Jamie Tompkins, the former Seattle Police Department Chief of Staff, is challenging the narrative of her dismissal—and the dismissal of former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz. 

In a letter hand-delivered to City Hall, addressed to both Harrell and Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson on November 27, 2024, Tompkins alleges that SPD officers ranking as high as assistant chiefs participated in widespread, targeted sexual harassment, including stalking, and that SPD leadership dismissed her attempts to bring it to light. Part of this harassment was linked to and involved spreading the rumors that she and Diaz slept together. The letter, obtained by The Stranger from the City Attorney’s office, is part of Tompkins’ settlement demand against the City of Seattle for $3 million, for the sexual harassment she allegedly endured during her time as SPD’s Chief of Staff.

Readers might be familiar with the saga that unfolded last year, wherein KUOW largely led the reporting that Tompkins and Diaz had allegedly been carrying out an illicit affair for years, and that this alleged affair was why Diaz had hired Tompkins to become his Chief of Staff. Diaz was ultimately fired over the allegations, following an Office of Inspector General (OIG)-directed independent investigation that upheld the allegations. Tompkins abruptly resigned in November.

Tompkins’ demand letter lays out serious allegations against several top officials, many of which she says she directly experienced—things like Assistant Chief Eric Barden, lately reinstated by former interim Chief Sue Rahr, telling her that she would not experience sexual harassment, if she looked different.

The letter also includes allegations regarding conversations that Tompkins was not part of. When asked about those, she told The Stranger that she learned about them from others, who would tell her about such conversations daily.

The Stranger obtained additional documentation, including interviews with officers named in the letter and Tompkins’ unemployment benefits decision, that appear to support some of the allegations made in the letter.

The Stranger reached out to SPD, Harrell, Nelson, and the Seattle City Attorney’s Office (SCAO) about the letter, as well as several officers named in the letter.

SPD’s communications officer Sgt. Patrick Michaud declined to comment. Named officer Eric Greening’s email sent back an automatic message: “I am currently out on extended leave and I will not be checking email.”

The SCAO said that it “can’t comment on matters like this.”

Nelson did not respond to a request for comment. 

In response to The Stranger’s request for comment, Harrell’s office said, “The City takes allegations of this nature seriously, and we are committed to creating a Police Department that reflects our Seattle community and where women have the opportunity to succeed in leadership and in the department.”

Harrell also addressed the matter at a morning press conference on Monday, April 28. During the press conference, meant to highlight the City’s increase in officer hiring, conservative social media personality and Discovery Institute Fellow Jonathan Choe recorded himself asking the mayor about the demand letter.

“I can’t comment on either litigation or threatened litigation,” Harrell said, “but as you heard, we take all allegations seriously — very seriously.”

When asked by Fox13 reporter Hana Kim about the fact that the Washington State employment department found that Tompkins should receive full unemployment benefits originally denied her, and that Harrell had known about the letter. The mayor told Kim that she "should not make assumptions.” 

Harrell then turned away from the podium, towards the City staff and SPD officers standing behind him, as he said with a raised voice, “We’re moving forward!”

“You guys are with me, right?” Harrell said to the City staff standing behind him.

“Yessir,” one officer mumbled.

“We are moving forward," Harrell repeated, “taking our city back into a situation where we are protecting people. That’s why we are here today.”

“So,” he continued, “the lawsuits will take care of themselves.”

Just before Tompkins’ start date at SPD, the letter says that Tompkins received a call from a fellow reporter. The letter says that a reporter told her that an assistant chief at SPD had told the reporter that Tompkins and Diaz were involved, and that former assistant chiefs Deanna Nollette and Eric Greening, as well as current police captain, Steve Strand, had been involved in spreading rumors about the alleged sexual relationship. (Later, in August 2024, Tompkins would, according to the letter, independently learn from Sgt. Michael Dunkle that he had determined that Nollette and Greening were among those behind the rumors.) 

The reporter also told Tompkins that SPD officers were surveilling her. This means officers had started surveilling Tompkins before she had officially joined the department.

“One SPD officer, Tay [Gray-Mcvey], told his colleagues he would watch Tompkins’ news broadcast every night to see whether she was wearing a wedding ring,” the letter continues. “[Gray-Mcvey] also admitted to regularly checking Tompkins’s bio on the Fox 13 website.”

