Getting down to the bottom of the barrel here.

by Ashley Nerbovig

Earlier this week, former Seattle Police Department (SPD) Chief Adrian Diaz came out as gay in a last-ditch effort to repair his image after employees filed multiple lawsuits against him and the department for sexual discrimination, harassment, and racism. That accumulation of lawsuits in part led to his ouster as top cop earlier this year. 

First of all Diaz, welcome; sad you didn’t break the news with us. Would have loved to have done the interview in the rainbow cruiser. 

Second, we have some advice. Instead of leaning on the gay thing as a partial defense to some of these rumors and complaints, a better defense might have been that you inherited a barrel of bad apples at SPD. Mayor Bruce Harrell said as much at his press conference announcing your departure! Why not start naming names and beginning the process of saging the department?? Since you declined to take that path, let us shed light on some racist, bullying, and lying SPD officers–a couple of whom you even managed to fire in your short tenure! 

Ding-Dong, a Racist Cop Is Gone

Case #2023OPA-0413

SPD fired Officer Burton Hill after the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) sustained two policy violations against him for hurling racist and sexist slurs at his Chinese neighbor in August 2022. Court documents show that Hill and his wife, Agnes Miggins, had engaged in what the neighbor, Zhen Jin, described as a harassment campaign against her. One night, Miggins banged on Jin’s door to yell about how her dog had gotten ahold of some bones, which Miggins accused Jin of leaving out intentionally to hurt her dog. Jin denied the accusation. During the more than 20-minute long confrontation, Hill twice referred to Jin as a racial slur used against East Asians, as well as calling her a cunt.

During the OPA investigation, Hill and Miggins both told investigators they’d drank heavily that night. Hill also denied that he used the racist slurs in a racist way, and called it an “excited utterance.” He told OPA investigators he only went out to speak to Jin after Miggins banged on Jin’s door and he heard yelling, maintaining that he only went out to help defuse the situation. OPA investigators found this argument not credible and said the audio recording showed that Hill “was the most aggressive and threatening party involved.” In response to Hill’s argument that he hadn’t used the terms in a racist way, OPA again disagreed. OPA called Hill’s use of the slurs a “textbook” example of violating SPD policies regarding bias-free policing. The racist and sexist slurs, combined with the way Hill repeatedly referred to Jin as “‘nothing’” showed an “intent to demean her.”

My favorite quote from the report of the OPA investigation, which I’ve already reported, remains when the investigator asked Hill if he had anything else to add, and he said, “The worst part for me about this whole thing—other than being labeled a racist, which is probably the worst thing other than a pedophile you can be labeled as—is I look at my fiancé and my dog differently. I resent them both because they put me in this position. And it sucks.” Hard to respect a man who blames animals and women for his own behavior.

Based on the OPA investigation, SPD’s disciplinary committee recommended either a 30-day suspension or termination. Former Chief of Police Adrian Diaz chose to fire Hill. Before leaving the department, Hill raked in a salary of about $170,500 in 2023, and under the new Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract, the City expects to pay him about $65,000 in back pay.  

Jan 6 Cop Taunts a Man in Crisis 

Case #2022OPA-0235

On June 27, 2022 Officer Jason Marchinone, one of at least six SPD officers who attended the January 6 riots at the US Capitol, drove to a call about a man in crisis who allegedly had a knife. By the time Marchinone showed up, other officers had already handcuffed the man and had him sitting on a curb. One officer told Marchinone the man had resisted arrest, to which Marchinone chuckled and said that resisting was a bad idea, according to the OPA report.

The Seattle Fire Department (SFD) arrived to check on the man, who had some injuries from his altercation with officers. An SFD employee asked the officers what happened to the man, and Marchinone “altered his voice into babytalk” and said, “‘Oh, he had a big morning, right? He had a big morning. He had a big morning. Yeah.’” When talking about the man’s injuries, Marchinone referred to the man having “boo-boos” on his arms and talked about how the morning had “‘tuckered out’” the man. He also acknowledged to the SFD employee that the man probably needed to be an involuntary commitment, and so he recognized he was taunting a man in mental distress.

Marchinone started to ask the man questions, and the man said his girlfriend lived in Columbia City. Marchinone told the man an ambulance would come to take him away soon, and if he asked them nicely the EMTs could take him to his girlfriend’s house. When the EMTs showed up, Marchinone told them, “‘He’s gonna ask many times about wanting to go engage in some physical activity with his girlfriend. Don’t be swayed and take him there.’” 

