Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes canceled a planned KOMO News interview on Wednesday about 30 minutes before it was set to begin, just as questions intensified over his travel and the police response to the deadly Seattle Center shooting. His office also released portions of his calendar showing where he was from late March through the end of July.
The documents show Barnes was out of the office and outside the Seattle area nearly a dozen times in those four months, including seven work-related conferences and four trips to Chicago. By KOMO News’ count, the travel and other absences add up to close to 50 days when he was not working from his Seattle office, though the records do not show whether he was handling department business remotely during those stretches.
Barnes was in Dallas on Sunday when gunfire erupted at Seattle Center, killing three people and injuring several others. He has acknowledged he was not in Seattle when the shooting happened, and Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis was listed as acting chief that day before leading the department’s first formal news briefing about five hours later.
The calendar broadens the picture beyond that one weekend. It shows Barnes traveling to conferences in Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Dallas and at least one additional location, along with blocked-off time this week for a dental procedure and a medical appointment. It also shows he remained in Seattle throughout the city’s World Cup matches.
That mix of dates is why the chief’s absence has become more than a single-trip question. At a Tuesday news conference, Barnes said he does not travel as often as he would like to and called reports that he is gone every weekend “grossly misstated.” He also said his passion can be “in full display, especially if someone is questioning my work ethic or my integrity,” but the calendar still shows nearly a dozen absences outside the Seattle area over a short span, including weekends and travel days.
The unanswered part is not whether Barnes traveled; the records make that plain. It is why so many of those trips were concentrated into a few months while the department was under scrutiny, and whether the calendar’s recurring acting chief designation points to a leadership pattern that stretched beyond one missed weekend. Barnes is scheduled to be in Seattle during this week’s Seafair events.
