By Andrew Engelson

Seattle Police Department officers frequently drive at excessive and dangerous speeds, PubliCola has learned using GPS data obtained through a records requet. Sometimes, they’re responding to emergency calls. Other times, they speed for no apparent reason at all.

The data covers a one-month period between January 1 and January 31, 2023 and tracks all instances of SPD vehicles exceeding 70 mph during January 2023–the same month SPD officer Kevin Dave struck and killed 23-year old Jaahnavi Kandula while driving 74 miles an hour on a 25 mph street in South Lake Union..  

SPD tracks Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) information from all its patrol vehicles – GPS-generated data that includes location, speed, and elevation.  We compared this data to 911 call logs, and created five Google maps representing each week in January 2023 to help reconstruct what, if any, call to service an officer driving at high speeds might have been responding to. (For reference: January 1-7, January 7-13, January 14- 20, January 21-27, and January 28-31.)

Martina Morris, a retired professor of sociology and statistics at the University of Washington and a community advocate who volunteers with the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, helped us analyze the data.

In a city that is failing to meet its Vision Zero goal of no traffic fatalities – according to the Seattle Department of Transportation, there have been 228 fatal crashes and 1,688 serious injuries in Seattle since 2015, with most of the fatalities involving pedestrians.“Yes, it’s important for police to be able to respond quickly to high priority calls, when there is an imminent threat to life or safety,” Morris said. “That doesn’t mean there is justification to drive recklessly.” 

The data shows that SPD officers regularly drive at speeds higher than 80 mph and sometimes even over 90 mph, on streets with speed limits between 25 and 30 mph. Officers consistently drive well over 70 mph on perennially dangerous streets such as Aurora Ave. (which accounts for 20% of Seattle’s traffic fatalities) and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S, where the SPD dataset showed at least 270 instances of speeds exceeding 70 mph. According to the Transport Research Laboratory, the pedestrian fatality rate for a collision at more than 70 mph is close to 100 percent.

In one striking example, Daniel Auderer—the Seattle Police Officers Guild official later caught on video laughing with SPOG president Mike Solan over Kandula’s death—consistently drove more than 90 miles an hour, often topping 100 mph, on his way to assess whether Dave was driving impaired the night he struck and killed Kandula. Auderer was driving on I-5 from his home in Thurston County to SPD’s West Precinct.

PubliCola compared the dataset with the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) investigation into Auderer. Both mention that Auderer was assigned a unit ID of Adam 49 the night he was dispatched to assess Officer Dave, and the AVL data closely matches what is described in the report.  

Kandula’s family has filed a lawsuit against the city for $110 million plus $11,000—the amount Auderer said her life was “worth.” Interim police chief Sue Rahr fired him in July and he filed a $20 million claim against the city for wrongful termination. Dave remains employed by SPD.

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The OPA report notes that Auderer left his home for Seattle with the unit ID “Adam-49” and that, according to  dispatch logs, he was dispatched to the call at 9:40 pm and arrived at 10:44 pm. This tracks with the AVL data, which lists the same unit ID for the high-speed trip between Olympia and Seattle on I-5 the evening of January 23. 

The Thurston County recorder’s office lists Daniel A. Auderer as the owner of a house in Olympia. 

If that trip to and from Olympia was Auderer’s vehicle, as it seems to be, he frequently went well over the speed limit on I-5 back and forth between Olympia and Seattle during the month of January 2023, exceeding 80 miles an hour on at least six occasions that month. The speeding incidents were at various times of day and did not appear to be in response to any active emergency calls. 

The fact that this was the same officer who joked about Kandula’s death is significant, Morris said. “It basically suggests a culture where the collateral damage of speeding is routinely just thought of as something you can pay off with a check.”

Morris also found that Auderer was among ten officers who most frequently drove at high speeds in January 2023. 

SPD did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Auderer’s history of speeding.

In addition to Auderer, we found it’s common for officers to drive at high speeds when they aren’t on emergency calls.

On January 25, an SPD vehicle drove southbound on I-5 in Tukwila and on state route 167 south to Auburn, moving consistently at speeds around 85 mph, and at one point hitting 98 mph. From 911 call logs, it does not appear that this officer was responding to an active call.

Another SPD vehicle, traveling on I-90 toward Seattle from east of Snoqualmie Pass on January 20, drove consistently at speeds well over 90 mph on westbound 1-90 toward Seattle, hitting a top speed of 105 mph east of North Bend. From analysis of 911 call logs, it did not appear the vehicle was responding to an active call. 

Joel Merkel, co-chair of the Community Police Commission, was disturbed to hear that SPD officers appear to routinely drive at high speeds when not on calls. “If an officer is not on duty, but they’re driving their vehicle in a way that’s outside normal traffic patterns, I don’t know what emergency they’re responding to,” Merkel said. “Showing up to work is not an emergency.”

Morris notes that drivers on the road can see these officers speeding for no reason, often without lights and sirens. “What does that say to the community?” she said. “It says the laws don’t apply to police. They can speed if they want to, and it suggests a culture where the potential dangers of speeding are simply not part of the calculation.”

The data also includes scores of examples of SPD officers responding to calls at extremely high speeds on streets with speed limits of 30 mph or less.

