In 2024, we raised the funds needed to purchase and install a brand-new public memorial in honor and remembrance of Seattle Police Department Officer Joselito “Lito” Alvarez Barber, killed in the line of duty on August 13, 2006.

Officer Barber’s memorial stone will be inscribed with the number 6897.

Officer Lito Barber was a Seattleite through and through. He was raised here, attending the St. Paul School and O’Dea High School, before eventually landing at the University of Washington.

He graduated from the UW in 2004, and less than two years later, on January 31, 2006, he graduated from the Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission’s Basic Law Enforcement Academy (BLEA). He was assigned to Seattle’s East Precinct, located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. He had served as a Seattle police officer for around six months when his patrol vehicle was broadsided by a sports utility vehicle traveling an estimated 80 miles-per-hour at 23rd Avenue S and E. Yesler Way.

According to those who knew him, Officer Barber loved his job as a police officer. His friends and family remember him as caring and “always smiling,” and his fellow officers remember him as conscientious and enthusiastic.

Officer Barber was taken from the Seattle community far too soon, and he is deeply missed by his friends, family, his brothers and sisters at the Seattle Police Department, and the Seattle community as a whole.

The Filipino Community of Seattle (FCS) will provide space for Officer Barber’s mourning badge memorial at the Filipino Community Center (FCC) in south Seattle. Owned and operated by FCS, FCC is a beautiful, publicly accessible facility with a deep connection to Officer Barber and his family, and we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect location.

Finding the right location for an officer’s permanent memorial can be a challenging endeavor, and we’re so grateful that this came together so smoothly.

We want to extend a very gracious thank you to FCS Executive Director Agnes Navarro and the entire FCS Board of Directors for their incredible partnership. We’d also like to thank Seattle Police Department Det. Kelly for her work at facilitating this wonderful outcome and to Gina Isreal for everything she did to pave the way.

The memorial will be installed in May of 2025.

Thanks to our generous community of supporters, the $16,000 needed to create and install a new, public memorial for Officer Alexandra “Lexi” Brenneman Harris (EOW June 13, 2021) was raised in 2023.

In September 2024, the Seattle Police Foundation was honored to host a ceremony to dedicate the newly installed memorial honoring fallen Seattle Police Officer Alexandra “Lexi” Brenneman Harris (EOW June 13, 2021). The ceremony took place on Thursday, September 26, 2024, and was officiated by Seattle Police Department Chaplain Charlie Scoma and the Seattle Police Honor Guard.

Speakers included interim Chief Sue Rahr, Assistant Chief Tom Mahaffey, and Rebecca Brenneman, Lexi’s mom. The Mounted Patrol Unit was in attendance, along with many of Lexi’s colleagues, friends, and family members.  

Detective Tim Oliverson played the bagpipes.  

The memorial is located along the South Ship Canal Trail southwest of the Fremont Bridge. It’s a meaningful location that was hand-selected for its 24-hour a day accessibility and its deep connection to Lexi. The memorial site is within walking distance of the Wallingford neighborhood, where Lexi grew up, and it’s inside the boundaries of the West Precinct service area, where she worked.  

Officer Lexi Harris had served with the Seattle Police Department for five years when she was struck and killed while rendering aid at the scene of a vehicle crash on I-5. Known as SPD’s very own Wonder Woman, Lexi was bicycle officer assigned to the Seattle Police Department Community Response Group Unit (CRG). The memorial’s prominent location along a busy Seattle walking, running, and biking path is a nod to Lexi’s distinct physicality.   

To be considered bike-trained, Seattle police officers must successfully pass a grueling 40-hour training course, innocuously titled “Bike School,” meant to push them past their limits.   

Lexi’s success at this challenging regimen speaks volumes of her grit, perseverance, physical fitness, and dedication to public safety. Law enforcement was a second career for Lexi, who worked in the fitness industry prior to becoming a police officer. In addition to her established excellence as a physical trainer, she was an accomplished martial artist, training in the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira and earning a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. 

Her discipline and training carried over into her job as a police officer flawlessly, and she leveraged her skill as a teacher to become a defensive tactics instructor for SPD.  

