Tacoma Police Chief Avery Moore placed on administrative leave. City provides no reason

Tacoma Police Chief Avery Moore has been placed on paid administrative leave, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.

One Police Department source, who has been granted anonymity for fear of retaliation, told The News Tribune on Thursday that Deputy Chief Paul Junger has been assigned as the department’s interim leader.

City spokesperson Maria Lee confirmed to The News Tribune on Thursday that Moore was placed on administrative leave effective Wednesday. Lee provided no reasons as to why.

The News Tribune has reached out to Moore and the Police Department for comment.

The newspaper also asked to speak with City Manager Elizabeth Pauli about the decision, which would fall under her purview, but the city declined to make her immediately available.

Moore has headed the department since January 2022, replacing Don Ramsdell. Before that Moore worked as assistant chief for the Investigations Bureau at the Dallas Police Department.

A second police source who was granted anonymity told The News Tribune on Thursday that officers were offered no specific details as to why Moore is on leave. However, nobody was surprised to learn of the decision, the source said.

Some in the department are worried about what’s to come, the source added. Questions remain as to the makeup of TPD’s leadership moving forward, the source said.

Moore’s tenure has not been without controversy.

His former chief of staff, Curtis Hairston, sued the city in April. He alleged that he had been subjected to racial bias and discrimination during his 18 months in the Police Department. He was fired after being the subject of an ultimately dismissed ethics complaint, the lawsuit said.

The suit, which is ongoing in Pierce County Superior Court, accused TPD of biased and discriminatory hiring practices toward Black applicants; unevenly disciplining Black and non-Black employees; and stripping down a program teaching about racial bias and violence in policing because it was purportedly too harsh for officers.

Hairston also claimed that the chief didn’t appropriately intervene when Hairston brought problems to Moore, to whom he directly reported. Hairston alleged that Junger had harassed him and made comments with racial connotations toward him, and that Moore had told the two to work out any differences.

In a June response to the suit, the city denied all allegations of wrongdoing, court records show. Hairston, who claimed the ethics complaint was an attempt to prevent him from scrutinizing the department, had been accused of using his position to aid his stepson’s prospects of getting hired by the police agency. His behavior was determined to have been “ill-advised, but not unethical,” according to the lawsuit.

In August, a group of community organizations requested a federal investigation of the Police Department, citing what it called “dangerous and inadequate policies, practices and disciplinary rules” that the group contends have led to widespread excessive force and discriminatory policing.

The Tacoma/Pierce County Coalition made a formal request to the Department of Justice in a letter dated Aug. 9, The News Tribune previously reported.

The coalition’s letter to the DOJ, which the group posted on its website, cited the death of Manuel Ellis in police custody, for which three charged officers were acquitted. It also referred to investigations by The News Tribune that showed TPD disproportionately used force against Black people between 2015 and 2019 and that TPD’s Internal Affairs section rarely sustained citizen complaints against the department, including use-of-force claims.

The coalition said recommendations it made to city leaders and Moore about how to address issues were not adequately implemented.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle told The News Tribune on Thursday that she had no information regarding the status of that request.

In January, Moore came under criticism from some TPD officers following the acquittal of the three Tacoma officers in the death of Ellis, a Black man who died in police custody in 2020.

An Internal Affairs investigation found that Matthew Collins, Christopher Burbank and Timothy Rankine largely did not violate department policy the night Ellis died in their custody.

Moore issued a statement in response to the IA findings.

“I acknowledge the detrimental impact of policing on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, extending both a personal and collective apology,” Moore said in part. “My awareness of the historical context of policing includes acts of oppression, abuse, and dehumanization, all carried out under the color of law.”

A number of officers contacted The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH-700 radio to complain about the chief’s statement.

“They (TPD officers) are being mischaracterized by their own absent chief as racist monsters who have abused their power for the last 30 years. There have been no actual examples provided,” one officer told the show. “The same chief that is never seen or heard from by the rank and file except in emails and press releases where he demonizes us as a whole.”

Moore has overseen a three-year plan to reduce violent crime in the city. Starting in July 2022, the Police Department launched the effort in collaboration with the University of Texas at San Antonio to reduce aggravated assaults, robberies and murders through data-driven solutions.

The violent crime reduction plan has rolled out in phases, with the first focusing on hot-spot policing of more than a dozen locations with high rates of violent street crime. Officers patrolled these areas at peak times while activating their vehicle’s lights to deter criminal activity.

At an April update presented to Tacoma City Council, Moore said overall violent crime was down 17.3 percent year to date and calls for violence-related help had dropped by 8 percent in hot spots.

The second phase of the plan has so far addressed underlying conditions that have contributed to problems on South Hosmer Street, which researchers identified as one of the city’s highest crime areas. That involved removing homeless encampments and 83,000 pounds of waste, as well as conducting outreach to community groups and local businesses. Plans were still being finalized earlier this year for a second site where a similar strategy would be deployed, Puyallup Avenue and East 25th Street in the Dome District.

Discussion and planning for the third and final phase of the plan is the next step, which would involve a focus on deterring known offenders through social programs and increased investigative resources.

The plan has faced skepticism from the outset, including for its similarity to a crime-reduction plan developed for the Dallas Police Department, where Moore worked previously, and for focusing first on short-term solutions rather than prioritizing addressing root causes of violence.

The chair of the South End Neighborhood Council previously told The News Tribune that the statistics touted by the department don’t reflect residents’ experiences.

Staff writers Shea Johnson, Peter Talbot and The News Tribune archives contributed to this report.