The Stranger has obtained documentation of official interviews showing that Gray-Mcvey was one of the few officers whom independent investigator Shayda Le, of Barran Leibman, LLP, interviewed in the course of investigating Diaz for the alleged affair between himself and Tompkins. Le was investigating the case on behalf of the City’s Office of Inspector General.

The letter also says that, later a fellow former Fox 13 colleague, Dace Durand, admitted to Tompkins that he, Officer Valerie Carson, and Officer Gray-Mcvey, had spread rumors about Tompkins’ alleged relationship with Diaz among several groups of people, including reporters and police officers.

Later, the letter says, Durand admitted to SPD’s employee relations and equal employment opportunity manager that in the spring of that year — just before Tompkins’ start date — Gray-Mcvey had told him that officers had seen Tompkins and Diaz at Tompkins’ apartment together, and that he and Gray-Mcvey had discussed Tompkins’ marital status. Durand’s meeting was part of an internal investigation, regarding the rumors of a relationship between Tompkins and Diaz.

“Dace conceded that he had no factual basis for believing that there was a sexual relationship between Diaz and Tompkins,” the letter reads.

The Stranger has obtained full copies of Durand’s interviews.

In his first interview on the matter, Durand affirmed that he believed the rumors regarding a relationship between Tompkins and Diaz were “absolutely … not true.”

In response to the interviewer’s question regarding whether he ever came to believe that there was a relationship between Tompkins and Diaz, Durand said in his second interview, “No, I just got caught up in the rumor mill and to this day I still do not believe, and will say this unequivocally, that there was an affair or any type of inappropriate relationship between [Tompkins] and Chief Diaz.”

Durand also cited both Gray-Mcvey and Carson as having been heavily involved in the circulating rumors, and mentioned both officers several times in each interview.

Following his termination, Durand told KUOW in September 2023 that he was made to be “the fall guy” and that the investigation was targeted and rushed.

Also just before Tompkins began her tenure with SPD, the letter says that Diaz held a meeting, wherein he told SPD command staff that allegations of an affair between himself and Jamie were false, and directed them not to allow other members of SPD to sexually harass her.

Diaz also contacted Seattle Ethics and Elections head, Wayne Barnett, to see whether the rumor should be investigated, the letter says. Barnett declined to investigate it. In response to The Stranger's request for comment, Barnett said he was "not aware" of Tompkins' letter and had no further comment.

All the rumors flying around about her and Diaz, as well as the knowledge that officers were tailing her, prompted Tompkins to seriously weigh withdrawing her acceptance of the position.

But she didn’t.

And the harassment got worse, Tompkins’ letter alleges.

The same week that Tompkins told Maxey and SPD’s general counsel, the letter says that Tompkins told Rebecca Boatright, and, separately, human resources, the same thing, “[former] Assistant Chief Eric Barden told Tompkins if she looked like [fellow SPD colleague] Heather Marx, she wouldn’t be treated this way.”

Barden isn’t the only one to have allegedly said something like this.

“Officer [Gray-Mcvey] told Tompkins that he could find her anywhere because he could track her scent,” the letter reads. “He also told her that he watched her on surveillance cameras. He questioned her about her tattoos and where they were located on her body. [Gray-Mcvey] would take photos of Tompkins without her knowledge and show them to other SPD employees.”

According to the letter, Gray-Mcvey also allegedly later told another SPD employee that he’d bet he could get Tompkins to sleep with him, if he got her drunk enough.

The letter also said that Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) president, Mike Solan, allegedly told Diaz in July 2023 that Tompkins was hot and that “everyone” would sleep with her, so Solan wouldn’t blame Diaz if he had.

According to the letter, at some point that same summer, Tompkins walked into the lunchroom to get an energy drink. The letter says that two officers sitting in the lunchroom spotted her.

“Do you think,” one officer said, “the Chief fucked her?”

“I don’t know,” the other replied, “but I sure would fuck her. She’s hot.”

Tompkins immediately left the lunchroom. She never went in again without someone she trusted, the letter says.

Tompkins' letter also alleges crude comments from Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell.

“In June 2023,” the letter reads, “you met with Diaz about his alleged affair with Tompkins. You told him that you weren’t worried about the rumor and that it was ‘completely alright’ if he had slept with her.”

“Diaz told you he had not slept with Tompkins and that it wouldn’t have been “alright” if he had,” the letter continues. “You responded that you would ‘do’ Tompkins, and it’s fine.”

