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Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, after vetoing Friday the revised 2020 budget approved last week by the City Council, called for new collaboration with council members, with whom she’s often been at odds. “The people of Seattle expect us to work together,” Durkan said during a Friday afternoon news conference, adding that she had spoken to Council President M. Lorena González on how to “make changes in a more thoughtful, deliberate way.” The council’s adjustments to the budget would have cut up to 100 police officers, slashed the salaries of police command staff and also scrapped the city’s Navigation Team, which...

Carmen Best, the Seattle police chief, emailed her resignation notice to police officers in the department late Monday hours after the City Council made good on its promise to approve sweeping proposals that would cut about 100 officers and slash the department’s budget. Best’s email, which was obtained by Jason Rantz, a radio host in the city, said that her retirement will be effective Sept. 2. “I wanted you to hear this from me, but some media have reached this conclusion on their own,” she wrote. “This was a difficult decision for me, but when it’s time, it’s time.”

SEATTLE - Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best is going to resign, two sources familiar with her decision confirmed to Q13's Brandi Kruse. The decision comes after the Seattle City Council voted to slash the department’s budget.

The mayor and police chief urged city council members to slow down discussions about the budget The Seattle City Council voted Monday to move forward with a controversial proposal that would begin the process of defunding the police department. The 7-1 vote comes despite objections from the city's police chief, mayor and the Seattle Police Officers' Guild. The plan would ultimately slash funding to the department but not the 50% some had sought. Seattle currently has around 1,400 police officers, and the current plan would see about 100 cut. It was also cut the police department's $400 million budget by...

The Seattle City Council voted Monday to move forward with a controversial proposal that would begin the process of defunding the police department. The 7-1 vote comes despite objections from the city's police chief, mayor and the Seattle Police Officers' Guild. The plan would ultimately slash funding to the department but not the 50% some had sought. Seattle currently has around 1,400 police officers, and the current plan would see about 100 cut. It was also cut the police department's $400 million budget by about $3 million, according to KOMO. Councilmember Kshama Sawant was the sole "no" vote because she...

SEATTLE — Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said a “large group of aggressive protestors” targeted her house late Saturday night in Snohomish County. Protesters that were there that night said they are disappointed in Chief Best’s letter. They said they disagree that they were aggressive, and instead, said the aggressors were the neighbors Best praised. “All we were doing was walking and they met us with guns, I don’t know who the aggressor is at that point, but I don't think it's us,” said Nicole Gitaka, a demonstrator with “Every Day March.” Gitaka and her fellow protesters said less than...

This is a bad time to be a police chief. It's really bad for black police chiefs, many of whom were elevated as part of diversity initiatives, only to find that major cities have moved from diversifying police to defunding them or calling for racial purges. Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best appeared stunned this week when confronted with City Council member Lisa Herbold’s suggestion that laying off police officers due to a defunding of the department could be done by a race basis rather than seniority. “It is illegal to make layoffs based on race,” Ms. Best promptly told a...

SEATTLE (AP) - Seattle city crews used heavy equipment Tuesday to remove makeshift barriers around the city’s “occupied” protest zone following two fatal shootings in the area. Demonstrators dragged couches and other items to replace the structures. But those were largely gone later Tuesday. **SNIP** Seattle police Assistant Chief Adrian Diaz said the large, makeshift barriers would be removed in incremental steps to allow traffic to move through portions of a road that had been closed off. “So far, you know, everything is peaceful this morning, so that’s a good sign,” Diaz told The Seattle Times. Cement barricades that remained...

SEATTLE - As suddenly as it appeared, the Capitol Hill Occupation Protest was gone. **SNIP** Durkan’s destruction of the CHOP was a reversal of her previous position. On June 12, when Trump accused her of letting anarchists take over the city, Durkan responded, “Seattle is fine. Don’t be so afraid of democracy.” But over the last few weeks, the CHOP had become increasingly controversial. While the daytime scene resembled a music festival or cultural event, the nights became more violent. Six shootings, two of them fatal, occurred in or near the zone in the last two weeks of June, a...

SEATTLE - Hundreds of protesters gathered in Magnuson Park Friday night before making their way to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s neighborhood. The crowd that marched to the mayor’s home was large enough to fill an entire city block, with an estimated two thousand in attendance. **SNIP** The crowd of protesters loudly marched into her neighborhood, chanting about their demands to defund Seattle police and reform justice, and demanding that she resign. The protesters also brought with them a large sound system, noisemakers, cowbells and music. After an hourlong rally, demonstrators paraded past the mayor’s gate where KIRO 7 was told...

