When Mayor Ed Murray made Kathleen O’Toole Seattle’s police chief, probably no one was happier than one Harry C. Bailey. Bailey, as you’ll recall, is the former assistant chief who retired in 2007 only to get called back into action by Seattle’s previous two mayors. Mike McGinn hired Bailey as a consultant on community relations in 2012. Then, in January, after only a week in office, Murray made Bailey interim chief, replacing Jim Pugel and calling Bailey “widely respected in law-enforcement circles and among the many diverse communities that make up the city of Seattle.” The trouble was that for all Bailey’s many lauded qualities, handling the press apparently wasn’t one of them—which he put on full display in February while bumbling through what had to be one of the worst press conferences in recent memory. After a ridiculous chain of events that saw Bailey remove misconduct findings against SPD officer John Marrion only to have Ed Murray eventually reverse those reversals amid confusion and much embarrassment, Bailey met the press and tried to explain himself . . . which couldn’t have been a bigger train wreck. You know a press conference has gone wrong when a PIO has to step in at the end and try to salvage things. With O’Toole now officially in charge of the SPD, let’s let Bailey focus on enjoying his retirement for once.

Read all of our picks for People & Places, and explore the rest of this year’s edition of Best of Seattle.