Category: public safety

Media, public safety, race

Top Fire Official Helped Concoct Hoax Against Department, Targeting “Woke” Policies Like Vaccine Mandate

 

The former deputy fire chief and another firefighter created a fake “proud Latino” from South Park. Messages also show department staff trading vaccine conspiracy theories, using homophobic slurs, and providing packaged, “paint by numbers” stories to right-wing media.

By Erica C. Barnett

A Seattle Fire Department deputy chief, Tom Walsh, and a longtime firefighter, identified in Signal messages as Paul Patterson, concocted a ruse to deceive fire chief Harold Scoggins into changing the language the department uses to describe staffing shortages in an attempt to prove the department was too “woke,” then shopped the story to right-wing media. KTTH commentator Jason Rantz picked up the story and ran with it last year.

The messages were obtained through a citizen records request and are available on Muckrock.

Walsh and Patterson were among many SFD personnel who were furious over the COVID vaccine mandate that went into effect in 2021. Signal messages between Walsh and a half-dozen other fire department employees show the men endorsing conspiracy theories, making racially insensitive comments (such as suggesting that Scoggins can never be fired because he’s Black), and using the f-slur for gay men.

The story Walsh and Patterson peddled to Rantz involved a fabricated South Park resident, “Armando Paredes de Castillo,” a “proud Latino currently living in the South Park neighborhood”  who was offended by the term “brownout,” which fire departments use to describe short-staffing. Both Patterson and Walsh are white.

Patterson and Walsh spent weeks working on a letter to Scoggins, which they also released to Rantz, expressing outrage about the term and calling it racist against Latinos; the goal was to get Scoggins to direct staffers to stop using the term, which would supposedly demonstrate that the department was too “woke” and focused on the wrong things. The Signal messages suggest that Patterson was the primary author of the “Armando” emails, with assistance and editing from Walsh.

Neither Walsh nor Patterson responded to questions sent earlier this week.

Patterson went by the handle “L11Tillerman” in Walsh’s Signal account but was identified by name in several exchanges, including one from Walsh that read “Paul Patterson: The Harriett Tubman of SFD.” (In a message to a city IT staffer, Walsh referred to himself as a “modern-day Harriett Tubman,” apparently referring to his “path back” into the department despite being unvaccinated. The deputy fire chief and the IT staffer also discussed Bitcoin, “one-way tickets to South America,” and places they might move now that living in the US was untenable.)

“Armando” began writing to Scoggins in the spring of 2022, complaining in April, for instance, that “brownout” was a “discriminatory term” that was offensive to Latinos like himself. In a conversation with Patterson about an email from “Armando” in May, Walsh joked that the email was making him “tingle in my bathroom parts.”

On June 13, Scoggins distributed a memo saying they would stop using the term after “Concerns were raised that the term ‘brown out’ has negative connotations for communities of color. This change has been made to reaffirm SFD’s commitment and mission to serve all communities with dignity and respect.” In an exchange with Patterson that day, Walsh wrote, “And Armando’s memo just came out,” to which Patterson responded with an image (or GIF) of dancing monkeys. “Exactly,” Walsh responded.

Rantz reported on the memo the following day, touting it as an “EXCLUSIVE.” In his post, Rantz called Scoggins’ response “a wholly contrived issue that the chief is using to signal his wokeness. It’s as if he was under pressure to show his commitment to ‘equity’ but couldn’t think of any that are woke enough, so he made up an issue for the pats on the back he’ll no doubt receive.”

Rantz remained in contact with “Armando.” In August, Rantz filed a followup based on more info he’d received from “Armando,” reporting that “internal emails obtained by the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH show how the department kowtowed to the increasingly aggressive demands of one random Seattleite.”

In November, Rantz returned to the story yet again, this time with an email exchange with Patterson. (In a message to Walsh in October, Patterson wrote, “Jason asked for an interview, I declined but said I would give him a [sic] that was quotable. Feel free to edit or give your input”).

Walsh and Patterson debated how to talk to Rantz over Signal, and ultimately decided to deliver him anonymous quotes over email; in his piece, Rantz wrote that “Armando” “said he is an internal Seattle Fire source that wishes to stay anonymous.”

