Mayor Wilson walks back opposition to surveillance cameras, Councilmember Lin wants to repeal stadium district housing law, state commission deals a blow to public defense, and more.
A state commission ruled that King County was not required to bargain with unionized staff for the county’s Department of Public Defense (DPD) before moving inmates from the King County jail in downtown Seattle to the South Correctional Entity (SCORE), a decision with potentially serious implications for caseloads and staffing levels at DPD and other public defense agencies.
A $29,011,000 settlement in the 2023 killing of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, who was struck in a crosswalk by a Seattle police officer driving 74 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone, maxed out the city’s insurance policy, which has a $10 million deductible and a maximum of $20 million. Rising insurance claims, including from settlements with SPD, are putting a strain on the city’s budget.
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In her first State of the City speech, Mayor Katie Wilson outlined a policy agenda that was still short on details—and punted on major issues, such as how she plans to add 1,000 new shelter beds this year and whether she will expand police surveillance cameras into more Seattle neighborhoods.
Our first guest on Seattle Nice this week was former Democratic state legislator-turned-Seattle Chamber leader Joe Nguyen, who told us he sees no contradiction between his past as an pro-tax progressive legislator and his present job as the head of the city’s anti-tax business lobby group.
Seattle City Councilmember Eddie Lin is introducing legislation to repeal a law that would have allowed apartments in the Stadium District just south of downtown, undoing a longstanding priority of housing developers and handing a significant win to the Port of Seattle and unions representing port workers.
In an exclusive interview, Mayor Katie Wilson elaborated on her plans for her first year, telling us how her position has changed on police cameras since taking office and how she plans to balance her campaign commitment to add 1,000 new shelter beds by the end of the year with a budget deficit and the need to build permanent housing.
1. The state Public Employee Relations Commission ruled earlier this month that King County was not required to bargain with unionized staff for the county’s Department of Public Defense (DPD) before moving inmates from the King County jail in downtown Seattle to the South Correctional Entity (SCORE), a jail in Des Moines owned by several cities in South King County.
The decision to move people to SCORE, which the county argued was necessary to alleviate understaffing at the downtown jail, was controversial. Unionized staffers for the county’s Department of Public Defense, which represents indigent clients, argued that the move limited defendants’ access to attorneys and created logistical hurdles that made it harder for DPD to provide the best possible defense.
SEIU 925, the union that represents DPD employees, filed a demand to bargain over the proposal to move inmates to SCORE, arguing that the agreement creates changes to their members’ working conditions and was a mandatory subject of bargaining. A hearing examiner ruled in the union’s favor; PERC’s decision overturns that ruling.
The county’s contract with SCORE ended in 2023. But the PERC decision, which the union is appealing, has potentially serious implications for issues that remain ongoing, including caseloads and staffing levels at DPD and other local public defense agencies around the state attorneys and non-attorney DPD staff such as investigators, paralegals, and legal assistants.
According to public defense union president Molly Gilbert, “there has never been a decision like” the examiner’s initial ruling, which “would have required the county, and any other public defense office in that state, to negotiate with the union over caseloads and staffing.” In practice, Gilbert said, this could force the county to hire more staff, including paralegals and investigators, to lower caseloads make it easier for attorneys to handle the cases they have.
Public defender caseloads are an ongoing issue in Washington state; last year, the state Supreme Court ruled that jurisdictions like King County must reduce caseload standards dramatically over the next 10 years. According to Gilbert, a favorable outcome for the union wouldn’t necessarily result in a directive to hire dramatically more attorneys—a scenario that could set King County up for a consequential McLeary-style funding mandate to “lock in” complex caseload standards.
Instead, Gilbert said, the union has been making “proposals that are far cheaper than the bar standards that we could live with” by “having more staff support, which is cheaper than hiring all these attorneys. But they refuse to bargain with us on that.
The union is appealing PERC’s decision.
2. As PubliCola reported, the city settled with the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old student killed in a crosswalk by a speeding Seattle police officer, earlier this month for a total of $29,011,000—$29 million plus $11,000, the amount a Seattle Police Officers Guild leader “joked” that the city would pay her family, given her “limited value.” The comment, made by officer Daniel Auderer to SPOG president Mike Solan and caught on Auderer’s body camera, caused international outrage and led to Auderer’s termination.