An auto-shop owner on the edge of Seattle’s cop-free CHAZ says police refused to help as an angry mob stormed his property — forcing his son to pull a gun to protect them, according to video and reports. John McDermott told KIRO 7 News that he initially tried to detain a protester Sunday night who stole cash and set a fire in his Car Tender business on the edge of the so-called “Capital Hill Autonomous Zone.” His son, Mason McDermott, helped tackle the suspect who “tried to cut me with a box cutter,” he told the station, showing large slits...

SEATTLE (AP) - Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best says officers will go into the several-block area being occupied by protesters if there are threats to public safety. Police pulled back from a part of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood after recent clashes with people protesting the Minneapolis death of George Floyd near the department’s East Precinct. A festival-like atmosphere has emerged in the area, now called the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest,” with participants painting a Black Lives Matter mural on the street and planting a community garden. Best spoke after a business owner near the protest area complained that police...

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and police chief Carmen Best are at odds over the city's handling of the self-declared autonomous zone set up by protesters spanning several blocks surrounding a police precinct. Best has accused the mayor of shirking her responsibilities as an elected official and allowing protesters to oust police officers from a precinct located inside the 6-block radius now deemed a "cop free zone." Demonstraters inside the perimeter of the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" - or "CHAZ" - have battened down for almost a week decrying police brutality after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and are...

During a portion of an interview with the Fox News Channel released on Thursday, President Trump stated that he wouldn’t allow Seattle to “be occupied” and “If we have to go in, we’re going to go in.” Trump also urged Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) to use the National Guard but stated that “one way or the other, it’s going to get done. These people are not going to occupy a major portion of a great city.” Trump said, “If there were more toughness, you wouldn’t have the kind of devastation that you had in Minneapolis and in Seattle. I...

VIDEO The governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, is either incredibly clueless or just plain deceptive when he claimed that he didn't hear about what has been all over the national news and social media. Namely that 6 blocks of Seattle has been occupied by radical groups after the police were forced to leave. Either way, it is not a good look for Inslee. And to think he actually ran for president just a year ago. Perhaps Inslee should just turn over the governorship to the bouncing sign language guy. At least he is engaged in his job.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said Thursday that neither she nor city police Chief Carmen Best had any intention of resigning -- despite calls from protesters that they do so. "The answer is no and no," Durkan told reporters a news conference, according to Seattle's KUOW Public Radio. "We thought about a 'Thelma & Louise' moment," she added, referring to a 1991 movie about two women on the run from the law.

Seattle's mayor said that "autonomous zone" protesters are patriots, and not, as President Donald Trump called them, "domestic terrorists." Since Monday, protesters have occupied a section of the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood after clashing with police during a Black Lives Matter demonstration. "Demanding we do better as a society and provide true equity for communities of color is not terrorism — it is patriotism," Mayor Jenny Durkan tweeted. Trump on Thursday tweeted that the protesters were "ugly Anarchists" who "must be stopped IMMEDIATELY." Seattle's mayor scolded President Donald Donald Trump for calling protesters occupying the city's autonomous zone "domestic terrorists,"...

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan on Thursday defended the protesters who have declared an “autonomous zone” on the city’s street as “patriotic.” In her remarks to the press, Durkan also said President Trump’s threat to send in federal resources to crack down on the protesters was “unconstitutional and illegal.” “Unfortunately, our President wants to tell a story about domestic terrorists who have a radical agenda and are promoting a conspiracy that fits his law and order initiatives,” Durkan said, according to Patch.

The mayor also assured Washingtonians that there is no imminent threat of a U.S. military invasion, as President Trump threatened on Twitter. She said the threat is not only unwelcome, but illegal. Durkan also said the President painted a false portrait of what is happening in Capitol Hill. “It’s simply not true,” she said. “Lawfully gathering and expressing first amendment rights, … is not terrorism.” “The right to challenge authority and government is fundamental to who we are as Americans,” Durkan added.

(CNN)Seattle police want to resume operations at a downtown precinct they left empty as protesters began occupying the area around it. The area around the precinct is now occupied by protesters, some of whom are calling it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. According to CNN affiliate KOMO, police boarded up the East Precinct building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and left it unoccupied during protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protesters have also hung signs on the East Precinct, KOMO reported, some of which read "Seattle People Department" and "The Property of the People." But Seattle's...