The location where her memorial rests offers a view of the Fremont Cut, a beautiful Seattle waterway that connects Lake Union to Salmon Bay. The treed, parklike space is peaceful and welcoming, and offers a bench perfectly positioned to watch as the city’s maritime adventurers cruise past. It’s a lovely little pocket of tranquility nestled within Seattle’s vibrant urban core and is a reflection of Lexi’s love of the outdoors.  

We want to thank Det. Britt Kelly for her work to locate and coordinate the perfect location for Lexi’s memorial, along with our generous donors for bringing meaningful projects like the Seattle Police Fallen Officer Memorial Project to life.  

Officer Lexi Harris is included on the Seattle Police Department Memorial Wall located in the main lobby at SPD Headquarters. Additionally, Officer Harris’s patrol bike is mounted on the wall inside the lobby at SPD’s West Precinct, where she worked.

May 15, 2023 marked the official launch of the Seattle Police Fallen Officer Memorial Project, which installs custom granite badges in honor of Seattle police officers who have died in the line of duty.

This project came to us in 2022 as a grant proposal from SPD Detective Britt (Sweeney) Kelly, who was in the car with Officer Tim Brenton when he was shot and killed in 2009. Kelly, still in field training at the time, was also shot in the ambush, but did not let the incident hinder her pursuit of a career in law enforcement.

Kelly was inspired to write the grant after she happened to pass by Brenton’s memorial, located at 29th Avenue and E Yesler Way, near where the two were shot. To her dismay, she found it in disarray, covered in weeds and not appropriately cared for. Spurred to action, she recruited those in her Unit to join her in cleaning up the memorial. This sparked the idea of having SPD’s post-Basic Law Enforcement Academy student officers help her clean and maintain the memorial. The manual act of maintenance dovetails neatly with conversations about line-of-duty deaths.

Her goal is not to frighten new officers but simply provide some insight into one of the realities of law enforcement. In her 15 years in law enforcement, she’s experienced three that struck close.

“It’s not, ‘will this happen to you?’ it’s, ‘how often?’” Kelly said.

She also began caring for Det. Antonio Terry’s memorial, which is located along an I-5 offramp and extremely challenging to access. Seeing an opportunity, her grant proposal requested the funding for a new memorial for Det. Terry, that would match Officer Brenton’s and be in a much more accessible location. She submitted her proposal in August of 2022, and Det. Terry’s new memorial was installed in the front lawn of SPD’s South Precinct on April 27, 2023.

Moving forward, these granite mourning badges will be installed once a year for each of SPD’s fallen officers, at locations that hold a connection to the fallen officer. The next memorial will honor the department’s most recent loss, Officer Alexandra “Lexi” Brenneman Harris (EOW 06-13-2021), and move backwards through time.

This project at its core exemplifies the often-uttered words; “we will never forget,” by giving the phrase a tangible and definitive form. More than anything else, she wanted to create beautiful, highly accessible spaces that anyone can visit, at any time of day or night, to grieve, mourn, remember, and give gratitude to the one fallen.

We want to thank Quiring Monuments for their incredible work on this project.

Each of the mourning badge memorials will mirror Officer Tim Brenton’s, which is located at 29th Avenue and East Yesler Way, where Brenton was shot and killed.

The memorial stone is a raised, 6-inch granite badge, that securely rests on top of a black granite foundation. To create the mourning band, the foundation was ordered polished, and then all but a narrow strip was sanded to grey.

The result is a beautiful glossy black band stretching across the stone. The badge is installed on top of this sturdy base, positioned so that the black band can be seen between the two halves of the badge. The lower half of the badge is inscribed with the fallen officer’s badge number.

Officer Alexandria “Lexi” Brenneman Harris EOW June 13, 2021: Location TBD

Detective Antonio Terry EOW June 4, 1994: SPD South Precinct 3001 S. Myrtle St., Seattle, 98108

Officer Tim Brenton EOW October 31, 2009: 29th Avenue and East Yesler Way, Seattle, 98122 *Note: Officer Brenton’s memorial was not an SPF project. This memorial was conceptualized by a neighborhood committee made up of Leschi Community Councilmembers and Leschi residents, and installed in 2010 by community volunteers. This was a community project that relied on both monetary and in-kind donations. We are so grateful for the Leschi community and their collective vision, which created Officer Brenton’s beautiful memorial. For more information on Brenton’s memorial, visit the Leschi Community Council webpage.