Seattle police plan to release internal messages from the night of the Sunday, July 26, Bite of Seattle mass shooting by the end of this week.

Interim Chief Andre Sayles said Monday, Sept. 7, that the mayor's office texts should not be viewed as the complete record of what happened, KOMO News reported.

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) release is expected to show what commanders knew, when they knew it and how decisions were made about public communication.

For residents in Queen Anne and surrounding neighborhoods near Seattle Center, the messages could answer why thousands of people left the festival that night with no official information for hours.

"My biggest thing is [I] want to make sure we have all the information," Sayles said. "I don't want it to be where we put out information and then there's three or four people's text messages missing."

The announcement follows Mayor Katie Wilson's decision to release her staff's text messages on Saturday, Sept. 5, over the Labor Day weekend. Wilson said the release was made "in the interest of transparency."

Those messages did not include texts from former Police Chief Shon Barnes, who resigned after the shooting and received a $700,000 settlement to not sue the city, according to the Seattle Times.

What the mayor's texts showed

The released messages revealed that Wilson's communications staff knew the number of victims, deaths and suspects in custody by 7:20 p.m. on July 26.

That was roughly 80 minutes after the shooting. The information was not shared publicly for hours.

By 8:30 p.m., then-mayoral spokesperson Jonah Spangenthal-Lee pressed police for an update. "It's been two hours since you guys posted anything? Even some tweets at this point," he wrote. Ten minutes later, he called the response "embarrassing" and a "massive disaster and hit to public trust" in an internal chat.

Public safety director Alison Holcomb discouraged a press conference in the messages, writing that it "doesn't do anyone any good." Holcomb later asked police to delay a planned 9:45 p.m. briefing until the mayor could arrive. The news conference did not begin until near 11 p.m.

AlertSeattle never activated

One of the sharpest questions remains why AlertSeattle, the city's opt-in emergency notification system, was never activated that night.

The messages show an emergency management staffer offered to send an AlertSeattle notification, but SPD declined.

The city's CARE program chief, Amy Barden, told Holcomb her office would "never have authority to issue it." The day after the shooting, Spangenthal-Lee wrote that the system was "everyone's job and no one's job."

Councilmember Bob Kettle, who chairs the City Council's Public Safety Committee, has made the AlertSeattle failure a central focus. Kettle arrived at Seattle Center around 7:15 p.m. the night of the shooting after receiving a call from Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt.

"It's not just the five-hour delay," Kettle said Monday, Sept. 7. "It is, are we executing properly? Are we operating properly? Is there a checklist? It's not just SPD, but is the mayor going through a checklist?"

In an Aug. 21 interview with KOMO News, Kettle put it more bluntly: "We can't rely on a wish strategy or hope strategy … This isn't rocket science, but we don't have a plan."

SPD creates new briefing rules

Sayles and Wilson announced new communication protocols on Sept. 2 that require SPD to hold a news briefing within one hour of a major incident, "when safe and feasible." Sayles also promoted Jennifer Sullivan to executive director of communications on Thursday, Sept. 3, in part to improve coordination between SPD and the mayor's office, according to the Seattle Times.

Wilson said Monday she is focused on the new protocols. "There's been write-ups of them, and we're really focused on moving forward," she told MyNorthwest.

Lisa Judge, who leads the city's Office of Inspector General, is conducting a separate independent review of the shooting response. That review is expected by mid-December.

Three people were killed in the July 26 shooting and four others were wounded, including a 2-year-old boy. No suspect has been charged with murder or manslaughter. A 15-year-old arrested at the scene was charged with first-degree assault and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. Prosecutors have moved to try the teenager as an adult.

Seattle government week ahead

Tuesday, Sept. 22 — Public Safety Committee hearing on Bite of Seattle shooting response. After-action reports from both SPD and Seattle Fire are expected. Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis and Detective Brian Pritchard are expected to attend. This is the council's first full debriefing on the shooting timeline, communications failures and key decisions made that night.