EMTs began to strap the man to a gurney, and Marchinone walked away to speak to a witness before returning to the back of the ambulance. He continued to heckle the man, making a comment that the man may have a doppelganger out in the world, such as Sammy Hagar. When the man asked for a ride to see his girlfriend, Marchinone said the man needed to “‘tone down that libido baby.’” The man asked, “‘What libido?’” In response, Marchinone said, “‘What libido? You’ve been asking to go bang your girlfriend for thirty minutes!’”

At one point, Marchinone turned to one of the EMTs and said, “‘Gotta amuse yourself and reinvent … I’m reinventing the wheel here. The job has changed so much.”

About half an hour later, Marchinone climbed into the ambulance to escort the man to the King County Jail. During the six-minute ambulance ride, the man called out Marchinone for laughing at his arrest and making fun of him. Marchinone said he and the man were just “hanging out. I just like to have fun at my job….” The man said “fuck that” and said he planned to sue the city. Marchinone seemed dismissive of the idea and said, “Probably like 12 to 25 people are gonna watch my whole video and me talking, talking nonsense to ya. They probably won’t laugh even though I’ve laughed. And then we’ll go on.”

When the ambulance finally arrived at the jail, Marchinone had the fucking audacity to make a comment about how the King County Jail had “lost total standards and credibility” when referring to how long it would take for jail staff to book the man into jail.

In an interview with OPA, Marchinone defended his comments as a strategy to calm down the man, however OPA disagreed and described what he had done as antagonization for the sake of amusement. The OPA sustained a professionalism policy violation against him, and Diaz issued him a written reprimand for his behavior.

OPA also recently released an investigative report regarding false statements Marchinone made to police after a 2021 collision in Bellevue, which earned him a 30-day suspension, according to a story by DivestSPD. The article went on to say that he has another active investigation for failing to conform to the law, and that he has remained on leave since July 2021. Despite spending 2023 entirely on leave, he made about $117,850 last year. Under the new SPOG contract the City plans to pay him about $48,000 in back pay.

Seattle’s Finest Hides Hit-and-Run, Accused of Rape

2021OPA-0092

KOMO recently dropped a story about how SPD fired Officer Dezmond C. Moore for his role in trying to hide his involvement in a DUI-related hit-and-run. On the night of crash, a woman also accused Moore of raping her, though the King County Prosecuting Attorney declined to charge him in that case due to concerns they could not prove the accusations beyond a reasonable doubt. 

In a 23-page report, the OPA detailed how on February 9, 2021, Moore went out and drank with the woman to the point of “severe intoxication.” Restaurant staff reported the woman appeared to become drunk very quickly. Moore reported that the woman drove the two from the restaurant until she allegedly hit a parked car, which pushed into another parked car. Moore said he then switched spots with her and drove the car to a hotel. 

The next morning, the woman told friends she woke up and couldn’t remember the events of the previous night, including whether she had sex with Moore. He later told a mutual friend that he had sex with her. About three days after the incident, the woman sought an examination from a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. 

Moore denied the accusations that he had sex with the woman without her consent, and he said the woman appeared to be awake and aware of her surroundings. The OPA made no finding regarding the accusations of sexual assault, though investigators said that at minimum Moore had sex with the woman “when there was evidence to suggest her capacity to consent was then, or had very recently been, legally questionable.”

In the days after the accident, Moore pressured the woman to hide the fact that he had ridden in the car with her that night and to lie about other aspects of the accident. He also used police databases without authorization to see if someone had filed a police report about the accident.

OPA described all of Moore’s conduct in relation to the case as “concerning,” all the way from the amount of alcohol he drank to riding in a car with an intoxicated driver to leaving the scene of a DUI-related hit-and-run and then failing to report both the crash to the police and his involvement to his superiors at SPD. Even in his interview with OPA investigators, Moore appeared closed off and “nonsensical in his lack of candor.” Throughout the investigation, Moore minimized his responsibility and allowed “others to take the fall,” investigators said. 

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office charged Moore with a DUI for his involvement in the accident, and he entered into a deferred prosecution agreement, which required him to admit to the charge. OPA investigators sustained five policy violations against Moore for lying, breaking the law, unauthorized access of police databases, failing to report his policy violations, and failing to act professionally. 