For example, at around midnight on January 20, 2023 – three days before Dave struck Kandula on Dexter Ave.—another SPD vehicle, likely responding to a burglary, drove north on Dexter Ave at speeds between 70 and 83 mph, and on Nickerson St., well over 80 mph. Both streets have speed limits of 25 mph.

In another instance, near midnight on January 10, 2023, an SPD vehicle, probably responding to an assault, drove west on Northgate Way and Holman Road NW at speeds between 74 and 90 mph, triple the speed limit.

To be sure, many of SPD’s high speed trips take place on major highways like I-5. More disturbing are the high speeds SPD officers routinely attain on smaller streets with frequent pedestrian crossings. In the early morning of New Year’s Day 2023, for example, an SPD patrol vehicle, which call logs indicate was probably responding to a burglary, headed south on MLK at speeds ranging from 74 mph to 93 mph, nearly four times the speed limit.

It’s extremely common for police to drive at high speeds on two major streets in the south end—Rainier Ave. S and MLK Way S. For instance, on January 27, 2023 at 6:08 am, an SPD patrol car, likely responding to a carjacking on 33rd Ave. S, traveled south on MLK at speeds between 70 and 80 mph, then accelerated and hit a speed of nearly 95 mph at the intersection of MLK Way and S. Holden St.

Activists have long highlighted the dangers of Rainier and MLK – SDOT found that more than half of Seattle’s fatal and serious injury crashes occur in Seattle’s South End, and WSDOT data indicate there were 18 fatal or serious crashes on Rainier and 10 on MLK in 2023, making them two of the city’s most lethal streets.

Though SPD officers tend to speed more often in late evening and early morning hours, there are abundant examples of excessively fast driving in the middle of the day. At 4:40 pm on January 26, 2023, for example, an SPD vehicle responding to a call sped down Highland Park Way SW and West Marginal Way at speeds between 75 and 105 mph. On this call, the SPD patrol car blazed past the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center, where a crosswalk is often used by visitors to access the tribe’s cultural site on the Duwamish River.

Morris’s analysis of the data shows that surface streets with the highest instances of SPD vehicles attaining over 70 mph were: MLK Way S., Fourth Ave S., 15th Ave W., Rainier Ave S., Airport Way S, Elliott Ave W., and Holman Rd NW.

Oddly, officer Dave’s speeding, which resulted in Kandula’s death, is not included in the data for January 2023. An SPD spokesperson declined to answer questions about why that data was missing from the dataset.

Because AVL relies on GPS data, it’s not perfect, especially in downtown, where large buildings can interfere with accuracy. PubliCola excluded most AVL data recorded in the downtown core because of this tendency for inaccuracy. In addition, small glitches sometimes show up in the data as isolated points, including one showing an SPD vehicle traveling at 250 mph, which is physically impossible. 

SPD uses AVL data for real-time tracking of its patrol vehicles, and this data is collected and integrated into SPD’s computer aided dispatch software, which is provided by a company called Versaterm. Versaterm did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

According to an SPD employee who is familiar with the AVL system, the GPS data is recorded and transmitted about once every 10 seconds for patrol vehicles that aren’t on active calls, and about once every second when a vehicle is responding to an active call for service. 

In response to a series of questions about SPD officers driving at high speeds, SPD chief operating officer Brian Maxey told PubliCola, “The GPS accuracy, especially in an urban environment, is unfortunately lacking and therefore we do not rely on this data. As [an] example, the top ten units in your data request show speeds in excess of 120 mph with some topping 250 mph, which far exceeds the capabilities of our patrol vehicles.”

PubliCola did not include these outliers in our analysis. Both the Office of Police Accountability and SPD’s Traffic Collision Investigation Squad (TCIS) sometimes use SPD’s GPS data in their investigations, according to an OPA spokesperson.

In the wake of Kandula’s death, former police chief Adrian Diaz promised revisions to SPD’s Emergency Vehicle Operations policies, which are vague and leave discretion up to individual officers. In early September, Maxey told PubliCola, “SPD has redrafted its Emergency Vehicle Operations policy, which should be finalized and on our public website in the next few weeks. This policy was developed in collaboration with the Office of the Inspector General, the Office of Police Accountability, and the Community Police Commission.”

There do not appear to be any changes yet to the policy. CPC commissioner Merkel said he hasn’t heard from SPD about any proposed changes. We’ll update this article if SPD responds to our questions about this policy.

Merkel said the CPC has let SPD know it wants clear guidelines outlining when officers can drive outside traffic regulations and speed limits.  “What the community is asking for are specific speed limits on emergency vehicle responses that are predicated on or connected to at least two factors. One is the density of the urban setting and the presence of pedestrians and two, the seriousness level of the call.”

Maxey said SPD does not take the risks of speeding lightly.  “Both before and after [the Kandula] tragedy, SPD policy and training has focused on the preservation of life, driving with due regard for the safety of all persons, and modifying driving based on the totality of the circumstances including environmental factors, population density, and driver ability,” he said.

Morris said that in addition to clearer guidance to officers about when it’s appropriate to break traffic laws, she’d like to see SPD do more to make speeding data public, “especially if there are any accidents or injuries that occur as a result.”