Eight of nine Seattle City Councilmembers demanded Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) president Mike Solan’s resignation on Monday, following a freewheeling week during which he blamed the Trump-backed coup on Black Lives Matter protesters after it failed to block certification of results. Two Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers went to Washington, D.C. to participate in the storming of the Capitol, and interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz suspended them pending an investigation.
Five people died in the coup attempt, including one Capitol police officer who insurrectionists bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher.
The Seattle City Council (sans lone holdout Debora Juarez) joined a chorus calling for Solan’s resignation that includes the MLK County Labor Council, Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, and Black Law Enforcement Association of Washington. Even Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who has consistently opposed the effort to Defund SPD, had harsh words for Solan and argued he was in no position to lead negotiations for a contract extension for SPOG.
“It’s time for Mr. Solan to hand this important position over,” Pedersen said. “We must have a partner who has truly embraced that we cannot go back to the way things were. The current president of the police union has, in my view, disqualified himself to be a fair partner in negotiating the contract.”
The SPOG contract expired at the end of 2020, but talks are sputtering given how far apart the two sides are. SPOG members continue to operate under the expired contract, but raises are frozen during the negotiations. The last SPOG contract extension also didn’t happen on time, but once signed in 2018, it came with retroactive pay raises (and repealed accountability measures in contradiction of the Consent Decree) to make up for the months they were working with an expired contract. That helped many police officers pull in a record haul in 2019, including one officer who pulled in more than $400,000, buoyed by overtime.
True to his signature motto “hold the line,” Solan did not back down. In fact, in an email to SPOG members he doubled down, as has been his style since he was elected as a hardliner with 70% of the vote early in 2020 against more moderate incumbent Kevin Stuckey (a Black officer) who had nurtured the relationship with MLK Labor Council. MLK Labor Council backing helped steamroll SPOG’s highly favorable 2018 contract through Seattle City Council, with only Councilmember Kshama Sawant opposing the deal. With Solan refusing to address racism within the department despite massive Black Lives Matters protests this summer, the MLK Labor Council booted SPOG from its ranks.
“I interpret the calls to tender my resignation as political rhetoric. I will never bend to cancel culture as I lead this union with conviction. You elected me to represent you and I serve at your will,” Solan said in the email, which Publicola‘s Paul Faruq Kiefer shared. “When we are abandoned by our politicians you must remember one thing; the reasonable Seattle community supports us and we will always have each other as we are a strong union. We are SPOG.”
Solan argued the two SPD officers who traveled to DC to storm the Capitol were innocent, and police officers were “caught in the middle” between radical Left and radical Right.
“I am in communication with those two members and have provided SPOG resources to assist them during this process,” Solan added. “As you can imagine, we are concerned for their safety, mental health and for what appears to be their guilt by association for merely exercising their constitutionally protected first amendment rights. We are in a scary time in our nation’s history as voicing a dissenting opinion can get you ‘canceled’.”
Far from caught in the middle, Solan seems indistinguishable from the radical Right, citing the same tropes, promoting the writings of extremist troll Andy Ngô, and following White Supremacist leaders on Parler.
Police abolitionist and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun Scott, who lost a close race with Alex Pedersen for District 4 Council seat, argued Solan ties to the insurrection should be investigated.
“Seattle City Council should give some thought to subpoenaing Mike Solan, the president of the city’s police union. There are a lot of questions about Seattle PD’s participation in the coup, and many citizens don’t trust the city’s police oversight agencies to get the answers,” Scott said in a tweet. “Meanwhile, at least two Seattle officers attended the coup attempt at the capitol. Did Solan participate? What did he know about the involvement of SPD officers? Were public resources used by the two officers who attended? Where will accountability about any of this come from?”