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Despite being fine with quoting a source who was anonymous even to him, Rantz’ followup excoriated Scoggins for failing to “vet” Castillo to determine that he was who he said he was—a Latino resident of South Park. (The city does not track down and verify the identity of every person who writes to them, which would cause obvious privacy and workload issues.) Patterson forwarded the story to Walsh, writing, “He didn’t hit a home run, but…”

The following February, after a lengthy back-and-forth on Signal to fine-tune the wording, “Armando” sent a followup to Scoggins and Harrell mocking the fire chief for falling for their “brownout” hoax. The point of the prank, they wrote, was to bring attention to Scoggins’ efforts to “divide us on vaccination, religion and race.”

Besides the vaccine mandate and the “brownout” language change, the letter complained about Mayor Bruce Harrell’s reaction when a firefighter wrote the mayor to complain about the mayor’s pro-choice statement when Roe v. Wade was overturned, which the firefighter called “virtue signaling, politically motivated nonsense.” Harrell’s office sent the email to the fire department’s HR department, which told the firefighter he should only communicate with the mayor through his chain of command.

The letter began, “I am the troll that single handily played into your woke ideology and manipulated you into the BROWN OUT cancel culture BS!”

You have shifted the paradigm and culture within the Seattle Fire Department from being a tight nit inclusive family to a poorly run business that has been run with tyranny & bias!

I highlighted the gaping tear in the fabric of common sense by arbitrarily saying I found the term “BROWN OUT” offensive. We are living in ridiculous time where anyone can “identify” as whatever they want and then throw a flag that the rest of society has to bend and lean into their irrational behavior and insist we reinvent language to accommodate made up feelings.

The purpose of this dog and pony show was to bring attention to couple of things that you have done that have ripped a gaping hole in the fabric of the Seattle Fire Department!

It went on for another 2,500 words in this vein.

Rantz wasn’t the only local right-wing commentator who ran with a packaged story from Walsh and Patterson. In February 2023, the pair shopped around a letter from a group of firefighters who claimed Scoggins had engaged in “presumed criminal activity” during the 2020 protests by, among other things, loaning stretchers to volunteer medics in the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).

After failing to get traction with Rantz and considering both Brandi Kruse (a former FOX13 reporter who, according to Patterson, “owed [Walsh] one from the Chaz”) and local right-wing provocateur Katie Daviscourt, the two men decided to go with Post Millennial writer (and failed Seattle City Council candidate) Ari Hoffman.

In their texts, Walsh and Patterson described the story as a “paint by numbers” piece. In a separate email with another firefighter, Steve Collins, around the same time, Walsh wrote, “Hoffman’s not gonna have to do any work. I’ve done it for him.’

Hoffman ran with the story on March 15, posting it under the headline, “EXCLUSIVE: Seattle fire chief faces backlash after coordinating with BLM, Antifa rioters during CHAZ occupation.”

The Signal messages included in the records request include Signal messages from deputy fire chief Walsh from 2021 through 2023. Many of the conversations are about the vaccine mandate, and refer to right-wing conspiracy theories that have been thoroughly debunked.

In many of the texts, Walsh and other fire department employees complain that the department has been taken over by “woke” vaccine proponents. “These fucking people are ruining my beloved fire department,” Walsh wrote in November 2021. The following March, Walsh wrote that he had “zero fucks left to give”; two days later, he wrote, “The city was monstrously good in the way they prosecuted the mandate. Fuckers. Evil, but good,” then made a joke about Seattle restaurants requiring “a proof of Ukraine support card before they’ll serve you.”

Despite writing that he would likely lose his job over the mandate, Walsh remained in his position until June, when he retired after 27 years at SFD. As of last year, he was still complaining about the vaccine mandate, writing, “Cocksuckers. Every last one of them” in an exchange with Collins on September 7, 2023.

In a separate exchange with Walsh, Collins said he was being disciplined for calling someone a “f-g” on Facebook after the other person was “whooping up the mandate;” Collins complained that the person sent the exchange to HR. “Of COURSE he did,” Walsh wrote. “Seattle is such a ‘run and tell mom’ town.”

Walsh also speculated, in a conversation with a fire lieutenant, about whether someone was a “tranny” or a “chick.”

As of July 31, Patterson was still listed as an active firefighter in Seattle’s online wage database and in the city’s internal employee directory. Collins left the department in 2021 after refusing to get the vaccine, and we were unable to locate contact information for him; however, he was quoted in the Free Beacon, a right-wing website, in 2023, complaining that “woke tests are making it harder for the macho guys to get hired” at SFD.

The Seattle Fire Department responded to our questions with the following statement: “The Seattle Fire Department is unable to provide comment due to an ongoing investigation and pending litigation.”

