Jim Pugel, the reform-minded interim Seattle Police Chief removed by Mayor Ed Murray in January, is retiring after 31 years with the Seattle Police Department.

The retirement, apparently encouraged, was announced on the SPD Blotter website by current Interim Chief Harry Bailey, who has lately been busy reversing disciplinary findings against SPD officers. Bailey is a former vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

“The Seattle Police Department would like to congratulate Assistant Chief Jim Pugel on his retirement,” Bailey wrote in an unctuous post. He hoped Pugel would continue to work in the field of harm reduction and “root for his Washington Huskies,” adding: “Congratulations, Chief, you’ve earned it.”

Pugel, 54, has not been treated well since his removal as interim chief. His command staff was replaced. Pugel was excluded from Bailey’s command staff. He was apparently given the option of retiring or facing demotion to captain. Two other assistant chiefs, Mike Sanford and Clark Kimerer, have retired since Bailey became interim chief.

The head of a U.S. Justice Department monitoring team, Merrick Bobb, praised Pugel in an otherwise critical report last fall on implementation of reforms at the SPD.

While giving Seattle police high marks for increased outreach to the community, Bobb’s team noted resistance to reform at levels under the chief. “It appears that a struggle wages on at the upper command level for control of policy related to the (Justice Department) Command Decree,” the report said.

The Seattle Police Officers Guild delivered a carefully timed endorsement to Murray in the middle of his campaign against incumbent Mayor Mike McGinn. The guild turned out in strength when Murray gave his vision-of-the-city speech at a Columbia City theater in early October.

After less than a week on the job, Murray replaced the 54-year-old Pugel with Bailey. Bailey, 69, had retired as assistant chief in 2007.

Pugel, a Seattle native, is leaving after a distinguished career. He headed the SPD’s investigations division at the time he was tapped by McGinn last April to replace retiring Chief John Diaz. He previously organized and led the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program, which gave non-violent drug dealers and users the option of going into treatment rather than prosecution.

Bailey has overturned the misconduct findings against seven SPD officers since taking over as interim chief.

The most notable case was that of SPD Officer John Marion. During an International District incident last summer, Marion threatened The Stranger news editor Dominic Holden that he would come up to the newspaper’s office and harass Holden. Holden, riding his bicycle home from work, had been photographing police officers surrounding a man.

Bailey reversed the slap-on-the-wrist punishment given Marion — a day at home without pay — but also removed the misconduct finding from the officer’s file.

The case embarrassed Murray, who stood by Bailey at a testy news conference and later praised the interim chief in a statement.

The treatment of Pugel by Murray and his administration has evoked an unhealthy law enforcement tradition, here and elsewhere. The price of reforming police departments is often to push out reformers and those who blew the whistle on problems in the first place.

In the early 1970s, a gambling tolerance policy scandal shook the SPD as well as the King County Sheriff’s Office and the King County Prosecutor’s Office. The policy involved widespread bribery of police officers and public officials.

The first person bounced by the new “reform” Chief George Tielsch was Assistant Chief Gene Corr. “Clean Gene” Corr had risked his career — and his life — by testifying to a grand jury about goings on in senior ranks of Seattle law enforcement.

Corr was removed for the sin of talking to investigators without first receiving official permission.

Mayor Murray is promising a new police chief by late spring.

In the meantime, the Seattle Police Officers Guild has reasserted its power, and discipline cases have been “settled” before the new leadership arrived.

Pugel was once a prospective applicant for the chief’s job. He is now free to “root for the Washington Huskies.”