If there is an immediate underlying cause for the fraught relationship between the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and the citizens its officers ostensibly were hired to serve and protect—frequently manifested in a kind of mutual hatred that’s deeply rooted in the city’s history—it primarily comes down to a single factor: a seething contempt for the city and its liberal politics and citizens among a hardcore right-wing political faction on the police force, one that has grown in power and strength over the past decade.
That faction recently showed its face in an incident that so far has made only a blip on the local media radar: SPD announced that it had fired officer Andrei Constantin, who authored a Twitter account under a fake identity that mocked citizens’ deaths and injuries, while sneering that George Floyd “got justice” and taunting family members of slain antifascists. The firing, as Erin Barnett of PubliCola reports, occurred in late September, nearly a year after Constantin’s identity was first revealed by an antifascist Twitter account.
Constantin, posting with the handle “Bruce Wayne” at his @1SteelerFanatic account on Twitter, frequently posted memes and comments mocking leftists and liberals, including crude taunts about people who had died or were injured. His identity as a Seattle cop was exposed in an October 2021 thread by @WhiteRoseAFA.
After the revelation, Constantin was placed on suspension while SPD opened a disciplinary investigation. The resulting report signed by Chief Adrian Diaz was unsparing:
Diaz noted that while Constantin acknowledged the tweets and was sorrowful for giving the department a black eye, he also took Constantin’s “history of discipline, which includes two prior suspensions for lack of professionalism and other SPD policy violations,” into consideration.
Barnett reports that Constantin certainly was no stranger to trouble—and had a hand in a number of contentious incidents:
The @WhiteRoseAFA account was able to identify Constantin as the author of the @1SteelerFanatic account by tracing its original versions, which were related to his work at a couple of Las Vegas clubs, and featured various comments as “Andrei.” He also posted his Seattle phone number, which was listed under his real name.
His tweets were a relentless litany of far-right trolling, and displayed both a contempt for the lives of Seattle residents and a desire to see harm inflicted on leftists and minorities. A June 11, 2020, tweet responding to a right-wing radio rant about the leftist “autonomous zone” on Capitol known as CHAZ/CHOP openly wished for the occupants’ deaths: “I disagree, drop napalm on that area to actually fix it,” he wrote.
Responding to a July 25, 2020, tweet reporting on the city’s ongoing anti-police protests following the murder of George Floyd [“WOMAN HIT: Says she was hit by flash bang at 12th Ave. and Pike”], he wrote: “Waaaaa waaaa I went to a riot to get a confrontation and they gave me a boo boo.” Constantin also dismissed legal observers at Seattle protests as “just scum ambulance chasers with biased agendas.” And he relished violence against antifascists: “Hahaha I love the screeching sound of those loser #AntifaTerrorists.”
Perhaps the most disturbing tweets were those in which he responded to posts about the killing of Seattle resident Summer Taylor, a protester who was killed when an angry motorist evaded police blockades to drive onto a closed-off section of the freeway where a march was occurring and ran her over, as well as injuring another woman; the driver, an African man named Dawit Kelete, is still awaiting trial.
Right-wing trolls promptly began using the hashtag #FreeDawitkelete, which Constantin bandied about multiple times. “Do you have the go fund me page for #FreeDawitkelete?” he wrote in response to a post linking to a fundraiser for Taylor’s family. “Shouldn’t play in the freeway idiots” he responded to another tweet. When someone demanded he apologize, he responded: “Naw, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
Constantin was also an avid COVID denialist who opposed mask mandates. When someone tweeted about a man assaulted in the resort town of Ocean Shores after confronting men for not wearing masks, he responded: “Mind your own business next time.”
And his animus toward the victims of police violence was constant. In May 2021, a full year after the anti-police protests, he tweeted: “#GeorgeFloyd got justice regardless what our madeup definition of ‘justice is.”
And he was deliberately cruel to the families of people killed during the protests. When the mother of an antifascist killed in Portland posted about a memorial protest for her son last October ["I also understand people might be to afraid to attend or working or are far away and that's ok I love and appreciate all of you but if you could still light a candle and share it I would so appreciate it much love all of you”], he responded: "Naw, rest in piss bitch."
