Barnes had to be dragged away by a member of his staff after getting aggressive with a reporter asking about his Chicago home and travel.
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes was asked to resign by Mayor Katie Wilson on Wednesday, just hours after his office was asked about a federal tax lien filed against Barnes and his assets, including his Chicago-area home.
The Post Millennial obtained Cook County, Illinois records showing the Internal Revenue Service filed a Notice of Federal Tax Lien against Barnes and Stephanie Dance totaling $86,841.14. The lien, recorded on March 11, 2025, "on all property and rights to property belonging to this taxpayer," lists Barnes' residence in Park Ridge, Illinois, where his family has continued to live throughout his tenure as Seattle's police chief.
According to the filing, the lien stems from unpaid federal income tax assessments for tax years 2021, 2022, and 2023. Earlier Wednesday, the Seattle Police Department was contacted seeking comment on the federal tax lien. The department did not respond before Barnes was asked to resign later that day.
The tax lien is the latest controversy to engulf the embattled chief, whose leadership has been under intense scrutiny since Sunday's deadly mass shooting at Seattle's Bite of Seattle festival.
As the police chief attended a conference for black law enforcement executives in Dallas, three people were killed, and several others were injured near Seattle Center in a suspected gang-related shooting.
Nearly five hours passed before Seattle police held their first formal media briefing after the shooting. The city also declined to issue a mass emergency alert despite investigators searching for additional suspects and uncertainty surrounding how many shooters may have been involved.
During a tense press conference Monday, Barnes had to be dragged away by a member of his staff after getting aggressive with a reporter asking about his Chicago home and travel. At a press conference Tuesday, Barnes acknowledged publicly that his wife and children continue to live in the Chicago area while he maintained an apartment in Seattle.
When asked about how frequently he traveled back to Illinois, Barnes rejected suggestions that he routinely left the city. "I don't travel as often as I would like to," Barnes said. "I think any reports that I'm gone every weekend are grossly misstated."
On Wednesday, Barnes canceled a scheduled one-on-one interview with KOMO News approximately 30 minutes before it was set to begin. Instead, the department released portions of his calendar documenting his travel over the previous several months.
According to KOMO's review, Barnes spent nearly a dozen periods away from Seattle between late March and the end of July, including seven work-related conferences and four trips to Chicago. The station calculated that those absences totaled nearly two months away from his Seattle office, although some included weekends and travel days.
Later that afternoon, Barnes attended a vigil honoring the victims of the Bite of Seattle shooting but departed before the program began. Within hours, Wilson asked him to resign.
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The newly discovered federal tax lien raises additional questions. As Seattle police chief, Barnes earned an annual salary of more than $374,000, making him one of the highest-paid officials in Seattle city government. Despite that compensation, the IRS filing alleges more than $86,000 in unpaid federal tax liabilities and establishes a federal lien against property belonging to Barnes and the co-listed taxpayer.
The filing also underscores Barnes' continued ties to the Chicago area, which became a political issue after he acknowledged that his family remained in Illinois while he commuted between Chicago and Seattle. Barnes previously attempted to brush aside questions about the arrangement by joking about Seattle's affordability, a remark that drew criticism because he maintained both a Seattle apartment and a family home in suburban Chicago while earning one of the city's largest public salaries.
Before coming to Seattle, Barnes also attracted national attention during his tenure as police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, over his handling of public questions following the 2024 Abundant Life Christian School shooting. He later became embroiled in a dispute with Madison's independent police oversight office before being selected by then-Mayor Bruce Harrell to lead the Seattle Police Department.
Neither the mayor's office nor the Seattle Police Department responded to requests for comment before Barnes was asked to step down.
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