Moore joined the SPD in December 2019. SPD placed him on administrative leave for these allegations in February 2021 until his firing at the end of December last year. While on administrative leave, Moore has earned a salary of more than $100,000 each year, and the City is expected to pay him about $43,894 in back pay under the new SPOG contract.

The Stranger

The paradox of library music is that it’s utilitarian, yet it’s also a breeding ground for some of the boldest, most interesting sounds ever.

by Dave Segal

Working out of his Everett-based Soundview Analog Recorders studio, Sean Wolcott has become a prodigious creator of eclectic, evocative soundtrack and library music. With regard to the latter genre, the guitarist/composer/producer occupies a tiny niche in the region’s musical ecosystem. Aside from Andy “Gel-Sol” Reichel (whose great library single I reviewed on this blog in 2022), the field’s pretty much ruled by Wolcott. 

Library music—which is created for placement in movies, TV shows, radio, ads, and other media—is, Wolcott says in an interview conducted at Analog Coffee, “kind of like this bizarre creature that’s mixed of all of the kind of music I like and is pushing genre in a way that a lot of genre-bound artists don’t. It felt really alive.” The paradox of library music is that it’s utilitarian, yet it’s also a breeding ground for some of the boldest, most interesting sounds ever. 

Traditionally, it’s been rare for an American musician to get involved in European-dominated library music. What’s the US scene like right now? “It seems to be evolving, where awareness of library music has expanded a lot,” Wolcott says. “I worked on a movie project a few years ago and one of the actors was a young guy who was a huge library-music fan, but he didn’t even know the term ‘library music.’ When I told him this was library music, he said, ‘Oh, wow, I love it!’ If the uncool goes far enough, it becomes cool. Like easy listening—which I’ve always been a diehard fan of—is sort of hip and edgy in a way.” 

<a href=”https://seanwolcott.bandcamp.com/album/violent-hand-of-the-sleeping-city”>Violent Hand of the Sleeping City by Sean Wolcott</a>

Wolcott got into library music in the early 2000s through music blogs, which exposed him to obscure European soundtracks and the rich crop of ’60s/’70s Italian composers. “Discovering the Italian soundtracks and library stuff, it was like, okay, this is my realm,” Wolcott says. “I delved a lot deeper. Ennio Morricone being the obvious one, but finding people like Stelvio Cipriani, Bruno Nicolai, and the infinite amount of composers from there [further intrigued me].” 

Another inspiration came in the form of Jonny Trunk’s The Music Library: Graphic Art and Sound (2005), a book that spotlights a dazzling array of library album covers. “At that point, I was doing graphic design as a job, and that appealed to that aspect of things. The sheer creativity in the artwork and the music itself and the contradiction of the extreme experimental aspects, but meanwhile it has commercial intent. Also, the speed at which [library albums] were made and the low cost at which they were made… you have a couple of days to write, a couple of days to record. That spontaneity brings out a lot of inspiration and creativity when you’re under those constraints.”

Sean Wolcott’s Soundview Analog Recorders studio in Everett, WA. Liam Kennedy

Some of Wolcott’s commissions come from a Seattle company called License Lab, where his friend and founder, Daniel Holter, works. For the LL imprint Analog Champion, Wolcott’s done a ’60s psych record [Psych Rock] and a ’50s/’60s exotica album [Exotica], both from 2023. The records’ attention to period details and execution are phenomenal—and their cuts are surfacing in unusual places. “I’ll look at my performance rights statements and see that [a track appeared on a televised football game]. I don’t know why the NFL is playing some weird psych track,” Wolcott says, laughing. 

“My ongoing joke with recording is, I’m not trying to do a Civil War reenactment. I don’t fetishize any of these eras. I just think that there’s a quality of music I strive for in my own creations.”

<a href=”https://seanwolcott.bandcamp.com/album/love-is-a-funny-game”>Love is a Funny Game by Sean Wolcott</a>

Besides the aforementioned albums for Analog Champion, Wolcott’s released 2022’s Il Mietitore cavalca verso ovest (dusky spaghetti Western moves), 2023’s Love Is a Funny Game (carefree, orchestral pop redolent of erotic French and Italian films from the ’70s), 2023’s Violent Hand of the Sleeping City (crime-thriller nail-biters), and 2023’s Liquid Landscapes (woozily jazzy themes for undersea nature documentaries).

