups. This is a question that demands answers.

There is a time for elected leaders to speak. Sympathy. Empathy. Policy. Resources. “We are Seattle strong.” But as Calkins pointed out, that press conference doesn’t have to delay the release of basic safety information. In fact, it probably shouldn’t happen at the same press conference at all. A worried restaurant owner trying to decide whether to close for the night doesn’t need your empathy statement. They need to know whether there’s a gunman loose.

The chief wasn’t in town. The real question is why his people weren’t ready

Chief Shon Barnes wasn’t in Seattle when the shooting happened. He said Monday he had a medical procedure on Friday that took him out of town. That’s a legitimate reason to be away, and I’ll take him at his word.

But Calkins made a point that reframes this. A chief’s first job is to train subordinates so the operation runs when the chief is away. Chiefs get to take breaks. They get to have surgery. They get to go on vacation. What they don’t get to do is leave a department that can’t communicate with the public during a mass casualty event.

Barnes went through a mass shooting at his previous department. With that experience, he should have been training his people and setting expectations long before Sunday. The five-hour silence suggests that training either didn’t happen or didn’t stick.

And when South Seattle Emerald reporter Connor Nash asked Barnes about his absence after today’s press conference, Barnes got in his face. Inches away. On camera. KOMO recorded it.

“I don’t have to tell you where I go,” Barnes said. “I have been here working as hard as I can for this city from the day I got here.”

His own staff had to intervene, pushing him toward the door.

It was a fair question. Nash is a journalist doing his job. The question of whether the chief was in town when three people were killed, and a toddler was shot, is exactly the kind of question reporters are supposed to ask, and chiefs are supposed to answer. Calmly. Professionally. With the weight of the office in mind.

And it raises another question that preceded this incident. Does Barnes have a full-time residence in Seattle? The word is his family still lives in Chicago, that Barnes keeps an apartment here and heads back on weekends and for extended stretches. That deserves a straight answer.

Why can’t you just say what this was?

As of Monday’s press conference, police have confirmed this appears to be gang-related. At least two people, possibly three, were exchanging gunfire at the Seattle Center in front of families and children.

So why couldn’t that have been said Sunday night? Why leave people wondering for hours whether there’s some ongoing mystery threat, when investigators on the scene could see what this was?

Telling the public what happened, clearly and promptly, is the most basic function of crisis communication. You don’t need five hours and a governor to do it. You need someone in a uniform looking into a camera and saying: This is what we know, this is what we’re doing, and this is what you need to do right now.

This was an epic communication failure

The officers who responded to the scene did their jobs. The firefighters and medics who treated the wounded did their jobs. The people responsible for telling the public what was happening failed them.

I’ve covered this city for decades. I’ve praised this department when it earned it, including last month. I’ll praise it again when it earns it again. But the communication failures here point to a leadership problem that existed before the first shot was fired.

Seattle just showed the world its best face for the World Cup. Two weeks later, three people are dead at a food festival, and a two-year-old was hospitalized, and the people in charge couldn’t figure out how to tell us what happened for five hours.

Do better.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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