FRONTLINEPRIVACY
Family targeting

Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best — protesters at her home, neighbors' addresses leaked, kids questioned about their schools (Snohomish County, 2020)

2020-08-01·Snohomish County, Washington

On August 1, 2020, roughly 200 protesters in 40 vehicles arrived at the Snohomish County home of Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Best was not home. Neighbors reported that their personal information had been published online ahead of the protest, that protesters photographed homes and license plates, and that protesters approached neighborhood children and asked them what schools they attended.

What happened

On the evening of August 1, 2020, roughly 200 protesters arrived in approximately 40 vehicles at a residential street in unincorporated Snohomish County, Washington. The destination was the home of Carmen Best, then Chief of the Seattle Police Department. Best was not home at the time. Local reporting documented that the protesters photographed homes on the street, recorded license plates, and approached children in the neighborhood and asked them what schools they attended. Several of Best's neighbors reported that their own personal information — names tied to home addresses — had been published online ahead of the gathering. Best wrote a letter to the Seattle City Council on August 3, 2020, asking the council to publicly denounce the targeting of public officials at their homes. She announced her retirement from the department on August 11, 2020 and left office on September 2, 2020. The Snohomish County mayor's office condemned what it called the doxxing of officials and law enforcement during the same period.

What happened

On the evening of August 1, 2020, roughly 200 protesters in approximately 40 vehicles converged on a residential street in unincorporated Snohomish County, Washington. The destination was the home of Carmen Best, then Chief of the Seattle Police Department.

Best was not home at the time. Her neighbors were. According to local reporting, protesters photographed houses on the street, recorded license plates, and approached children in the neighborhood with questions about which schools they attended. Several neighbors said their own personal information — names tied to their home addresses — had been published online ahead of the gathering.

How it started

The address-finding step did not require investigation. A sworn officer's home address is one of the most readily aggregated pieces of information in the people-search broker market. Once the chief's address was identified, the surrounding addresses on the street are one hop away on the same broker page, the next-door page, the property-records page, or any number of adjacent commercial sources.

Best wrote a letter to the Seattle City Council on August 3, 2020 calling for the council to publicly denounce the practice of targeting public officials at their homes. She announced her retirement on August 11, 2020 and left office on September 2.

What this means for you

For sworn officers and other first responders: the family-targeting threat shape doesn't always start with a swatting call or a stalking case. Sometimes it starts with a residential street full of strangers with cameras and a list of names. The address-by-name lookup that aimed the gathering is the same lookup that runs through the broker market every day.

The address-confidentiality program in Washington and broker-removal statutes in other states (e.g., New Jersey's Daniel's Law — the original, which lets covered officers sue data brokers for failing to remove their home address) give covered persons the legal grounds to demand removal. Cleaning up the dozens of broker pages that resell the address — and re-running the demand when the address comes back — is what turns the demand into a result.

The neighbors didn't ask to be in this. The upstream protection is removing the data that makes the whole picture possible to assemble in the first place.

For more on family-targeting and what to do if your address has been published, see /doxxing and /laws/daniels-law.

Editorial rules: Only public, already-reported incidents. Never name a non-public victim. Always end with the prevention takeaway tied to our service. Cite at minimum one public source per claim.

What would have prevented this

The chief's address was reachable through standard broker channels. Neighbors' addresses sat one search hop away. Continuous broker removal is the upstream step that makes that aggregation harder.

Run a free scan. No signup.

Public sources