When contacted by The Stranger, Harrell's office vehemently denied the alleged conversation between Harrell and Diaz in the letter. “Those remarks are crass and repugnant, the mayor didn’t say them, and he doesn’t talk that way,” Jamie Housen, the mayor’s spokesperson, said in an email to The Stranger. “This conversation – alleged by Adrian Diaz – did not happen. Beyond this, we cannot comment on pending or active litigation.”

The Office of Police Accountability (OPA) even fielded an anonymous complaint that Carson had helped to spread the rumor about Tompkins and Diaz sleeping together, and that Carson had unlawfully surveilled Tompkins’ apartment.

But while the report found that Carson had “admittedly spoken about the rumored affair,” there was not enough evidence to prove that she had initiated or propagated it.

“‘By all accounts the rumor was widespread and covered by traditional and social media,’” the OPA declared.

The OPA concluded that it could not “discipline Carson because it would be ‘selective enforcement,’” — an apparent admission, the letter says, that the OPA knew how widespread the rumor was — “even though Carson admitted to commonly discussing the false sexual rumor both with SPD employees and members of the media.”

The letter includes the OPA’s opinion, as one of three exhibits.

The following year — after Boatright allegedly told Tompkins that she had “a massive sexual harassment case” against the department, given all she had gone through — Tompkins filed a formal complaint of sexual harassment against Carson. According to the letter, Tompkins also later told interim Chief Sue Rahr about the ongoing sexual harassment she was experiencing.

In the letter, she says, Rahr dismissed her concerns. “Grow a thicker skin,” Rahr allegedly told Tompkins. It happens all the time in law enforcement, Rahr allegedly said, before advising Tompkins to “invest in Visine” to hide the red in her eyes from crying, and to just tell people to “fuck off.”

When Tompkins allegedly told Maxey and SPD Human Resources Dir. Mike Fields what Rahr had said, the letter says that Maxey told her not to file a formal complaint — not that it would matter, anyway: Maxey also allegedly told Tompkins that Fields had sent the issue to the department’s HR Investigations Unit, where “investigations go to die.”

A few months before Tompkins resigned, in September 2024, Maxey told her that she would be reporting to him. The letter says that Tompkins expressed concern that the rest of SPD would start claiming that the two of them were in a relationship.

“Well,” Maxey allegedly said with a laugh, “Chief Diaz already groomed you so this should be easy for me.”

Over the course of her tenure at SPD, the letter says, Tompkins eventually had to take two weeks off work, due to the stress the rumors were causing. The summer before she left, in July 2024, Tompkins even met with SPD’s executive director of wellness, Dr. Emily Hu, to discuss the sexual harassment she was facing, the letter says.

On Nov. 6, 2024, Tompkins resigned.

The letter concludes with several legal citations, including the fact that, according to the Washington State Supreme Court, a single discriminatory comment was grounds for establishing a hostile work environment claim.

“Here, the hostile work environment was ‘pervasive’ by SPD’s own admission,” the letter reads. “It occurred countless times. The harassment continued for more than a year and half. Moreover, it was much harder for Tompkins to do her job when a significant proportion of the SPD workforce believed she had received her position because of her physical appearance and sexual favoritism rather than on her qualifications and experience.”

“SPD was on notice about the harassment even before Tompkins’s official start date,” the letter continues, which means that SPD was legally obligated, per a 1995 9th Circuit Court ruling, to do something about it.

Washington law states that an employee who has resigned does not have to prove that leaving was due to a hostile work environment with unbearable working conditions. Therefore, all Tompkins has to do, the letter says, is to show that the alleged sexual harassment played a substantial role in her decision to leave.

Though she has left the department, Tompkins “still feels violated, degraded, and dehumanized,” and the trauma she experienced at SPD “has caused her to withdraw from social interactions.”

“Tompkins,” the letter reads, “is not the same person she was when she began employment with the City 18 months ago.”

Tompkins settlement talks with the City of Seattle are slated for June 25. She received a letter from the state’s Employment Security Department in December granting her full benefits.

“We decided you had good reason for quitting your job,” the state’s decision letter reads.

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Editor's Note: A previous version of this story said that the demand letter was hand delivered to Mayor Harrell. It was hand delivered to City Hall, addressed to the Mayor.