Seattle Police Chief Fired

Asked to resign--he said "NO." He was then fired.

Seattle mayor fires police chief after mass shooting failures, then faces backlash from racial justice groups

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson fired Police Chief Shon Barnes after a botched response to a deadly food festival shooting, and now faces organized protests from civil rights organizations that call the move racially motivated.

Barnes, 55, was out of town at a law enforcement conference in Dallas when gunfire tore through the Bite of Seattle food festival on a Sunday evening, killing three people and wounding four others, including a two-year-old boy.

The Seattle Police Department then waited roughly five hours before holding its first public briefing, issued statements containing factual errors, and never activated AlertSeattle, the city's emergency notification system, to warn residents that at least one armed suspect remained at large.

By Wednesday evening, Wilson had seen enough. Fox News reported that the mayor called Barnes into a meeting and asked him to resign. He refused. She fired him on the spot, just hours after the two had stood side by side at a silent vigil for the shooting victims.

By Thursday, a coalition of racial justice organizations, the NAACP, the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, Byrd Barr Place, and Community Passageways, had organized a rally at city hall to protest the dismissal. Speakers cast Barnes's firing in explicitly racial terms.

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