SPD officer Kevin Dave was driving 74 miles an hour down a 25-mile-per-hour street when he struck Kandula, who was in a crosswalk; he claimed he was racing to provide medical care to an overdose victim who turned out to be a a guy concerned he had used too much cocaine.
After we published, a number of people asked PubliCola what Dave’s reckless driving would cost the city—and who would pay. We asked the Office of City Finance, and learned from a spokesperson that although the city’s insurance will cover $20 million of the settlement. The city itself is liable for the first $10 million of “any covered loss,” including lawsuit settlements. That $10 million deductible also includes the cost to defend SPD against the lawsuit filed by Kandula’s family.
That $10 million will come out of the city’s Judgment and Claims fund, which is part of the city’s general fund.
According to OCF, $20 million is the “full amount of available insurance and the insurers’ policy limits.” The city, in other words, is on the hook for its deductible plus any settlement amount above $20 million.
As we’ve reported repeatedly, the city has had to increase the judgment and claims fund routinely for several years running, thanks in large part to growing settlements in lawsuits against SPD. In addition to this ever-increasing line item, large settlements raise the amount the city pays for insurance; as of 2023, when Kandula was killed, the city was paying just under $9 million a year for insurance, the OCF spokesperson said. In short: SPD does not pay directly for any of the lawsuits it loses or settles.
State legislation that would have made it a first-strike felony, rather than a misdemeanor, to pay another person for sex has been amended; under a version that passed narrowly out of committee, buying sex would be a gross misdemeanor and sex workers would get access to services in lieu of jail. Proponents of the original, harsher bill said the new version fails to crack down enough on the “demand” side of sex work, and suggested that lenient prostitution laws allowed traffickers to go unpunished.
The changes to the state law we covered Monday came partly in response to a lurid presentation by local prosecutors at a city council meeting, which included photos of identifiable, brutalized women and graphic details of assaults. Advocates for sex workers, also appalled by the presentation, issued a list of demands for the city, including a separate panel on non-carceral, humane approaches to abuse and trafficking and the inclusion of people with direct experience in policy discussions about sex work.
City Attorney Erika Evans and the ACLU of Washington announced that the ACLU is dropping its lawsuit against the city over a policy instituted by Evans’ Republican predecessor, Ann Davison, that disqualified Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi from hearing criminal cases for almost two years.
City hall veteran Ben Noble, who’s currently in his second stint as director of the city council’s policy-oriented central staff, is retiring in March after more than two decades at the city. His replacement, Lish Whitson, is another city old-timer who has worked on four comprehensive plan updates, including the upzone of Seattle’s former single-family enclaves last year.
The Seattle City Attorney’s Office settled for $29,011,000 with the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, the 23-year-old student who was struck and killed in a South Lake Union crosswalk by a Seattle Police Department officer traveling 74 miles an hour in 2023. The $11,000 is a pointed reference to a comment made by Daniel Auderer, then the vice president of the police union, that the city could just “write a check” for that amount because that’s all Kandula’s short life was worth.
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Funding for Seattle’s new social housing developer, which the City Council approved in a 7-0 vote yesterday, is coming in significantly higher than anticipated: In its first year, the developer will receive an estimated $115 million to acquire existing apartment buildings and develop new ones. The revenues mirror early returns from the JumpStart payroll tax, which is also a tax on large companies that pay high wages.
The city’s Office of the Inspector General released a report today finding that the Seattle Police Department’s actions during the anti-trans “Don’t Mess With Our Kids” rally, held by an extremist group called Mayday USA, showed a bias against counter-protesters who showed up to demonstrate against the right-wing event. After chatting amiably with security for the anti-trans group, officers began referring to protesters as “transtifa.”
On this week’s episode of the Seattle Nice podcast, David, Sandeep, and I interviewed new City Councilmember Dionne Foster. Our conversation touched on encampment removals, police surveillance cameras, the upcoming library levy, and the
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has rescinded a $3 million grant it gave the Low Income Housing Institute to build 60 new low-barrier tiny houses outside King County’s youth detention center, claiming LIHI delayed the process by failing to secure a site in time. The money, which LIHI secured in last year’s city of Seattle budget, will now go to the Salvation Army to convert 35 of its existing transitional housing units into shelter.
