PubliCola76%
Seattle Police Chief Out of Town During Mass Shooting 60%
By ericacbarnett62%
7/27/2026, 2:08:59 PM
Keywords: Seattle Police Chief, Shon Barnes, Mass Shooting, Seattle Center, Out Of Town, Weekend Travel, National Organization Of Black Law Enforcement Executives, Noble, Dallas, Press Conference, City Hall, Recruitment Bonus, Madison Wi, Cal Anderson Park, Capitol Hill, Connor Nash, South Seattle Emerald, Hana Kim, Fox 13, Alex Ricketts
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Availability Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 28.3% saturation with 192 hits. Analysis detected 1,010 faulty-reasoning hits from 678 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 49.2% and a BS Rank of 60% (11,101 of 27,323 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 59.40% of the article peer group.
Seattle Police Chief Out of Town During Mass Shooting
By Erica C.
Barnett
Editor’s note: This post, originally part of today’s Morning Fizz, has been updated and expanded to include new information.
Yesterday’s mass shooting at Seattle Center, in which a gunman killed three people and injured five more, was the type of violent incident that, historically, has prompted Seattle police chiefs to rush to the scene to demonstrate the seriousness of the situation and answer questions from members of the press.
But the city’s current police chief, Shon Barnes, was nowhere to be seen on Sunday.
As he has been for many weekends since he took the $373,000 job in December 2024, Barnes was out of town.
According to multiple sources, Barnes planned to be out of town until mid-August, taking several weeks away from Seattle during the period when shootings and other violent incidents are most likely to occur.
Barnes also took two weeks off during the most recent winter holidays, including New Year’s Eve.
As we’ve reported, Barnes rents an apartment in Seattle and makes frequent trips to his family residence in Chicago, where his wife and kids live full-time.
Last year at this time, PubliCola reported that Barnes’ schedule showed he spent most weekends, beginning on Friday afternoons, out of town, attending conferences, going to events related to his college fraternity, giving keynote speeches, or spending time with his family in Chicago.
PubliCola sent detailed questions about the police chief’s whereabouts to SPD on Sunday night and Monday morning and had received no response or acknowledgement by late morning.
However, Barnes’ Facebook page, where he has chronicled many of his trips, indicates he was at a conference for the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives in Dallas.
He was back in Seattle this morning for a press conference on the shooting at City Hall.
(After this post went up, a city spokesperson contacted us to ask for a correction, saying we had inaccurately claimed Barnes was in Chicago, which we did not; our article this morning included the paragraph above about Barnes’ attendance at the NOBLE event.
Despite the apparent urgency of this call, SPD still has not responded to any of our questions sent over the past two days.)
Barnes, who received a $50,000 recruitment bonus to leave his previous job as police chief of Madison, WI, was also out of town during a major SPD incident last May, in which police pepper-sprayed and arrested dozens of counter-protesters at a rally and concert held by anti-trans right-wing activists at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill, Seattle’s historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood.
Barnes’ family also lived in Chicago while he was Madison’s police chief, although those two cities are only about a three hours’ drive apart.
During a press conference late Monday morning, a reporter asked Barnes if he was out of town this weekend, as I reported on Sunday.
His response: “I wish I had a crystal ball and we could schedule gun violence but we can’t.
”
At the end of the press conference, Barnes snapped at South Seattle Emerald reporter Connor Nash, who asked him about my reporting that he is out of town a lot.
FOX 13 anchor Hana Kim posted video (above) that showed Barnes becoming “confrontational,” as Kim put it, snapping, “I have been here working as hard as I can for this city from the day I got here.
Do you got that?
”
As Nash continued to ask his question, Barnes cut him off.
“No, no, you listen to me.
”
“The reports are that you are not in town—often,” Nash persisted.
“Their reports are wrong.
You understand that?
” Barnes said, as his chief of staff Alex Ricketts pushed himself physically between Barnes and Nash, saying, “Let’s go, man.
Let’s go.
Let’s go” and escorting Barnes back inside the mayor’s office.
We’ve reached out to the mayor’s office about Barnes’ outsize response to the question about his schedule and will update this post if we hear back.
Speakers
4speakers18%attributed speech559writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageFOX 13
37 attributed words31% of attributed speech89% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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