Incoming Police Chief Shon Barnes: "Our Job Is to Prevent Crime"

The new chief discusses efforts to hire more women, police officers in schools, less-lethal weapons, and more.

By Andrew Engelson

On Thursday, PubliCola sat down with incoming Seattle police chief Shon Barnes, who has served as the chief of police in Madison, Wisconsin since 2021. Barnes has 12 years of command-level police experience and worked as a civilian police accountability executive in Chicago, where he helped create training programs designed to meet the conditions of a federal consent decree with the Department of Justice, which mandated police reforms. Seattle has been under a similar order since 2012.

Mayor Bruce Harrell has touted Barnes' leadership in helping the Madison Police Department achieve a police force that is 28 percent women, atlhough that figure declined to 21 percent in 2024.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PubliCola (AE): You're taking over for the a chief who’s faced a lot of issues, including discrimination and harassment claims and a climate that's difficult for female officers. The mayor has said one of the reasons they chose you is that Madison is making good progress on the 30/30 Initiative. What have you done to improve things for female officers, and what would you do here to reset the climate?

SB: I think it's important to note that the culture and climate in Madison was set years before I showed up. They had a chief, David Cooper. David came to Madison from Minneapolis, and he was chief for twenty years, and he was the first one to say: Hey, why are all the women in [the] juvenile and traffic [divisions]? And he changed that culture.

Some of the things we've done under my tenure in Madison are making sure that people have the opportunity to do special teams and special assignments, making sure that people are trained and get the same opportunities as everyone else. It's really a zero tolerance culture for any behaviors that would be misogynistic or sexist.

AE: What specifically would you do here? Are you willing to clean house and fire people, if needed, and hire new people?

SB: The answer is, yes, you have to hold people accountable. Accountability is looking internally first and asking yourself: As the leader or chief, did I set people up for success? Do people know the culture, which is what you will and will not accept? Do they know the rules? Have they actually had training on this issue—or did we just watch a PowerPoint and scroll through it? Having some substance behind it, I think, is very, very important, and that's something that I will certainly do: make sure that everyone knows what the culture is, what the rules are, and that everybody feels comfortable.

AE: You're coming into a police department where there's been a culture of retaliation within the accountability system. The Office of Police Accountability director recently left amid questions about whether OPA was delaying investigations into Diaz. Officer Kevin Dave killed a pedestrian and officer Daniel Auderer made horrible comments about her death. What can you do to reassure folks that there's going to be some teeth to accountability?

SB: Everything that you stated didn't happen overnight. So if you're suggesting that there is a culture of non-accountability, then it's going to take some time, I will admit, to fix that. And if the accountability system is broken, and you can't go to OPA and get a fair shot, then we need to fix that, and we need to make sure that people are being held accountable. I’m the only police chief in the country that's worked for civilian oversight and been a police chief. The issue is that when the process isn't fair, timely and thorough—that's going to be my responsibility. Because if I want to complain, or I have a complaint and I don't believe in that [process], then guess what happens? People start not talking. Bad behavior starts to grow.

AE: The police officers guild negotiated for a pretty tough contract, and the city didn't really get any concessions in terms of accountability.

SB: It’s going to take some time for me to dig into what they're asking for. I do believe they're involved in some negotiations. Now, usually the chief is not involved in that. But one thing I will always advocate for is accountability, on both ends. Accountability for myself and making sure people know what the culture and the rules are. It has to start with me and my integrity.

You mentioned the line of [previous] police chiefs. I don't know them. I can't speak for them. But I can speak for myself. And when they see me being professional—the way I speak, the way I talk, the way I interact with people, that sets the culture and tone for everyone else. And on the back end, I'll do everything I can to make sure that people feel comfortable, and that they have somewhere to go if they want to file a complaint and that they feel like that complaint has merit.

AE: The city has adopted new drug use laws and they're doing more rigorous policing in places like downtown. I wouldn't say it's necessarily a broken windows approach, but it's this idea that we may need to arrest more people. Where do you fall in the spectrum between cracking down, arresting more folks, versus diversion or providing more services?

SB: Let me be very, very clear. Our job is to prevent crime, and sometimes the presence of police in dealing with crime doesn't always signal that we're doing the greatest job. And so I think the mayor is right when it comes to partnerships and working to clean up areas, making sure people get the help they need. It's just unfortunate that in this country, sometimes you don't get help until you're justice-involved. That's counterproductive to how I've always looked at policing. Coming up as a young officer, I'm always around officers and supervisors who didn't want to arrest people—we’d talk or work our way through problems. So that's kind of my DNA.

But I do believe that there's crime and there's fear of crime. And so what I do hear a lot is that people are fearful when they are walking in places and they see someone suffering from a mental health episode, or someone who may be unsheltered, or even graffiti and aesthetics. We know the “broken windows” [approach] wasn't the thing that reduced crime in the 1990s. But that doesn't mean we have to let things deteriorate. We have a responsibility, I think, to the community.

AE: One of the last steps for SPD to come out of the consent decree is a new policy on crowd control. Right now, the city council is looking at allowing blast balls, among other changes. There's concern in the community that there may be more protests during the Trump era. How will you reassure folks that we're not going to have a situation like we did in 2020?

SB: I think the situation in 2020 was a little different, in that the focus of the protest was on the police. I think that changes how you operate. But I want to be clear. I want to make sure that we have the best possible tools available to protect everyone.

AE: Including blast balls?

SB: Including blast balls. But I want to make sure that we don't have to use blast balls. And that starts long before a protest even starts, with community dialogue, with making sure we have an understanding. But as someone who’s from a part of the country where the police truly treated people poorly who were protesting, I will tell you this. I will do everything in my power to prevent ever having to use any of those tactics, even if I have to get out there and stand there myself.

I have seen it firsthand. In 2020 when I was a police deputy chief in North Carolina, we had two things going on at the same time. We had Confederate statues in the middle of town. And we had people protesting the killing of George Floyd. And [protesters supporting Confederate statues and BLM protesters] converged together. It was a situation where, as a commander, I'm not going to be in a command center. I was on the ground trying to de-escalate the situation. And I will do that here if I have to. Because I do not believe in those tactics against our community members. I will do everything in my power to prevent that.

AE: After the Abundant Life school shooting, you said you supported putting police officers in schools. That's a controversial prospect here. Would you push for that in Seattle?

SB: I would support that, under my definition of school resource officer (SRO), and that is police officers who are in school to support the school and to ensure that students do not get arrested. I was a public school teacher, which is how I got into this. I was an SRO, and then I supervised SROs.

My SRO program that I supervised doesn't fit the definition of what I have heard throughout the country. It makes me sad when I see police officers dragging kids out of chairs because they don't want to do homework. That's not the program I was involved in. Our officers were out of uniform. Most of their time was spent in or around the neighborhoods. They had a one-minute response time to the school. They didn't do school discipline. They were involved in mediation. They were involved in talking to parents. They're involved in conflict resolution. We taught classes. When I was a SROm I would teach literature classes, because I love literature. I think it's about redefining what that program truly is, before I would ever ask to bring SROs back to the schools.

AE: My daughter went to Garfield, where there was a shooting last year. And I think students of color and families are extremely skeptical of SROs. Having an officer in a school is going to be a hard sell.

SB: I can understand that. I have a Black son. If you tell me that if he goes to one particular place, and he has a 70 percent chance of being arrested, I would say that I want him to go somewhere else, unless we fix that. I think there's a lot of smart people in this city, and I always believe in being collaborative, not simply imposing your will. I'm not that kind of person. But I do believe we have enough smart people that we can figure it out.