City Council, public safety

Council Members Approve Fine for Street Racing, Claiming It Will “Deter” Racing, Save Lives
Charlie XCX would never.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council approved a bill this week that will impose fines on people who engage in or watch street racing, with fines that begin at $500 and range up to $1,500.

Supporters of the bill, originally sent to the council by City Attorney Ann Davison, vastly overstated its likely impact, suggesting that the “deterrent” threat of fines would not only prevent people from racing in the first place, but save lives that might otherwise be lost to gun violence. (A young man was recently shot and killed at a street racing event on Alki).

“Too many people are dying,” Councilmember Rob Saka said. Addressing a public commenter who raised concerns about the constitutional rights of spectators, who can now be ticketed and fined for being present at a street race, Saka noted that the city of Kent has long had a similar law, “and I think this bill … strikes the right balance between the competing demands of constitutional rights and the rights of people who want their community safe across the city.”

Bill sponsor Bob Kettle, who represents downtown, Queen Anne, and Magnolia, praised Saka’s amendment creating graduated fines, rather than the fine of $500 per incident Kettle originally proposed, “because checking in [with] the community, you know, $500 wasn’t enough to deter. … And we have to have that deterrence point. Otherwise, more people are going to lose their lives.” The legislation also received an emergency designation, meaning it will go into effect immediately.

Street racing is already illegal under state law, and has been for more than 100 years; reckless driving, which encompasses street racing, is illegal on both the state and local levels. Under these laws, people convicted of illegal racing can be fined up to $5,000, jailed for up to 364 days, and lose their license. Compared to these existing potential penalties, a fine of $500, or up to $1,500, is fairly minor.

Tanya Woo, who co-sponsored the bill, said there are already legal outlets for people who “feel the need to express themselves with speed,” like racetracks and official races, and suggested that people “leave these high risk maneuvers [like drifting and burnouts] to the professionals in a controlled environment.”

Councilmember Tammy Morales, who represents Southeast Seattle, said that what the city needs isn’t more criminalization of something that’s already illegal and subject to significant penalties, “but what we do need is safe places for young adults to go. We need better lighting on our streets. We need to design our streets to make it difficult for drivers to race on them, and that’s why we just approved a $1.5 billion transportation levy package to begin to address all of that other infrastructure that’s needed.”

Morales cast the lone vote against the bill.

City Council, Crime, Elections, public safety, Transportation

Transportation Levy Funds Leary Bypass of Burke-Gilman Trail; Council Escalates Street Racing Rhetoric (and Fines)

1. The Seattle City Council voted Tuesday to approve a $1.55 billion, eight-year transportation levy for the November ballot, and Mayor Bruce Harrell signed the legislation Wednesday.

In a reversal from its previous position, the council decided Tuesday to earmark $20 million to “complete” the long-disputed Burke-Gilman Trail by rerouting cyclists and pedestrians off the current route and onto new path next to busy Leary Way NW. Cycling advocates and industrial businesses have spent decades locked in a legal battle over the “missing link” of the trail along Shilshole Ave. NW, with business groups opposed to a straightforward link between two sections of the trail through Ballard.

By explicitly funding the Leary detour, Strauss said his amendment will finally settle that debate, “putting this 30-year problem to rest.” But the debate is likely to continue, even assuming voters approve the transportation levy and secure the $20 million for the Leary option. The proposed route, as we’ve reported previously, would require cyclists to cross 13 active intersections, the most of any alternative the city has studied, plus 33 driveways and loading docks—each presenting its own opportunities for collisions.

Three council members—Sara Nelson, Bob Kettle, and Maritza Rivera—voted against Strauss’ proposal, with Cathy Moore and Rob Saka reversing their previous “no” votes. Rivera said she supported completing the Missing Link, but that she didn’t support earmarking so much money for a specific option when there would be more opportunities to discuss the alternatives and finalize the details later; Nelson said she was concerned about stripping all but $6 million from an arterial maintenance fund that was supposed to help leverage millions of dollars in other investments.

Model T speedster photo via ModelTPix.com.

2. Also this week, the council’s public safety committee, chaired by Kettle, approved legislation that will allow police to issue tickets to anyone engaged in illegal street racing in Seattle.

The new ordinance (much like last year’s controversial drug law, which incorporated an existing state law into a local ordinance) imposes a fine of $500 for the first infraction and, thanks to an amendment added by Councilmember Rob Saka, escalating fines that top out at $1,500 per infraction. Another Saka amendment, modeled on a law in Kent, makes it a civil infraction for people to be “spectators” at street races.