Police form a barricade at a right-wing rally at City Hall held shortly after the “Mayday USA” event.
Police didn’t engage with community before the anti-LGBTQ event, weren’t familiar with Capitol Hill and its history, and referred to protesters as “transtifa,” the report found.
By Erica C. Barnett
The city’s Office of the Inspector General released a report today finding that the Seattle Police Department’s actions during the anti-trans “Don’t Mess With Our Kids” rally, held by an extremist group called Mayday USA last May, showed a bias against counter-protesters who showed up to demonstrate against the right-wing event. The report also found that officers didn’t understand why it was a provocation to hold an anti-LGBTQ event in Cal Anderson Park, at the heart of Seattle’s historic LGBTQ neighborhood.
Instead, the report found, police assumed that the rally organizers represented no real threat, while assuming that “‘black bloc’ and ‘antifa’ are established, hierarchical organizations intent on inciting disorder and criminal activity,” which—despite President Trump’s decision to ID “Antifa” as a “terrorist organization”—they’re not. Former mayor Bruce Harrell bolstered these assumptions after the rally, claiming any violence was caused by “anarchists” who “infiltrated the counterdemonstration to incite violence,” the report notes.
This “anticipatory defensiveness” contributed to officers’ decisions to overreact to protesters while seeing the far-right group as a mere “church group” holding a prayer event.
At the same time, the report continues, police on the scene served as de facto security for the anti-trans religious group. Cops on the scene “frequently spoke with the MayDay USA security liaison, sharing MayDay USA intelligence with SPD leadership on-scene.”
“After hearing the MayDay USA security liaison refer to counterdemonstrators as ‘transtifa,’ POET officers adopted the term which spread to other SPD personnel,” the panel, which included six community members and six representatives from SPD, found.
During the event, police deployed pepper spray and other “less lethal” weapons against demonstrators, throwing many to the ground and arresting 23 people. Police used bike rack-style barricades to prevent protesters from entering the rally area and arrested people for pushing against or knocking over the barricades, which were connected together and placed on a hill, where they were prone to tipping over.
The report was the result of a police accountability process called a Sentinel Event Review that follows major incidents, such as police shootings and protest responses that lead to injuries and arrests. A panel that included representatives from the police department, an LGBTQ organization that organized counter-programming, and impacted community members along with OIG Director Lisa Judge held three lengthy meetingsto discuss their experiences in confidence.
However, the report notes that the process was cut short after one panelist leaked details about one of the confidential meetings, preventing the panel from holding its final meeting.
According to multiple sources, Gabriel Dias, a medic who was injured by police at the protest, told Divest SPD about an incident in which SPD arrested people for releasing some of the May Day group’s balloons into the air and trying to tamper with their bubble machine.
Immediately before those arrests, Lieutenant Matthew Didier was caught on body camera telling his team they were “going in with guns blazing” and were “here to fuck people up now.”
“After three successful panel sessions, one panelist violated the agreement not to disclose specific details of the panel discussions,” the report says. “The trust necessary to continue open deliberation was broken, so the SER was discontinued prior to a final meeting to develop consensus contributing factors and recommendations.”
The violation apparently upset SPD so much that one of the police participants suggested SPD would no longer participate in sentinel event reviews, which would effectively end this kind of review.
A spokesperson for SPD said the department plans to participate in future sentinel reviews.
“We take all the recommendations from the OIG seriously, including those from its Feb. 12 report about SPD’s role at the MayDay USA event in Cal Anderson Park,” the department said in a statement. “The Department has already implemented several changes recommended in this report. One example is rebuilding community legitimacy and trust through our dialogues at the Our City, Our Safety meetings being scheduled throughout the city.”
Dias denied leaking to Divest SPD. After their report came out, they were one of many people who quoted or played the video of Didier’s incendiary comments at City Council meetings.
