Good evening from the KUOW Newsroom. This is Seattle now. I'm back as your host tonight, Paige Browning. Here are today's top stories. It's Wednesday, June 26th.

A lot of court dramas going down in King County today. Jurors in the murder trial of an Auburn police officer got back to deliberating today after a judge paused everything over concerns about juror misconduct. Investigative reporter Ashley Haruko has more.

At least one juror was accused of discussing the case outside their designated

room and with an earshot of bystanders. King County Superior Court Judge Nicole Gaines-Felps

ultimately decided to allow the jury to finish deliberating. Yesterday, the jury said it had

reached the decision on one of the two charges against Officer Jeffrey Nelson, who is accused

of murder and assault in the shooting death of Jesse Saray in 2019.

Judge Phelps instructed the group to keep debating the second charge.

Ashley Hurrico, KUOW News.

When you call 911 these days in Seattle, your call's being treated a bit differently than in the past.

There's a small team of

behavioral health specialists ready to respond. And now Seattle is hiring more mental health experts

to respond to 911 calls. Mayor Bruce Harrell launched this program in the fall and Amy Smith oversees

it. Here's Smith. His vision was to set up and legislate a third public

safety department, three different departments of first responders. And again, to let the data

demonstrate that half of these calls could probably use a civilian response. The city is now adding

more than 20 people to this crisis response team. The goal is that this team's available to help its situations citywide by the end of this year.

Under the program, six behavioral health specialists so far are joining police officers at some downtown 911 calls.

Most of those situations involved people who were lost or evicted in distress or needed clothes or shoes.

Now to a different policing story. The Washington State Supreme Court is considering whether the names of four Seattle police officers are protected under public records laws.

Because these four police officers attended events in D.C. on January 6, 2021, the day of the capital insurrection.

The officers say they did nothing wrong and revealing their names would violate their privacy.

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