Category: public safety

Guest Contributor, Historic Preservation, neighborhoods, public safety

Guest Editorial: Stop Treating the Chinatown/International District as a Talking Point

By Asian Pacific Americans for Civic Engagement (APACE) PAC

The Chinatown/International District is hurting. The recent vandalism of the Wing Luke Museum showed that anti-Asian hate is alive and well. The cancellation of the CID Night Market was a blow to our small businesses, still struggling after the pandemic.

Yet many in the media and positions of power (or seeking power) have been using the CID—which spans Chinatown, Filipino Town, Japantown, and Little Saigon— to advance their personal agendas and platforms while conveniently forgetting to advocate for resources and care the neighborhood so desperately needs.

To those who wish to effectively lead or to media personalities who want to cover the challenges our home is experiencing, we call on you to do better by embracing the difficult work and truly advocate with us: not press conferences, not media stunts, not using the neighborhood as a wedge issue.

To many, the neglect of the neighborhood or its use as a talking point to justify systems that often oppress and marginalize poor, non-white, or limited English proficient people might seem like a new dynamic, but the history of the CID shows otherwise.

Our beloved neighborhood, a cultural home to many, has also been a home for other groups, including Seattle’s Black community and tribal communities. Throughout the neighborhood’s history of being one of the few areas where non-white communities could reside, it has been serially overlooked, under-resourced, and neglected. At the same time, the CID has routinely been treated as a “convenient site for services” that would never land in a wealthy, white neighborhood.

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Decades and generations of failed pro-carceral, pro-police state, pro-NIMBY political ideology—working to protect wealthy (and white) neighborhoods from disruptions to “neighborhood character”—have worked to produce safety and economic opportunity that centers some and fails many others—especially neighborhoods like the CID, because of who lives there or calls it home. Ignore the non-stop local media and conservative politician talking points about “public safety.” The CID is much more than what these individuals and institutions would want you to believe to support their agenda.

Our predecessors were resilient in the face of intense legal and de facto discrimination, as well violence from the state and from xenophobic homesteaders, and it shows in the richness of the neighborhood.

It is home for many of us across the broad Asian and Asian-American diaspora, who have memories of walking up and down Jackson Street or King Street or Weller Street with our family and friends, eating the foods that evoke powerful, cherished memories.

It is where we can hear our home languages, where our elders and younger generations have found community despite being unwelcome, treated as perpetual foreigners, and targeted with violence.

We’ve had enough of leaders using the CID when it’s convenient—to prove their community credentials, as a sad story to be gawked at, or when it serves a political agenda.

In July, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the CID one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, citing the history of displacement and gentrification in the neighborhood. Across the country, other Chinatowns have disappeared or are disappearing. To prevent that from happening here in Seattle we must put progressive, community-centric values into policy and program interventions that start upstream. It is essential to pair that long-term work with an immediate urgency to stand up and increase the availability of services that truly meet the needs of the neighborhood.

To meet the public safety needs in a way that can genuinely move the needle, we cannot and must not replicate the pro-carceral positions of the past (and current day). Insisting that “more police is the answer” has not been effective at reducing harm or safely de-escalating people in crisis safely. Policies of the past merely shifted the visibility of people in crisis while ignoring the causes of abject poverty in our communities or ignoring people suffering from substance use disorder or mental illness. Community trust in policing is critical to public safety, and in light of recent headlines, this trust is delicate at best.

One example of what collaboration can look like? After the 2021 Atlanta Spa shooting that targeted Asian women and businesses caused a national wave of concern and anxiety of being further targeted for violence by AANHPI communities, Seattle City Hall directed resources to enhance public safety via community-led resiliency and safety initiatives in partnership with the CID. This shows a different way is possible.

We’ve had enough of leaders using the CID when it’s convenient—to prove their community credentials, as a sad story to be gawked at, or when it serves a political agenda. It’s time for leaders to commit to working with nonprofits and community members supporting the neighborhood to address systemic inequities, co-design strategies and solutions, and move the neighborhood to long-term vibrancy and prosperity. This is love for the CID in action.

Mayor Harrell, Police, public safety

As Questions Swirl About SPD Accountability, City Announces “Dual-Dispatch Pilot” for Low-Priority Calls

By Erica C. Barnett

On Thursday, during a press conference outlining his proposal to expand, reorganize, and rename the city department that responds to 911 calls, Mayor Bruce Harrell said he believed “the process is working” in the case of Daniel Auderer, a police officer and Seattle Police Officers Guild vice president who was caught on body-worn video mocking the death of 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula with SPOG president Mike Solan. The video, which only captured Auderer’s side of the conversation, was recorded shortly after Officer Kevin Dave struck and killed Kandula on January 23.