Although SPD has a history of ignoring SER recommendations (the new report includes many recommendations that, it observes in footnotes, SPD agreed to in the past but failed to implement), the process is one of the only opportunities for people impacted by police actions to tell SPD directly how they were affected and how police could do a better job in the future.
In one instance, according to the report, a lieutenant “apologized for the statements made and acknowledged that, in hindsight, they would have used different language.” This appears to be a reference to Didier, who was on the panel.
“The panelist noted officers did not fully understand the cultural importance of the park and the rally and were unnecessarily focused on identifying ‘bad actors.’ The panelist stated the panel discussions improved their understanding of the impact of this Event on community and the importance of community perceptions and context for future crowd management operations.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report reveals a deep disconnect between SPD (whose officers typically live outside Seattle) and the communities those officers are supposed to serve. Instead of engaging with community groups, SPD looked on social media to gather intelligence on “antifa.” At the same time, police “did not seek additional intelligence about the MayDay USA group,” the extremist organization whose rally prompted counterprotests in the first place.
“[T]he strong visible presence of SPD was itself escalatory for counterdemonstrators, who felt targeted based on their identities and felt SPD was there to protect an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group in a park with historical significance for the LGBTQ+ community,” the report concludes. As an example, SPD was already coordinating with May Day organizers to press charges against counter-protesters even before the balloon incident, which culminated in arrests that violated SPD’s own crowd management policy.
“Crucial to the assessment of SPD crowd management operations for this Event is a broader understanding of the cultural context of the location and event,” the report found. “This context includes the historic over-policing of LGBTQ+ spaces, the history of Capitol Hill as a sanctuary neighborhood for LGBTQ+ communities in Seattle, as well as the current federal posture and climate of anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation.”
At the time of the protests, SPD had no LGBTQ liaison.
Three months after being sworn in as police chief, SPD Chief Shon Barnes promoted Mike Tietjen to head up Capitol Hill’s East Precinct, bypassing the acting commander, a gay lieutenant named Doug Raguso who had served in the precinct for years.
Tietjen became notorious for his actions during the CHOP protests against police violence in 2020, when he drove his SUV onto a sidewalk filled with people, laughing later about how they looked like “cockroaches” as they scattered. He received a temporary suspension and was moved to the North Precinct as punishment for that incident and several others, including the alleged harassment of a trans woman by police driving through the protest area. After PubliCola reported on Tietjen’s promotion, Barnes rescinded it and (eventually) appointed Captain Jim Britt to the position.
Barnes had previously come under fire for overseeing a dramatic crackdown on the historic LGBTQ+ nude beach at Denny Blaine Park, in which officers showed up prepared to arrest or trespass anyone who wasn’t wearing clothes.
As we reported earlier this year, Barnes’ chief of staff, Alex Ricketts, reportedly brushed off SPD’s general counsel when she advised Ricketts to Barnes to take the concerns of Seattle’s LGBTQ+ community seriously, telling her, “We’re not here for the gays.”
At a meeting of SPD’s LGBTQ Advisory Council earlier this week, Barnes reportedly blamed the Parks Department for permitting the May Day rally at Cal Anderson Park and not informing SPD about the rally until 10 days before the event. According to multiple people who were present, Barnes also claimed the Community Police Commission, an independent police accountability office at the city, had appointed people to the Sentinel Event Review panel, which a CPC staffer had to step in and correct.
In fact, according to CPC Director Eci Emeh, the CPC never got a chance to weigh in on the report or participate on the review panel, beyond forwarding the names of people who expressed an interest in serving on the panel to OIG. Contrary to reporting elsewhere, “we were not in the room,” Emeh said.
“I would have liked to see the CPC play a bigger role,” Emeh continued. “I would have liked to see the CPC be directly involved in the SER panel process—not necessarily the selection, but even being able to attend the SER panel and hear the exchanges that happened between community members and police officers.”
In an incident that sparked widespread outrage, police guild leader Daniel Auderer joked that the 23-year-old student was only worth $11,000.
By Andrew Engelson
The Seattle City Attorney’s Office reached a settlement last week with the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, who was struck and killed in a South Lake Union crosswalk in January 2023 by a Seattle Police Department officer traveling 74 miles an hour. In September 2024, the family brought a lawsuit against the City of Seattle and SPD officer Kevin Dave for $110 million, plus an additional $11,000.
