Jamie Tompkins claims Seattle police scandal was a setup. Here’s why

SEATTLE - Former Seattle Police Department Chief of Staff Jamie Tompkins is speaking for the first time about the 18 months she worked at SPD, which she describes made her feel "violated, degraded and dehumanized."

Tompkins believes she was "collateral damage" in a conspiracy to remove Adrian Diaz as chief, and she says there is new evidence that a Star Wars-themed birthday card, which ended both of their SPD careers, was a forgery.

"I'm not writing notes to people. There’re no birthday cards. There’re no anonymous love letters, and there're no notes," Tompkins said. "Bottom line - it's fabricated." 

Tompkins defended herself, her work and her relationship to Diaz in an emotional, hour-long interview – she hasn’t spoken publicly about her ordeal before now.

"I am not the author of an anonymous birthday card, but I am the author of that demand letter. And that is my true story. That is what I experienced," Tompkins said. "I have the documentation, and I feel good about that. We're connecting the dots. Our attorneys are connecting the dots. That's why they're asking for another investigation, an outside criminal investigation."

The backstory:

Tompkins’ letter to Mayor Bruce Harrell calls for the city to pay her $3 million in damages for failure to stop the rumors she was sleeping with the Chief. She says during the 18 months she worked for SPD she was subjected to near-constant harassment about her appearance, and she claims some of the crude comments came from the Mayor himself, in a conversation he had with Diaz.

"He says Mayor Harrell told him he didn't care about the rumor, because he would ‘do’ me too," Tompkins recalled. "It is not the reaction that I would imagine. I would imagine him saying, you know, ‘It's unacceptable. It will not be tolerated.’ But to hear ‘I’d do her too’ - that just felt like he was just condoning it."

Diaz independently confirmed to FOX 13 Seattle the accuracy of Tompkins’ accounts, both in her demand letter and for our interview. We contacted the Mayor’s office to see whether he wanted to discuss the incident and are still waiting for a response; when asked about Tompkins’ demand letter previously, Harrell said he could not comment on pending litigation. 

The former FOX 13 Seattle news anchor had only been with SPD a few months before the whisper campaign spilled over into comment sections on social media pages, an experience that left her feeling dehumanized.

"That's pretty much the feeling of my entire time at SPD, being treated like and feeling like a piece of meat," Tompkins said.

There were hundreds of reactions and comments talking about her story, but she says no one was talking to her: Tompkins’ formal complaints about her treatment by some of the employees in the department went nowhere. "I felt like I was just talking into a vacuum," Tompkins recalled. "I emailed my complaints to human resources. I would, I sent some complaints off to OIG [Office of the Inspector General]. To OPA [Office of Police Accountability]. All of them went unanswered."

Tompkins finally spoke to OIG on Aug. 31st, but it not about her complaints: she was being interviewed as part of the city’s investigation of Chief Diaz. "I wrote a letter saying, ‘Listen, if you guys want to sit here and talk about my body, you better include my voice.’ I got an email back from the investigator, but she didn’t want to speak to any of that," Tompkins said. 

OIG asked her for samples of her handwriting they wanted – to compare against an adult message hand-written in a kids’ Star Wars-themed birthday card, from Papyrus with a teddy bear-like Ewok on the front: 

"Adrian, When I think about you, I think of the first time I saw you smile. You were so shy, but sweet. And I loved the way you chose your words so carefully. I wondered what you were filtering out. What made you tick? What made you laugh? Why would a person want to take on such a challenging role? Now that I know you, I know the answers to those questions. What I did not expect was how knowing you would bring me closer to me. More in line with who I am. How I feel. What I want. Where I want to go. Before I knew you, I didn't really know me. You woke me up. Like a prince in one of your Disney movies. I hope I always know your kiss. I hope I always feel your influence. I hope to always know you and me. I love you, Me." 

The card was one of the main pieces of evidence used by OIG to determine Diaz was having an affair with his subordinate Tompkins, which Mayor Harrell used as a justification to fire him.

Investigators said two members of Diaz’s security detail, known as the Executive Protection Unit (EPU), found the birthday card a year earlier while cleaning one of the Diaz’s official police vehicles, inside the storage pocket on the back of the passenger seat. 