“Many of these races are occurring because they’re putting on a sideshow. They’re putting on a show for people,” Saka said, adding that spectators can number in the “hundreds—hundreds!” The “key delta” between the Kent law and Seattle’s proposal, Saka added, is that Seattle’s only imposes a civil fine, while Kent’s allows criminal penalties.

“We can’t be afraid of taking risks and taking strong action to solve this problem that has plagued our city over and over again,” Saka said.

A council spokesperson said it “will ultimately be up to SPD” how to enforce the ban on watching street races, which could include issuing tickets on site or using footage from nearby surveillance cameras to track down and ticket people after the fact.

None of these measures are likely to end street racing, which has been illegal in Washington state since the age of the Model T. State law has banned street racing since at least 1915, suggesting it has been a perennial problem. The original law banning street races allowed officers to arrest drivers for “racing on the public highways,” except when local authorities set aside time for “speed trials or speed contests.”

City Council, Police, public safety

Council’s Public Safety Chair: “We Don’t Have the Luxury” of Being Picky About Police Test Scores

By Erica C. Barnett

City Council public safety committee chair Bob Kettle took some time at the beginning of this week’s committee meeting to address what he called misleading media reports about the city council’s efforts to replace the current police hiring test, provided by the National Testing Network, with a test used in smaller jurisdictions that has a 90 percent passing rate, provided by Public Safety Testing.

“One of the things in these articles, they keep speaking to the fact that the legislation that we recently passed was to replace the NTN [test] … with the Public Safety Test. That was never the case with our legislation. It was all about augmenting the NTN with the PST test,” Kettle said.

We can’t speak to anyone else’s coverage, but PubliCola accurately reported that Council President Sara Nelson originally broached the idea of replacing the NTN test with the PST test, then walked that plan back after the Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC) reminded her that the city council can’t dictate what test the independent commission uses.

The legislation Nelson introduced said the PSCSC “should seek to use” the PST test—defined, in the bill’s legalese, as the test “that is also used by law enforcement agencies operating in King County, and geographically contiguous counties, and that provides greater access to candidates who wish to make multiple applications with such local law enforcement agencies.”

The bill that eventually passed no longer mentions a specific test, saying only that the PSCSC should seek to use a test “that conforms to the extent possible to all City of Seattle policies that address recruiting, hiring, and retention.”

PSCSC director Andrea Scheele told PubliCola that it has never been “an option for the city of Seattle to use two exams. Other jurisdictions might do it, but the city of Seattle is the largest law enforcement agency, serving the greatest number of people, in the state—more than twice as many as the next largest city, which is Spokane.”

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Whatever exam the city uses, it has to comply with the federal consent decree and test for qualities Seattle has identified as priorities, including problem solving, empathy, and the ability to make decisions without racial bias. According to a PSCSC report released last week, that means PST would have to create a customized test for Seattle, and officer candidates would have to take that test; they couldn’t just “transfer” their application over from a different jurisdiction that uses a more generic PST test.

Additionally, PST’s test has not been “validated” to confirm that test results predict actual job performance—in other words, that people who score higher on the entrance exam perform better as cops than those with lower scores.

Kettle said he liked the idea of ranking applicants by their test scores and hiring only highly ranked applicants, but added that the city no longer has that luxury because the previous council drove down police applications. (Police hiring and recruitment declined nationwide after the murder of George Floyd sparked a racial reckoning and short-lived debate about the role of police in maintaining public safety.)

“That would be applicable if, for example, we were looking for two out of 10 qualified candidates,” Kettle said. “But the bottom line, sadly, and [this] just comes out of the actions of the previous council, is that we’re dealing with a situation where we need 10 of 10 qualified candidates.”

The qualifying test, Kettle continued, is “just the first step” in hiring and there are many more stages, including the time a new officer spends on “probation,” where SPD can filter out people who are unfit to be officers.

PST told the PSCSC that it “does not want to provide police testing services for the City of Seattle right now,” according to a report released last week.

Kettle noted that most Seattle police officers come from inside Washington state, “and that’s a problem, because PST is the most used [test] in Washington State. … This fact puts us at a disadvantage, a major disadvantage, when we’re trying to recruit against neighboring jurisdictions.”

Scheele called this comment “confusing. … Yes, most of our Seattle applicants are from in-state, and they seem to be applying just fine using NTN. It sort of proves the point that [the NTN test] is accessible to say that most of our hires are from within Washington, and it’s just a guess to say that we would get more applicants” by switching to a different test, she said.

