Jenny Durkan on the decision to leave East Precinct, and those missing texts

What did Mayor Jenny Durkan think about the decision police made to leave the East Precinct? And what about those missing text messages?

Durkan talks with KUOW's Angela King.

On the decision to leave East Precinct

Jenny Durkan: [KUOW’s reporting on the decision of police to leave East Precinct] parallels the Office of Police Accountability, the independent oversight group, which is looking at the decisions around the East Precinct to make sure that they were done in accordance with Seattle Police Department rules and regulations.

They've been conducting a really thorough and independent investigation, done extensive review of documents, interviews of all the personnel, both in the police department, my staff, and other city departments that were involved.…

A year ago, (Chief Best and I) issued a statement together saying exactly what your reporting showed – not in as much detail – but what was happening at the time, the dynamic nature of the events and the decision by the frontline incident commander to leave the precinct. I think that the reporting also makes really clear, and I think it's important for the public to know, that that decision was made for safety reasons.

I think that there's more information to come out about that.

Angela King: Do you believe it was the right call to make to leave the East Precinct?

Jenny Durkan: That area had become a flashpoint for demonstrations between the police and demonstrators. And we knew – Chief Best and I agree – we had to have a different approach to de-escalate that situation. And the way to do that was to remove the flashpoint.

Angela King: So it sounds like you're saying it was the right call?

No, what I'm saying is … to make a decision on whether that was the best call, we need more of the facts and understanding as to what they were thinking when they made that decision.

I do think it was the right call to remove the barriers and to try to de-escalate the tension between protesters and the police, which led to so much conflict and public distrust.

On her missing texts messages

Angela King: Has this situation changed your approach to health, the city handles whistleblower complaints?

Jenny Durkan: We've not done a good job, we need to make improvements. And we've been steadily trying to make improvements.

I just issued a directive to take additional steps so that we can have a better process moving forward. And included in that directive is not just an internal Seattle government thing on how do we do our job better internally, but to create for the first time, an outside advisory group that would include transparency people, people from the media and the like, can raise concerns and filter that for so we do a better job.