The settlement, obtained by PubliCola on Thursday, is for $29 million plus $11,000.
The added figure is a reference to callous remarks made by SPD officer Daniel Auderer, vice chairman of the Seattle Police Officers Guild at the time, who had been called to the scene to investigate Dave for signs of intoxication. Caught on body cam video in conversation with police union leader Mike Solan, Auderer joked and laughed about Kandula’s death, saying, “Just write a check. $11,000. She was 26, anyway. She had limited value.”
“Jaahnavi Kandula’s death was heartbreaking, and the city hopes this financial settlement brings some sense of closure to the Kandula family,” city attorney Erika Evans said. “We also recognize that her loss has left unimaginable pain. Jaahnavi Kandula’s life mattered. It mattered to her family, to her friends, and to our community.”
In their claim, filed in King County Superior Court, attorneys wrote that Kandula “experienced terror, severe emotional distress, and severe pain and suffering before dying.”
Kandula, a 23-year-old engineering student from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, was crossing Dexter Avenue at Thomas Street when she was killed on the evening of January 23, 2023. The legal complaint was filed by Kandula’s mother and father, Vijaya Laksmi Gundapuneedi and Sreekanth Kandula, who both live in India.
Interim police chief Sue Rahr fired Auderer in July 2024. In response, he filed a $20 million tort claim against the city for “wrongful termination,” and added an addition five million dollars to the claim, which is currently in King County courts.
Rahr fired Dave in January 2025 after the Office of Police Accountability issued a report finding Dave failed to drive with “with due regard for the safety of all persons.” The report also noted that Dave had been involved in a separate “preventable collision” as an SPD officer, and—as PubliCola first reported—did not have a valid Washington driver’s license when he struck Kandula.
Before joining SPD, Dave was fired by the Tucson Police Department; SPD was aware of what one sergeant flagged as his “checkered history” in Tucson before SPD hired him in 2019.
Tucson fired Dave in 2013 after numerous investigations, including one involving a “preventable collision” for which he was suspended being fired.
In a troubling incident that occurred shortly after he was fired, an officer pulled him over for speeding and observed Dave acting erratically. According to a police report on that incident, the investigating officer filing suspected Dave was “possibly on some type of narcotic.”
Many of the details from PubliCola’s reporting were included in the Kandula family’s claim against officer Dave and the city. “He should have never been hired,” Vonda Sargent, an attorney for the family, told PubliCola shortly before the lawsuit was filed in 2024. “You can’t take just all comers. Everyone is not suited or fit to be a law enforcement officer.”
Sargent did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. PubliCola will update this post if we hear back.
In November, 2024, in response to community outrage over the collision, SPD released new policies on emergency driving which direct officers to “drive no faster than their skill and training allows and [what] is reasonably necessary to safely arrive at the scene.”
With the second phase of the city’s comprehensive plan well underway (and the next two planned), the city is starting to implement the zoning that makes the new comp plan, designed under former mayor Harrell, a reality. And there’s still time for Harrell’s urbanist replacement, Katie Wilson, to put a pro-housing stamp on the city’s main planning document.
The Seattle Police Department complied with a court ruling by giving people with more than one open public disclosure request an actual (if moveable) date when they plan to provide records for each request. Previously, SPD discouraged people from filing more than one records requests by placing every request but one in “inactive” status.
After okaying Mayor Wilson’s decision to hire Purpose Dignity Action director Lisa Daugaard as a temporary advisor on homelessness, the city’s ethics director reversed course, advising Daugaard that the hire represented a potential conflict of interest. As a result, Daugaard—an influential member of Wilson’s transition team—left her new position just 10 days into her planned six months at the mayor’s office.
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Police Chief Shon Barnes was out of town over the weekend, when a spate of shootings left three dead and three injured. SPD wouldn’t say where he was (we asked), but his family lives in Chicago and he visits them at home regularly on weekends while renting an apartment in Seattle.
In his latest Maybe Metropolis column, Josh Feit reports on a Washington state proposal that would make accessible housing more affordable by reforming elevator standards that too often result in no elevators in new buildings at all.