According to the OIG report, a forensic comparison by Chicago-based Omni Document Examinations matched the writing on the card to samples of Tompkins’ handwriting. Omni’s findings, obtained by FOX 13 Seattle, show one sample was cited at least 10 times to make the match to the birthday card, far more than any other piece of writing used in the analysis. It was an undated note labeled JT-K-1, which reads:  

"Thank you for saving the day – per usual (Smiley face) – Jamie"

The OIG report says JT-K-1 was a ‘thank-you’ from Tompkins to an officer on Diaz’s EPU security detail – who also had access to the vehicle where the birthday card was found. 

The OIG investigator considered whether the birthday card may have been planted to frame Diaz and Tompkins. The report first ruled out the security detail as suspects, since they "held onto the card for over a year rather than circulate it to others." 

Instead, the investigator said the handwriting match - done months after the birthday card was found and primarily using the JT-K-1 "Thank you… Jamie" note - was proof enough it was real. "It seems unlikely that someone would have been able to fabricate the card as evidence to harm Mr. Diaz, given that a handwriting analyst concluded that the handwriting was highly probable to have been Jamie Tompkins."

Except what if a different Jamie wrote it?

Tompkins is adamant the note wasn’t from her. "I did not write this anonymous birthday card two months before the chief's actual birthday and then plant it inside a city vehicle driven by another employee. The whole thing doesn't make any sense," Tompkins said. "The first time that I heard about that note was from an attorney who was trying to figure out, ‘Where did this note come from?’ I've never seen it before. No one ever even showed it to me. So it was never authenticated. And that's part of the whole botched investigation."

But Tompkins said a second forensic exam did use verified examples. "We have a handwriting expert who is local, who has reviewed over a dozen authenticated samples of my actual handwriting," Tompkins explained. "We're talking about federal documents, all kinds of things."

The comparison was done by certified document examiner Hanna McFarland, recognized as a handwriting expert in courtrooms across the Northwest. She determined that ‘Jamie’ did write both documents central to the OIG investigation, but McFarland does not believe it was Jamie Tompkins. 

"It is my opinion that the person who wrote the [birthday card] probably wrote the body of JT-K-1," McFarland noted. "[But] the combination of all the differences between JT-K-1 and the exemplars of Jamie Tompkins provides significant evidence that Tompkins probably did not write the body of JT-K-1… The degree of opinion ‘probably’ is the same as ‘more probable than not’." 

McFarland’s report said the OIG analysis did not gather enough every-day examples of her writing to make an accurate comparison the first time. But Tompkins says investigators had their chance when they searched her office without her knowledge. "I didn't care finding out that they had swept my office," Tompkins said. "I'm like, ‘Gosh, that would just solve everything.’ And you know, I've got steno books in there, files, folders, Post-it notes. All those items were just stored away in OIG. OIG never handed it over to the expert."

"Nothing that was ever provided would ever be enough evidence. I think [the investigators] had a preconceived narrative for this all along." Tompkins said. "I mean, I can't speculate as to exactly who's involved. We have our ideas and I just can't talk about that at this time.[But] it certainly felt coordinated."  

Through it all, Tompkins continued to work on behalf of SPD to help attract new officers, especially women. Her action-packed recruitment videos wrapped messages of empowerment, opportunity and community service in slick production values borrowed from TV cop dramas and drawing on Tompkins’ years as a TV news reporter. 

"You know, I don't carry a brass badge or a gun. I don't have those things. My brass comes in the form of Emmy Awards," Tompkins said. "But I didn't get those awards because I'm pretty. I got them based on the merit of my work for over 20 years."

Tompkins pushed back on suggestions that Diaz ever gave her special treatment and while there had been no designated SPD ‘chief of staff position’ in several years, Tompkins pointed to similar roles filled by civilians in other law enforcement agencies. "There’s already been a news anchor who left their job in television and became the chief of staff for the King County sheriff," Tompkins said. "Liz Rocca was a well-known journalist in Seattle. She did that long before me. Ironically, she's my mentor, and I thought that was funny, that the narrative that was created was that somehow, I'm special."

But Tompkins also recalled something another former news colleague told her: "He said, ‘Jamie, listen, this has nothing to do with the facts and the truth. It's salacious. They're looking at Chief of Police, pretty news anchor. It doesn't matter if the story is true. It's fun."

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