Harrell was announcing $6 million in new funds for the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) department, formerly known as the Community Safety and Communications Center; that money will help hire 13 new staff, including behavioral health specialists, to respond alongside police to low-priority calls.

The question about Auderer came from a trainee at the 911 call center in SPD’s West Precinct where the announcement took place.

“Sometimes justice is not quick, due process sometimes is not quick, certainly not as quick as people would like to see,” Harrell said. “But everyone accused of misconducth as the right to due process and I will defend that process. We can’t be quick to judgment. … I have a member of my administration who was sentenced to prison for over 20 years without the possibility of parole. He was unfairly convicted because of the lack of due process. So I will defend due process … and hopefully we’ll see outcomes that people will say, ‘the system worked’.”

As PubliCola reported last week, an SPD employee saw the disturbing video and reported it to supervisors on August 2. Six days later, Auderer sent a letter to the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) attempting to minimize his and Solan’s comments, saying the two SPOG leaders were laughing at “the ridiculousness of how I have watched these incidents play out as two parties”—in this case, Kandula, who was killed by a speeding police officer just hours earlier, and SPD’s own lawyers—”bargain over a tragedy.”

Earlier this week, the Community Police Commission, a civilian oversight body, wrote a letter calling on Police Chief Adrian Diaz to immediately suspend police officer Daniel Auderer without pay while the investigation is ongoing.

SPOG released Auderer’s August 9 letter to a conservative radio commentator the day before PubliCola and the Times received the video in response to records requests, and posted, on social media on September 15.

Earlier this week, the Community Police Commission, a civilian oversight body, wrote a letter calling on Police Chief Adrian Diaz to immediately suspend Auderer without pay while the investigation is ongoing. The CPC also asked Diaz to “immediately engage in a workgroup consisting of the Seattle Police Accountability Partners and members of the community to address repeated concerns with the culture of policing and police practices at SPD.” The other accountability “partners” are OPA and the Office of Inspector General, an independent office that reviews and audits SPD as well as OPA.

Mayor Bruce Harrell and 911 dispatcher Jordan Wallace discuss a Priority 3 call about someone selling stolen merchandise in the International District Thursday.

Auderer’s statements, the three CPC co-chairs wrote, “are horrifying and raise serious concerns about his attitude toward and interactions with members of the community, and his ability to investigate cases equitably, accurately, and without bias and keep the City’s residents safe. While the [body-worn video] does not capture SPOG President Mike Solan’s comments on the other end of the call, there is simply no context that could possibly make these comments acceptable.”

As of Friday, CPC co-chair Joel Merkel said SPD had not responded to the letter; a spokesperson for SPD said they had no comment beyond the statement they released on their website shortly after we published the video last week.

The city has been promising to send civilian first responders to calls that don’t require a police response since 2020, when thousands protested police misconduct after the death of George Floyd. In 2021, then-mayor Jenny Durkan announced the launch of a new crisis response team within the fire department to respond to some crisis calls, but the proposal never got off the ground.

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Harrell, similarly, has vowed since taking office in 2022 to create a new “third public safety department,” in addition to police and fire, that would include a new type of civilian first responder. This week’s announcement does include new civilian responders. But they won’t be going out to most calls involving people in crisis.

Instead, they’ll be deployed, along with police, to two call types that police have already determined do not necessarily require a police response. Priority 4 calls, the lowest priority, are non-emergency calls that generally don’t require a police response at all. Priority 3 calls are for minor issues that may or may not get a police response, depending on officer availability—everything from noisy neighbors to off-leash dogs to illegal parking.

Priority 3 calls do include “person down” calls, where someone is unconscious in public, and welfare checks—two call types that might benefit from a behavioral health response, Diaz noted. “Sometimes, a highly intoxicated [person] might actually be … experiencing some level of crisis. Not always, but in some cases,” Diaz said.

However, the majority of Priority 3 calls, Diaz said, are so-called “paper calls”—calls where the incident already happened and the only thing left to do is file a report. Harrell characterized the new program as a “dual dispatch pilot” that the city will evaluate in a year or two “to see where it makes sense… [and] where the data leads us.”

SPD, Diaz noted, already has an internal crisis response team; more than 60 percent of officers have also taken a 40-hour course in crisis intervention training.

Police, public safety

“Write a Check for $11,000. She Was 26, She Had Limited Value.” SPD Officer Jokes with Police Union Leader About Killing of Pedestrian by Fellow Cop

By Erica C. Barnett

In a conversation with Mike Solan, the head of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, Seattle Police Department officer and SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer minimized the killing of 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula by police officer Kevin Dave and joked that she had “limited value” as a “regular person” who was only 26 years old.

