Greg Russell, the former Amazon vice president who was named chief information officer of the Seattle Police Department six months ago, is leaving the role to join a Fortune 500 company, reports The Stranger.
Russell joined the Police Department in March, saying at the time that he wanted to have a bigger impact beyond shipping “brown boxes across the universe.”
“Is that useful to the world? I wanted the opportunity to give something back,” Russell said in a blog post at the time.
It’s not entirely clear why Russell — a native of Scotland who was awarded an $180,000 salary — left. An unnamed source tells The Stranger that the city “took away his workforce.”
Russell was charged with bringing technological innovation to the police department, including how to use body camera data and equipping officers with tablets. He was hired as part of a broader management shakeup by Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole.
At Amazon, Russell oversaw areas such as corporate applications, information technology and enterprise data warehousing. Prior to Amazon, he worked at Cisco and Flextronics.
