Controversial Seattle police union leader Mike Solan to step down

Mike Solan, the high-profile and divisive president of the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild, is no longer seeking reelection, he announced last week. His second term ends next month.

“It's been the honor of my career to be here in this position,” Solan said on his podcast on Dec. 31. “We've been able to deliver two contracts to the cops that still work here and for the future cops.”

Solan has been a Seattle police officer since 1999 and rose through the rank-and-file cop union’s leadership in the last 13 years, according to his LinkedIn.

In 2020, as vice president, Solan made the unusual move of taking on incumbent SPOG president Kevin Stuckey. With the slogan “It’s Time to Get Serious,” Solan said the union needed to push back harder on local and national scrutiny of police. He won by a 2-to-1 margin, with more than 500 out of 750 votes, and took office days before Covid lockdowns shut down the city.

Solan has made a number of controversial moves and statements — starting with shuttering the union newspaper “The Guardian” and replacing it with his podcast “Hold the Line with Mike Solan.” (“On the podcast, we hear the president’s opinion,” a former SPOG president said. “What forum does an officer have now to get their opinion out? There isn’t one.”)

After the January 6th, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Solan faced widespread criticism and calls to resign after he blamed Black Lives Matter activists, as well as “the far right.”

Bodycam footage surfaced in 2023 which apparently showed the union’s vice president calling Solan, and the two joking about Jahnaavi Kandula, a woman who was struck and killed by a speeding police cruiser.

In the international outrage that followed, Solan signed a statement with other union leaders saying, “Without context, this audio is horrifying and has no place in a civil society. It [sullies] the profession of law enforcement,” but that it didn’t capture Solan’s side of the conversation.

“Man, what a time we've had. I got elected about a month before the Floyd riots in 2020 and it has been a battle ever since,” Solan said on his podcast last Wednesday. “Lotta experiences, mostly positive, some really negative. Lotta attempts to cancel me, get me fired, cancel this union.”

Solan didn’t respond to calls from KUOW. He said the podcast would continue, although he didn’t clarify if he would remain the host.

The Seattle Police Department declined to comment on Solan’s announcement.