During the same meeting, the committee discussed new legislation, initiated by the City Attorney’s Office, that will let the city impose a $500 fine on the registered owner of any vehicle an officer sees engaged in street racing, including vehicles in videos posted online (though not automated traffic cameras, which are governed by a state law that limits how they can be used). Kettle, who’s sponsoring the bill, said it would help address the “creation” and “reinforcing of this permissive environment” in Seattle.

As council members and police observed during the presentation, street racers often take off their license plates or trade them out to prevent cops from identifying them, so it’s unclear how many people will actually be subject to the new tickets. Also, people don’t always pay tickets for moving violations—for instance, Kevin Dave, the police officer who struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk while driving nearly three times the legal speed limit, has failed to pay the $5,000 negligent driving fine that was his only legal punishment for Kandula’s death.

Traffic calming measures like speed bumps and narrower streets can deter racing in specific hot spots, but so far, the council has not proposed addressing street racing with proposals to make it harder to break traffic laws.

City Council, Mayor Harrell, Police, public safety

Interim Police Chief Sue Rahr: “We Have a Lot of Work to Do.”
Photo by Andrew Engelson

By Andrew Engelson

PubliCola police accountability reporter Andrew Engelson sat down with interim police chief Sue Rahr for an interview on Friday, one week after she replaced former police chief Adrian Diaz. Mayor Bruce Harrell announced he was removing Diaz as chief amid allegations of gender and racial discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against Diaz and others at SPD.

The interview took place at SPD headquarters the day after a student was shot and killed in the parking lot of Garfield High School. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Andrew Engelson: Let’s talk about the Garfield High School shooting first. Violence among youth, particularly gun violence in the Central District and South Seattle, has become a longstanding, intractable issue. What do you plan to do to address this problem?

Sue Rahr: What I’m doing now is getting out and talking to as many people as I can to find out how the relationship became so acrimonious—the relationship between the police and the community. I know there are many areas of the city where there’s a very strong, cohesive relationship. But I am recognizing that we have a lot of work to do. In the area of Capitol Hill, the Central Area, there are a lot of opportunities to rebuild there. I’m going to start out with listening. The challenge will be to find the right people, and I will get multiple different perspectives. I don’t want to go to a single community leader or a single group and assume that they speak for the whole community. I want to talk to as many different people from as many different perspectives as I can.

I met with officers at the East Precinct yesterday. I went to their roll call to get their perspective on how they feel about doing their job and policing. And I’ll be honest with you, it kind of broke my heart to hear how much they feel that they’re not embraced by the community. And this is a community that needs support and needs partnership, because we clearly have some public safety issues going on. The officers were—I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t want to say hurt, that sounds a little bit melodramatic. But they want to work with the community and they feel like the community is rejecting them.

“The officers were—I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t want to say hurt, that sounds a little bit melodramatic. But they want to work with the community and they feel like the community is rejecting them.”

AE: There’s some understandable skepticism.

SR: I completely understand that. What we have to figure out is how do we try to heal that relationship? At this point, there’s no constructive reason for me to try and figure out who’s responsible for what. The relationship needs mending. I’ve got to make connections with the people that are in a position to help us heal. This horrible tragedy yesterday, it’s just so incredibly sad. I hope that maybe we can use that as a starting point to say: We owe this to our children. The police cannot do it alone. And the community can’t do it alone. We’ve got to do it together. So we’ve got to find a way to heal. I don’t have the answer yet. But I’m going to be asking a lot of questions and I’m sure we’ll get ideas from people.

AE: I’m hearing that there are also going to be increased patrols in that area.

SR: I want to be really clear about those increased patrols. We’re not talking about coming in gangbusters or that we’re going to start pulling people over and doing heavy enforcement. That is not the mission. The mission is: Be present, talk to people, be the visual example of security. We want people to see a patrol car and say: I’m glad the cops are here. I don’t think we’re there yet. But I believe we can get there. 

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AE: Officers at SPD have told me morale is about as low as it’s been since 2020. And some of that is that Diaz was not particularly well-liked among a lot of the rank and file. I’ve also heard there has been a culture of retaliation against people who’ve spoken up and tried to change things. If you’re not going to be making personnel changes, which I think you said at the press conference— 

SR: I said I’m not going to change staff at the top right now. If I need to make a staff change, I will make it. The mayor was very clear. He said you will have the ability to change staff as you need to. But I’ve been here a whole week.

AE:  But does that description sound accurate to you—that upper leaders have engaged in retaliation or misused Office of Police Accountability investigations, that sort of thing?

