Seattle police officers will be limited in their use of ruses — a tactic of deliberately misinforming the public — starting Wednesday, following a three-year push to create a policy.
The new rules are the result of pressure from city officials following two dramatic uses of ruse tactics in the last five years: one that may have contributed to a man’s suicide and another that reportedly incited chaos at the massive Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP, of 2020.
In 2018, an officer found a driver who had been responsible for a hit-and-run fender bender by falsely claiming to a third person that the driver had critically injured someone in the collision. The driver’s family alleges that the ruse contributed to his subsequent death by suicide.
In another instance, two years later, police falsely claimed in radio broadcasts that armed members of the Proud Boys group were gathering during CHOP. The dispatches caused panic among some protesters, some of whom armed themselves in response, according to a 2022 report by the city’s Office of Police Accountability.
Following that report, the OPA and Councilmember Lisa Herbold called for the Police Department to restrict when patrol officers can use ruses, which she said can deteriorate public trust.
Nearly two years later, the new policy, which prohibits police from conducting ruses in certain circumstances and requires documentation of all ruses, will take effect Wednesday.
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