‘I’m the one who told him’: Gee reveals he broke the news to former SPD chief that Katie Wilson was pushing him out

KIRO host Gee Scott revealed he was the one who broke the news to now-former Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes that he was going to be asked to resign.

“I had a trusted source hit me up, and they said to me, ‘Hey, they just canceled some press briefings or some type of interviews, and actually, they’re gonna be drawing up papers to ask the chief to resign, or he’ll be fired,'” Gee said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “I’m like, ‘Whoa!’ So, I hang up with them, and so then I call the chief myself.

“I say, ‘Hey, man, what’s up, man?’ And he said he was at lunch,” he continued. “I said, ‘Did you have some meetings or some press briefings? Did you have something canceled? And he said, ‘Yeah, just did.’ I said, ‘OK, well, the first half you just verified.’ So I said, ‘The second half, I’m gonna tell you, I don’t know, but it might be true.’ I said, ‘Look, man, I think the mayor is gonna call you or hit you up and have you come in to ask you to resign, or if you don’t resign, be fired.’ And he says, ‘What?'”

“Are you serious?” KIRO host Ursula Reutin asked.

“I’m the one who told him,” Gee responded. “By the way, I’m saying this with the receipts. I’m the one who alerted him.”

Gee said his conversation with Barnes occurred around 3 p.m. Wednesday, and that he asked Barnes if he planned on still attending a vigil at the Seattle Center for the victims killed in the shooting. Barnes told Gee that no matter what, he was still going to the vigil.

Ursula was stunned that Gee knew about Barnes’ ouster before the chief himself did.

“How is someone, and you said it was a trusted source, telling you about it before the chief even gets…? I’m absorbing this for the first time,” she said. “You are finding out and talking to the chief who has no idea. That encapsulates everything that is wrong with his current administration.”

Shon Barnes confirms to Gee that he was asked to resign

Around 5:45 p.m. that day, Barnes hit Gee back and said he had just gotten the call.

“He says, ‘Yep, I just got the call. I got to go. I got a meeting with the mayor at 7:45 p.m.,'” Gee said.

Gee noted the reason he shared the story was to highlight what he sees as a failure of leadership in the mayor’s office.

“There’s no way it should have gone down like that,” Gee said. “There are people talking about, ‘Oh my goodness, the chief, now that he’s resigned and this is going to happen.’ Yeah, OK. Once you guys are done talking about the chief and being in Chicago and where he lives and all that whole conversation, and oh by the way, we have made the chief the main topic.

“The main topic should be: Can we find the person that’s on the loose right now?” he continued. “The main topic should be these families. The main topic should be what happened on Sunday. But instead, the Katie Wilson administration is not managing that situation. She’s managing her ordeal. She’s managing her leadership, or failure, or lack thereof. So that’s the whole conversation, and that’s why I’m bringing this up.”

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.