Among his favorite accounts was that of pseudo-journalist Andy Ngo, who specializes in smearing antifascists as violent criminals. Constantin frequently replied to Ngo’s tweets, flippantly urging violence against leftist protesters.
Constantin, however, was not an outlier among Seattle police. His attitudes are common among officers, many of whom do not even live in the city. SPD’s eventual firing of Constantin reflected the city’s desire to clean up the department’s image, but the lengthy response time also reflected city officials’ inability to deal with its powerful police union, the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which has become the nexus for a cadre of right-wing officers on the force who regularly voice their contempt for the city they serve.
The guild’s leadership, in particular, has set the tone. Its president, Mike Solan, has a long history of voicing contempt for Seattle’s liberal politics and politicians, and fought hard against a vaccine mandate for his officers, even though Seattle was one of the first cities hit hard by the COVID outbreak in 2020. In December 2020, he gave a speech to a group of realtors telling them that Black Lives Matter activists want to “take private property and give it to Indians,” and that the summer’s BLM protests had lowered the city’s property values.
A month later, on Jan. 7, Solan retweeted a post by Ngo suggesting that BLM and antifa activists were actually the people responsible for the previous day’s violence at the U.S. Capitol. “#American #cops caught in the ‘middle’ between factions vying for #political control,” he commented, adding that Ngo “continues to be reliable.”
The retweet created a brief firestorm for Solan in Seattle, with a number of city officials demanding his resignation. Solan refused, dismissing the demands as just another example of “cancel culture.”
“What I was trying to convey is that we as police are caught in the middle of two extreme political groups (left/right) whom are vying for political control via violence,” Solan wrote in a letter to his guild members. The letter didn’t explain how “leftists” “vying for political control” were involved in the Jan. 6 violence in any fashion whatsoever.
"Solan to me is that outlier voice that is more akin to the right-wing extremists, more akin to our previous president," Seattle educator/activist Jaiden Grayson told Insider. "But that speaks to me about the entire culture of SPD, because if you think that the ideas and the way the SPD is acting on the ground are one thing, when they turn to the person who would hold them accountable and he says it wasn't enough, that's concerning."
That faction recently showed its face in an incident that so far has made only a blip on the local media radar: SPD announced that it had fired officer Andrei Constantin, who authored a Twitter account under a fake identity that mocked citizens’ deaths and injuries, while sneering that George Floyd “got justice” and taunting family members of slain antifascists. The firing, as Erin Barnett of PubliCola reports, occurred in late September, nearly a year after Constantin’s identity was first revealed by an antifascist Twitter account.
Constantin, posting with the handle “Bruce Wayne” at his @1SteelerFanatic account on Twitter, frequently posted memes and comments mocking leftists and liberals, including crude taunts about people who had died or were injured. His identity as a Seattle cop was exposed in an October 2021 thread by @WhiteRoseAFA.
After the revelation, Constantin was placed on suspension while SPD opened a disciplinary investigation. The resulting report signed by Chief Adrian Diaz was unsparing:
Diaz noted that while Constantin acknowledged the tweets and was sorrowful for giving the department a black eye, he also took Constantin’s “history of discipline, which includes two prior suspensions for lack of professionalism and other SPD policy violations,” into consideration.
Barnett reports that Constantin certainly was no stranger to trouble—and had a hand in a number of contentious incidents:
The @WhiteRoseAFA account was able to identify Constantin as the author of the @1SteelerFanatic account by tracing its original versions, which were related to his work at a couple of Las Vegas clubs, and featured various comments as “Andrei.” He also posted his Seattle phone number, which was listed under his real name.
His tweets were a relentless litany of far-right trolling, and displayed both a contempt for the lives of Seattle residents and a desire to see harm inflicted on leftists and minorities. A June 11, 2020, tweet responding to a right-wing radio rant about the leftist “autonomous zone” on Capitol known as CHAZ/CHOP openly wished for the occupants’ deaths: “I disagree, drop napalm on that area to actually fix it,” he wrote.