SR: I have heard people use the term “weaponizing” of OPA and things like that. I have not seen that among the upper command staff. I’m certainly not going to cover my ears, if I hear of it. I haven’t seen it. I have heard people say: It feels like there’s a target on my back. I also have been around long enough to know when an adverse personnel action happens, it’s a very common human response to assume that somebody’s retaliating against me. I haven’t seen evidence of that, but I haven’t had enough time to really dig into it. And I think it’s important to know that two things can be true. There can be a legitimate reason to move somebody [to another part of SPD]. And it’s possible that there can also be discrimination.

And to be honest with you, we’ve got public safety to deal with. And I feel like there’s been so much focus recently on personnel issues and acrimony. I am trying my best to get people to stop ruminating about that and focus on public safety. 

AE: In my reporting, and KUOW’s reporting, and in the 30/30 report, it seems there is a climate of misogyny and discrimination against women at SPD. What, in your short time here, can you do to address that and fix that?

SR: Because I’ve done work all around the country [and] I’ve worked in a couple of agencies, I can say it exists in every police agency that I’ve worked for. I’ve said it before: SPD is not unique. I am not going to pretend like it doesn’t exist, because we are part of a larger society and that exists in our entire society. So it would be ridiculous to think that it doesn’t exist inside of any organization, including the police department. I don’t know where the hot spots are.

There are multiple investigations going on, and lawsuits. Frankly, there are mechanisms to do those investigations and to manage those lawsuits. I am going to look at what I’ve got in front of me, and what can I influence right now. If I see any evidence of that type of thing I will absolutely respond to it. But right now my focus is that we’ve got summer starting, we’ve got a staffing crisis. We have got to get our focus back on public safety, delivering service, not focusing on personnel issues.

Continue reading “Interim Police Chief Sue Rahr: “We Have a Lot of Work to Do.”” →

Police, public safety

Seattle Police Knew Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Had “Checkered History,” But Hired Him Anyway
Seattle police officer Kevin Dave (SPD body camera footage)

By Andrew Engelson

According to internal emails PubliCola obtained through a records request, the Seattle Police Department knew while he was still an officer in training that Kevin Dave–the officer who killed 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula last year while driving 74 miles an hour–had a “checkered history” at the Tucson Police Department, which fired him in 2013.

That history included investigations into a “preventable collision” and a conduct violation that earned him a 10-hour suspension right before he was fired. In addition, emails between the Tucson Police Department and SPD show that Tucson police believed Dave was intoxicated when he abandoned his truck in an alley after driving away from police “at a high rate of speed”; during that incident, which occurred about eight months after Dave’s firing, the two responding officers reported that Dave was belligerent and blamed TPD for his inability to get a job at other police departments.

As PubliCola previously reported, SPD knew before hiring Dave that he had been fired by the Tucson police in 2013 for failing to meet the standards required of new recruits during his 18-month probationary period.

 

The SPD emails, from 2020, include messages between an employee of the Tucson Police Department and SPD sergeant Christopher Young, who inquired about Dave after he was spotted “apparently filming the SPD facilities at Park 90/5” (an SPD training center on Airport Way) in August 2020. Young, who was investigating the incident at the training facility, asked the Tuscon police about Dave’s record there.

A TPD employee replied that while he was an officer in Tuscon, Dave was the subject of six investigations. These included two investigations involving the use of a firearm; two collisions (including one the department deemed “preventable”); one for filing an incomplete or inaccurate police report; and one for violating of the department’s “general standards of expected conduct.” 

That final charge was the one that led to Dave’s suspension in November 2013, the same month he was fired. The emails show that Dave received counseling for two of the other incidents—the preventable collision and the incomplete or inaccurate police report—and that the firearm incidents were ruled “justified” and unfounded, respectively.

In an email thread, Young alerted Sergeant Detective Eric Chartrand to his concerns about Dave, and Chartrand alerted Lieutenant Grant Ballingham. Ballingham, in turn, sent an email to Lt. Jonathan Lucas with SPD’s Employment Services Department, raising alarms about Dave’s “checkered past”—specifically, an incident after Dave was fired in which the former officer was “likely driving drunk and was able to park his vehicle and walk away before the police could catch him in the act.”

“I am not sure if Mr. Dave is still being considered as a prospective employee, but I thought it prudent to pass this information along in case you or the Background Unit were not already aware of this,” Ballingham wrote.

Lucas responded that the department had already hired Dave and that SPD’s “hiring process included a thorough background check to include all past employment history.” Continue reading “Seattle Police Knew Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Had “Checkered History,” But Hired Him Anyway” →