In the video, taken in the early morning after Dave hit Kandula in a crosswalk while speeding to respond to a call from a man who believed he had taken too much cocaine, Auderer says he has talked to Dave and he is “good,” adding that ” it does not seem like there’s a criminal investigation going on” because Dave was “going 50 [mph]—that’s not out of control” and because Kandula may not have even been in a crosswalk. Auderer added that Dave had “lights and sirens” on, which video confirmed was not true.

In fact, as we reported exclusively, Dave was driving 74 miles an hour in a 25 mile per hour zone and struck Kandula while she was attempting to cross the street in a marked and well-lighted crosswalk.

“I think she went up on the hood, hit the windshield, then when he hit the brakes, she flew off the car. But she is dead. No, it’s a regular person. Yeah, just write a check. Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway, she had limited value.”—Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer, joking with police union president Mike Solan about the death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula earlier that night.

“I don’t think she was thrown 40 feet either,” Auderer told Solan. “I think she went up on the hood, hit the windshield, then when he hit the brakes, she flew off the car. But she is dead.” Then Auderer laughed loudly at something Solan said. “No, it’s a regular person. Yeah.”

We have asked SPOG via email what Solan asked that made Auderer clarify that Kandula was a “regular” person, as opposed to another type of person Dave might have hit.

“Yeah, just write a check,” Auderer continued. Then he laughed again for several seconds. “Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway, she had limited value.” At this point, Auderer turned off his body camera and the recording stops.

Joel Merkel, the co-chair of Seattle’s Community Police Commission, called the video “shockingly insensitive.

“I was just really struck by the casual laughter and attitude—this was moments after she was killed,” Merkel said. “You have the vice president of SPOG on the telephone with the president of SPOG essentially laughing and joking about the pedestrian’s death and putting a dollar value on her head, and that alone is just disgusting and inhumane,” Merkel said.

Rantz claimed Auderer had immediately “self-reported” his comments by filing his own complaint with the Office of Police Accountability (OPA). After this post went up, OPA confirmed that the initial complaint actually originated with SPD employee who reported the incident on August 2, not Auderer, whose letter is dated August 8.

Right-wing commentator Jason Rantz attempted to pre-spin the video as an empathetic response that included a bit of “gallows humor,” saying the comment was “being described as a ‘leak’ of the content to media members who are hypercritical of police.” Rantz claimed Auderer had immediately “self-reported” his comments by filing his own complaint with the Office of Police Accountability (OPA). After this post went up, OPA confirmed that the initial complaint actually originated with SPD employee who reported the incident to OPA on August 2—not Auderer, whose letter is dated August 8.

Rantz also claimed the two police union officials’ comments were meant to “mock city lawyers” who work on cases in which police officers kill or harm civilians, which, Merkel says, “doesn’t make it any better and possibly even makes it worse! Because [in that case] you have SPOG complaining or mocking or joking about police accountability, which is really at the heart of the consent decree.”

Last week, US District Judge James Robart lifted the majority of a federal consent degree over SPD that has been in place since 2012, finding the department in full compliance with the portions of the agreement that dealt with use of force and bias-free policing, while maintaining federal oversight of the departments crowd-control and accountability policies. The city is currently locked in contract negotiations with SPOG. The city’s most recent contract with SPOG erased or neutralized reforms the city council, which included now-Mayor Bruce Harrell, passed in 2017.

Although Robart has said he has no authority to get involved in SPOG negotiations, Merkel said he was encouraged that he also said he “felt he had the jurisdiction to impact the contract to the extent that it affects accountability” during last week’s court hearing in which the judge largely terminated the agreement.

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PubliCola requested videos and documents related to the collision through the ordinary public disclosure process several months ago and has been receiving installments through the regular public disclosure process.

SPD did not respond to a request for comment. Half an hour after this post went up, the department posted the video on its website, along with a statement. According to the post, an SPD employee “identified” the video “in the routine course of business” and alerted their supervisor; when the video made its way to Police Chief Adrian Diaz’s office, the post says, his office sent it to the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) for investigation. Again, Auderer’s “self-report” came nearly a week after the initial OPA complaint

“As others in the accountability system proceed with their work, we again extend our deepest sympathy for this tragic collision,” SPD’s blog post says.

Auderer has been on the police force for 12 years and has been investigated by OPA for dozens of allegations, including several that involved violence against members of the public. In many cases, OPA has sustained, or upheld, the complaints.