To achieve his pitch-perfect sounds, Wolcott has stocked his studio with analog recording gear from the ’50s to ’60s, as well as a 1939 Altec Birdcage ribbon microphone, which his partner in the funk-oriented Wolcott Curran Collective, Craig Curran, uses to record his bass parts. (Curran played in Fleet Foxes from 2006 to 2008.) Also in Wolcott’s arsenal is a Scully 280 4-track tape recorder that the Beach Boys used while recording their classic 1966 album, Pet Sounds.

One of Sean Wolcott’s man vintage studio toys. Liam Kennedy

Wolcott’s initial musical enthusiasms began with John Williams’s scores for Jaws, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the ’60s, Wolcott’s father had played guitar in a cover band called Willow Run, and young Sean would learn how to play on that instrument. As a sixth grader, Wolcott—who was always drawing as a child—became enamored of arty pop such as 2nu’s “This Is Ponderous” and Barnes & Barnes’ “Fish Heads.” But hearing Nirvana right before Nevermind blew up convinced Wolcott that he wanted to make music his life. 

As someone who was so visually oriented from such a young age, though, Wolcott seemed destined to get into soundtracks—both real and imaginary. “With these projects, I tend to approach them almost like they were a soundtrack for a movie—not necessarily in the traditional sense, but I can see it in my mind. I’ll plot out the characters, scenes, and story and write for those, versus just coming up with random music. So I’m composing for this movie that’s in my mind, which I don’t necessarily have any intent to make.” 

Satisfyingly, tracks from these recordings have been licensed. They also, Wolcott says, “end up being business cards for producing other people, recording for people, things like that.” One example is Washington troubadour Damien Jurado, for whom Wolcott has produced two albums and several singles. Expect those results, which “are pushing some exciting new territory” for Jurado this summer. 

Wolcott’s newest soundtrack in search of a film, Lady Swordfighter, might be his most ambitious. Inspired by his deep appreciation for Japanese culture and music, Lady Swordfighter simulates the spare yet rich music that tingles spines in Japanese samurai thrillers.

<a href=”https://seanwolcott.bandcamp.com/album/lady-swordfighter”>Lady Swordfighter 修羅女武者 by Sean Wolcott</a>

Wolcott orchestrated this album to sound as authentic as possible, with considerable help from skilled collaborators such as Aura Ruddell (koto, vocals), Mary Ohno (shamisen, vocals), Hanz Araki (shakuhachi), Patrick Oiye (shamisen), and the drumming ensemble Seattle Kokon Taiko. Lady Swordfighter “was a chance to dive a lot deeper and learn a lot more. Having done so, I feel like it changed me permanently in terms of how I see music. It was me learning a lot more about Japanese scales. My good friend Aura Ruddell—who’s of Japanese heritage and has played on several of my albums—learned how to play koto in Japan, so she was a good resource and an encourager to nudge me on my way.

“I’m just an evolved garage-rock-band guy,” Wolcott says, laughing. “I don’t have any formal musical education. A lot of my musical education is just figuring it out on my own and having some great friends to play with.”

Wolcott takes pride in the fact that there are no samples in Lady Swordfighter—or in any of his recordings. “It has oftentimes fooled people, such as [legendary hip-hop producer] Pete Rock, into thinking it’s an old record. But that’s not really my goal. I’m not trying to make things sound old. I mean, I use a lot of old gear, because I like the way it sounds.”

Currently, Wolcott has about 30 concept albums dwelling in his mind, including one revolving around hang gliding. He’s also fielding film-scoring offers from directors outside of the Seattle area. “That’s a space I want to get into a lot deeper. It’s a hard space to penetrate. The rapper Logic just finished doing a film [titled Paradise Records] that’s using my music in some different scenes. There are other smaller things, too. Some things are hard to track, since it launders through an ad agency. It continues to plant seeds and opportunities.

“Getting back to library music, there’s a kind of an absurdity of some of these things, where it’s very specific. And it’s specific in a way that doesn’t describe a jazz or even a sub-genre of music. It’s more thematic. Narrative can challenge genre in exciting ways. The history of recorded film scores has been really good at pushing that. Jonny Greenwood for the Spencer soundtrack, he was fusing jazz with baroque music. It really ties back to library music and how the types of music you wouldn’t think to be bedfellows can actually play together quite nicely. 

“My whole experience has been me trying to get the thing I want. Going through somebody else’s channels has never worked for me, cosmically. If you want it, make it yourself. It’s always been my mantra. It’s worked thus far.”

The Stranger