Responding to a July 25, 2020, tweet reporting on the city’s ongoing anti-police protests following the murder of George Floyd [“WOMAN HIT: Says she was hit by flash bang at 12th Ave. and Pike”], he wrote: “Waaaaa waaaa I went to a riot to get a confrontation and they gave me a boo boo.” Constantin also dismissed legal observers at Seattle protests as “just scum ambulance chasers with biased agendas.” And he relished violence against antifascists: “Hahaha I love the screeching sound of those loser #AntifaTerrorists.”
Perhaps the most disturbing tweets were those in which he responded to posts about the killing of Seattle resident Summer Taylor, a protester who was killed when an angry motorist evaded police blockades to drive onto a closed-off section of the freeway where a march was occurring and ran her over, as well as injuring another woman; the driver, an African man named Dawit Kelete, is still awaiting trial.
Right-wing trolls promptly began using the hashtag #FreeDawitkelete, which Constantin bandied about multiple times. “Do you have the go fund me page for #FreeDawitkelete?” he wrote in response to a post linking to a fundraiser for Taylor’s family. “Shouldn’t play in the freeway idiots” he responded to another tweet. When someone demanded he apologize, he responded: “Naw, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
Constantin was also an avid COVID denialist who opposed mask mandates. When someone tweeted about a man assaulted in the resort town of Ocean Shores after confronting men for not wearing masks, he responded: “Mind your own business next time.”
And his animus toward the victims of police violence was constant. In May 2021, a full year after the anti-police protests, he tweeted: “#GeorgeFloyd got justice regardless what our madeup definition of ‘justice is.”
And he was deliberately cruel to the families of people killed during the protests. When the mother of an antifascist killed in Portland posted about a memorial protest for her son last October ["I also understand people might be to afraid to attend or working or are far away and that's ok I love and appreciate all of you but if you could still light a candle and share it I would so appreciate it much love all of you”], he responded: "Naw, rest in piss bitch."
Among his favorite accounts was that of pseudo-journalist Andy Ngo, who specializes in smearing antifascists as violent criminals. Constantin frequently replied to Ngo’s tweets, flippantly urging violence against leftist protesters.
Constantin, however, was not an outlier among Seattle police. His attitudes are common among officers, many of whom do not even live in the city. SPD’s eventual firing of Constantin reflected the city’s desire to clean up the department’s image, but the lengthy response time also reflected city officials’ inability to deal with its powerful police union, the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which has become the nexus for a cadre of right-wing officers on the force who regularly voice their contempt for the city they serve.
The guild’s leadership, in particular, has set the tone. Its president, Mike Solan, has a long history of voicing contempt for Seattle’s liberal politics and politicians, and fought hard against a vaccine mandate for his officers, even though Seattle was one of the first cities hit hard by the COVID outbreak in 2020. In December 2020, he gave a speech to a group of realtors telling them that Black Lives Matter activists want to “take private property and give it to Indians,” and that the summer’s BLM protests had lowered the city’s property values.
A month later, on Jan. 7, Solan retweeted a post by Ngo suggesting that BLM and antifa activists were actually the people responsible for the previous day’s violence at the U.S. Capitol. “#American #cops caught in the ‘middle’ between factions vying for #political control,” he commented, adding that Ngo “continues to be reliable.”
The retweet created a brief firestorm for Solan in Seattle, with a number of city officials demanding his resignation. Solan refused, dismissing the demands as just another example of “cancel culture.”
“What I was trying to convey is that we as police are caught in the middle of two extreme political groups (left/right) whom are vying for political control via violence,” Solan wrote in a letter to his guild members. The letter didn’t explain how “leftists” “vying for political control” were involved in the Jan. 6 violence in any fashion whatsoever.
"Solan to me is that outlier voice that is more akin to the right-wing extremists, more akin to our previous president," Seattle educator/activist Jaiden Grayson told Insider. "But that speaks to me about the entire culture of SPD, because if you think that the ideas and the way the SPD is acting on the ground are one thing, when they turn to the person who would hold them accountable and he says it wasn't enough, that's concerning."