FBI Paid Seattle PD $14,372 For JTTF Overtime During 2020 Protests
While the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened and operated a domestic terrorism investigation in Seattle during the 2020 protests, the bureau also made payments to the Seattle Police Department (SPD) to compensate Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) officers the SPD had detailed to the FBI.
The Puget Sound JTTF Memorandum of Understanding, signed by JTTF partner agencies, states that "overtime incurred in the performance of JTTF responsibilities, when allowable under federal law and to the extent that federal funding is available for such purposes, will be reimbursed by the FBI."
HardPressed has obtained a filtered financial ledger from the SPD, showing a total of $14,372 in FBI JTTF overtime payments to SPD during the 2020 protests period. Those payments were funneled to two SPD JTTF Task Force Officers (TFO); SPD detectives Rik Hall and Wesley Friesen.
HardPressed has reported that Friesen was previously arrested for a DUI in 2004, in an incident where he reportedly threatened to kill Washington State Patrol troopers on scene according to the Seattle Times.
Rik Hall no longer works for SPD, but previously signed his FBI emails with "CT3/Domestic Terrorism Squad."
CT3 is the codename for one of the FBI Seattle's counterterrorism squads. During the 2020 protests, CT3 opened a domestic terrorism/extremism investigation, assigning it case number 266H-3272708.
Real Change has reported that the FBI Seattle self-manufactured threats during the 2020 protests, potentially justifying the use of informants, which were mass-recruited and operated by another FBI Seattle squad known as the Safe Streets Task Force (SSTF) with the aim of providing intelligence for the FBI's domestic terrorism investigation that Hall's CT3 squad opened and operated.
Hall was one of a handful of SPD officers to receive training in Israel from Proactive Global Security in 2014.
So far, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson's office has not responded to several requests for comment concerning the assignment of SPD officers to the FBI JTTF or the implementation of NSPM-7.
While Wilson mulls declaring a civil emergency for LGBTQIA+ refugees, she must square that with her own cops being asked to "prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist," according to President Donald Trump's new counterterrorism strategy, authored by former JTTF instructor Sebastian Gorka.
SPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.