If people are taking the SPC's word as truth because they have priors that cops are truthful, that's an invalid prior based on how much general lying recent events have demonstrated cops do.
If people are taking SPC's word as truth because they have no priors, that's bias to authority and people should probably employ more skepticism.
Do we have any evidence that the Seattle police chief is generally truthful?
Chief Best has made multiple false statements of fact just this week, so, no.
> The Seattle Police Department walked back its claim, widely repeated in the news media, that denizens of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone are extorting businesses.
> "That has not happened affirmatively," Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best in a news conference Thursday afternoon, adding that the police department had based earlier claims on anecdotal reports, including in the news and on social media. "We haven't had any formal reports of this occurring."
> That contradicts earlier statements from the police.
My response, if you look, was to a post that posed the question:
> How, after all the events of the last two weeks, is anyone still willing to take a police-person’s word as truth?
That is not speaking of an individual, but of a group, and then asserting claims regarding all members of that group.
Of course technically that's a logical fallacy but in practice I don't think most people are used to questioning the truthfulness of official positions by the police.
In fact if we were to start questioning police truthfulness more, there'd be pretty big changes to how police testimony is treated in legal cases.