On Sunday evening, an gang shootout took place at the Bite of Seattle festival at the Seattle Center.

For those who are unfamiliar with the area, the Seattle Center is the immediate area surrounding the Space Needle. It is a large, multi-acre space that contains multiple buildings, a sports arena, the Pacific Science Center, and large open spaces used for music festivals and tourist attractions. And there was a gang shootout on Sunday evening that killed three people and injured several others, including a two-year-old boy who had an arterial bleed. One of the three dead was an alleged gang member who was also one of the shooters. One was arrested at the scene, and the Seattle police are still looking for both shooters and witnesses.

However, on Sunday night, the public was sitting around and waiting because the police department did not give out any information. Why? The police were waiting for “dignitaries” to show up.

AMATEUR HOUR: Seattle cops say they are delaying the press conference here at Seattle Center for “dignitaries.”
It’s been almost five hours since this mass shooting and no word from the socialist mayor or police chief.
It appears the city is now trying to turn this tragedy into… https://t.co/VOdyTFgiMT pic.twitter.com/m96G54pr24

— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) July 27, 2026

The media was legitimately furious, as they waited for hours for the initial press conference to happen. Finally, Mayor Katie Wilson, Governor Bob Ferguson, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, and the assistant police chief, Tyrone Davis came out for the presser.

It took the police department five hours to hold a media briefing regarding the shooting, led by Tyrone Davis, the assistant chief for the SPD. It was then that the public learned the department had one suspect in custody, and that two guns were recovered at the scene. For the five hours prior, both the media and the public were only made aware that a shooting took place at Seattle Center from one SPD post on X.

Officers within the SPD claimed the delay was due to state dignitaries, including Governor Bob Ferguson and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, wanting to be present at the briefing. Wilson later claimed the delay was due to sorting through rumors to confirm the truth.

It wasn’t until approximately 17 hours after the shooting, during a press conference Monday, that it was reported and confirmed for the first time that one of the suspects died at the scene, one was in custody, and a third remained missing and unidentified.

City leaders have since held multiple press conferences to relay more details and updates of the investigation to the media, with one specific conference turning into “a scuffle.”

So, where was the actual chief, Shon Barnes? Not in town. And according to sources, this is a consistent issue with the police chief.

The records appear to show Barnes was out of the office and outside the Seattle area nearly a dozen times during those four months, including seven work-related conferences and four trips to Chicago, where Barnes has family.

By KOMO News’ count, the travel and other absences reflected in the documents amount to close to 50 days when Barnes was not working from his Seattle office. Some of those dates included weekends or travel days, and the records provided do not necessarily indicate whether Barnes was conducting department business remotely.

Barnes’ office said he personally pays for private travel to Chicago. The department pays for conference-related travel, although officials said conference organizers sometimes cover a portion of those expenses. It was not clear why the department did not provide his records before the end of March.

Barnes was formerly the police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, but it seems his wife and children still live in the Chicago area, and he goes back routinely to be with them. When confronted by the media in the aftermath of the shooting, Barnes did not take it well. At all.

In the meantime, Mayor Katie Wilson was discovering that the media had a lot of questions for her, and she didn’t have good answers.

IN FULL: Here is the reporter Q&A from Tuesday morning’s press conference about the Seattle Center shooting.
We covered all kinds of topics including the controversy around Chief Shon Barnes’s weekend travel.
As usual, it went off the rails. pic.twitter.com/WmqFuDUA5g

— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) July 28, 2026

The honeymoon is over for Mayor Katie, and everyone, from local media to the public, is finally taking notice that this woman is completely in over her head. The arrested suspect is a 15 year old who is being charged with first-degree assault with a firearm enhancement and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. Since no 15 year old can legally possess any kind of firearm, the mayor lost any kind of gun control narrative that she wanted to push when the Seattle Police Department confirmed that this was a gang shooting.

So, what does an incompetent mayor do when she is struggling under bad PR after screwing up her initial response, and has to confront a crime that she can’t get a narrative grip on?

Fire the police chief, of course!

Shon Barnes was fired from his position as chief of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) by Mayor Katie Wilson, multiple sources confirmed with KIRO Newsradio.

Barnes was initially given the option to resign or be fired, according to sources, with the chief choosing not to resign.

According to The Seattle Medium, a coalition of at least nine Seattle Black community organizations is attempting to meet with Wilson to urge her to reconsider any decision to remove Barnes. The coalition is encouraging supporters to protest the firing at Seattle City Hall Thursday morning.

Barnes was officially sworn into office 12 months ago, replacing interim chief Sue Rahr, although he had held the role since January 2025.

It’s worth noting that Shon Barnes was already in his role as police chief when Katie Wilson was elected, though she chose to keep him on. Now that she’s made a big girl decision to fire him (we shall have to wait and see if she is pressured to change her mind), she will have to go through an entire hiring process on her own – and God knows who will end up leading the already decimated Seattle Police Department when Mayor Katie gets to make the decision.

Appointing a new police chief is one of the mayor’s core responsibilities, subject to confirmation by the Seattle City Council. And that’s where it gets tricky because when you look at Wilson’s history with law enforcement, it’s fair to be nervous about who she’d pick.

During the mayoral campaign, former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s team surfaced some troubling statements from Wilson’s past.

In a 2020 post on PubliCola, Wilson said: “We want to move towards a future entirely without SPD; we want to focus energy elsewhere.”

It’s worth noting that Wilson didn’t walk back that defund-the-police position until her 2025 mayoral run. That timeline alone makes me wonder what her real priorities would be in picking a new chief.

Never ask if it can get worse, because the answer is always yes, it can. Example: New York City.

Ultimately, Katie Wilson is the mayor, and this is her call. Is it the police chief’s fault that he wasn’t in town for this shooting? No, but his defensive behavior is a huge red flag, and whatever living arrangements he made when hired are clearly incompatible with being the police chief. With the media demanding answers that she is fumbling to find, Mayor Katie has decided to divert attention and make Shon Barnes the scapegoat for what happened on Sunday evening. Hope you’re enjoying the ride, Seattle – things are about to get even more bumpy.

Featured image: Katie Wilson via Wilson for Seattle Campaign on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, CC BY-SA 4.0