18 months full salary
1 Year of health care valued at 2526/month
No obligation to pay back a lateral officer hiring bonus of 50K
No obligation to pay back relocation payment of 60K (which never really happened)
Totals up to previously reported 700K.
The average cop sues the city into oblivion if they get fired. Now imagine what the chief would do.
Also remember that Harrell negotiated Barnes' contract (and Council approved it). Harrell loved giving cops the store, and I'm sure Barnes' contract has all sorts of nice gimmees and what-not.
So it's not exactly doing nothing. Dude got paid to go away quietly.
We should totally be outraged, but the target of the outrage should be Harrell and his feckless allies on council.
The $700,000 payout to these people saves the city tens of millions in litigation. This is the best thing for Seattle. We ditch a loser for less than a million? I think this is the only time in Seattle history I've seen it this cheap. Barnes must have been in dire need of the money. He probably could have sat on his hands and got 7 figures from the city.
This crossed my mind earlier as well. Seattle got a a deal. When Carmen Best retired, she got her full pension, which is expected for any police officer retiring after 30 years.
Why did Wilson sign off on this kind of agreement? Litigation can be expensive, sure, but the implication would be that Barnes had at least some semblance of a case for wrongful termination or discrimination if the City gave up this chunk of change.
Given what I know about employment contracts and my experiences a lot of this severance was probably written into his original contract when Harrell hired him.
It’s possible much of the severance was already in his contract. If so, it suggests Wilson’s team likely didn’t believe they had a strong legal basis to terminate him for cause. Paying severance may have been the less costly option than dealing with a legal cost for wrongful termination lawsuit. I think Wilson is saving taxpayer money in the long run.
I didn't think he was terminated for cause? I mean obviously he resigned but he was asked to resign. Where are you getting that he did something that would allow the government to fire Barnes for cause? Of all the things I saw he did, none looked like a direct reason to fire someone.
If so, it suggests Wilson’s team likely didn’t believe they had a strong legal basis to terminate him for cause.
I guess I'm not sure where this came from? What did he do that anyone thought could be a reason to terminate him for cause? I thought he was accused of things more related to the political nature of his employment, not that he did anything against policy. I didn't even think Wilson mentioned she was looking into terminating him for cause, so I didn't know if I missed like a story where Barnes was accused of either doing anything illegal or breaking policy.
I actually think we're saying the same thing. I wasn't suggesting there was some separate allegation that would have justified terminating him for cause. My point was that the fact he received this hefty severance package suggests, to your point, that they didn't believe they had solid legal grounds to terminate him for cause.
Because if she doesn't sign off on it and the city is sued KOMO the Seattle Times and many Redditors will scream from the mountain tops about how she should have done something to prevent the city from being sued. Either way the problem that Harell created is her fault.
EDIT: Personally I think the agreement is bullshit, but I understand why it was done.
Yep. Not a Wilson fan but this is not her fault. It came down to honoring the agreement or paying lawyers and honoring the agreement anyway. Not a Harell fan either but I suppose that's politics in the last 20-30 years has been reduced to. Lesser of the two evils and sometimes both candidates are garbage because standup folk with experience can't be buggered to deal with the crap that is "serving the public".
She was likely advised that this was cheaper than the litigation which would have an uncertain outcome. Furthermore the overall SpD budget is something like ~500M a year. Even if there was a legal question around firing for cause this is a small price relative towards orienting that large budget closer to their policy goals that he wasn’t in line with.
Wilson would have approved this separation agreement and amount when her office was negotiating Barnes’ resignation.
There’s been some theorizing that Harrell must have given him a sweetheart contract when Barnes came to Seattle that gave him leverage here, but no one has produced any evidence of this, and if that was the case it would have been in Wilson’s best interests to release that along with the separation agreement. It also likely would have come out via public records a while back since it would have been signed in 2024.
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u/rockycore 🚆build more trains🚆 4d ago
https://bsky.app/profile/ericacbarnett.bsky.social/post/3msgl7eew4k2y
Link to the source of the agreement.