In one incident, Auderer and his brother—a police officer for another jurisdiction—pulled a person out of their apartment without identifying himself as a police officer, failed to inform him of his Miranda rights, and did not report the incident to his bosses. Auderer was suspended for four days for that incident. In another, he chased down someone who was urinating in public and tackled him onto the concrete, injuring him. (Auderer later claimed he was trying to keep the man from running into traffic, which the investigator called “a logical stretch.”

“Indeed, this is not the first time that OPA has had such concerns. [Auderer] had numerous cases over the last two years in which it was alleged that he was unprofessional.”—Office of Police Accountability investigator

Many other complaints about Auderer involved alleged lack of professionalism. In one case, he threatened to break a person’s arm if he reached for his keys, asked if he was mentally ill, and failed to put a seat belt on him while he was handcuffed in the back of Auderer’s patrol car. Although OPA effectively dismissed the complaints in that case by giving Auderer a training referral, the investigator expressed concern with Auderer’s “general approach to this incident, his demeanor, and the way he interacted with the Complainant. Indeed, this is not the first time that OPA has had such concerns. [Auderer] had numerous cases over the last two years in which it was alleged that he was unprofessional.”

In another case, which was sustained, Auderer appeared to mock a woman who said she was developmentally disabled and had cognitive challenges that made it difficult for her to remember specific instructions during a DUI test. He then accused her of lying about being a veterinary nurse, suggesting she wasn’t capable of holding such a complicated job. “I know you usually get a reaction out of people, but you’re not going to get a reaction out of me,” Auderer told the woman, who appeared to be responding calmly and reasonably. He then informed another officer that she was “220,” code for mentally ill, in her presence, and said, “You also need to go see your mental health professional and I think you know that.”

Several other complaints against Auderer involved what appeared to be overzealous investigations of driving under the influence, such as a case in which he “effectuated an arrest” by another officer of a dead-sober man who briefly swerved his car because he was eating a hot dog. “I very much empathize with the subject who suffered through a Kafkaesque experience,” the OPA investigator wrote.

The King County Prosecutor’s Office has not yet decided whether to prosecute Dave in the case, which is under criminal investigation.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Police, public safety

Video Confirms that Officer Was Going 74 MPH, Did Not Have Siren Running When He Struck Pedestrian
A shoe found at the collision site.

By Erica C. Barnett

Content warning: This post contains descriptions of a violent, fatal traffic collision and images of a vehicle involved in that collision.

Video from the body-worn camera of Seattle Police Department officer Kevin Dave shows Dave accelerating to 74 miles an hour and failing to turn on his siren as he approached the intersection where he struck and killed pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula earlier this year. The King County Prosecutor’s Office, which is still deciding whether to charge Dave with a crime, provided the video and other documents in response to PubliCola’s records request.

PubliCola reported earlier this year, based on records we obtained through a separate request, that an SPD analysis concluded Dave was driving up to 74 miles an hour and could not have avoided Kandula, nor could Kandula have gotten out of the way, at that speed. The posted speed limit in the area is 25 miles an hour.

“I fucked up.”—Seattle police officer Kevin Dave, recorded on body-worn video after the collision

The video, which includes a clear shot of Dave’s speedometer, shows Dave going through several red lights and accelerating to 74 miles an hour before turning his wheel slightly and, in almost the same instant, striking Kandula, who can be seen briefly on the video as she passes over the windshield of Dave’s SUV.

The video also shows that Dave briefly “chirped” his siren a few times before he approached the intersection of Thomas St. and Dexter Ave. N but at no point had his siren running consistently. The audio from the body-worn camera indicates Dave may have turned his siren on in the instant before he struck Kandula.

In a statement on January, Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz said Dave was “clearing intersections with his siren” immediately before the collision.

The Seattle Police Manual says that officers engaged in emergency driving, as Dave was, must use “audible signals when necessary to warn others of the emergency nature of the situation.” In its policy on vehicle pursuits—another situation when officers might drive above the posted speed limit—the manual says officers must “use their sirens continuously to warn others of the emergency nature of the situation.”

The video also shows that Dave accelerated quickly, going from 4 to 74 miles an hour in just 12 seconds.

PubliCola is not posting the entire video; however, in the interest of transparency and access to the content described in this article, we have created a short clip of the video that begins shortly after Dave leaves SPD’s West Precinct and includes the moment of the collision. It is not graphic, but it is extremely disturbing. Please consider carefully before watching.

PubliCola also obtained three recorded statements from witnesses who saw Dave strike Kandula. In one of the recordings, the witness says he saw a police car approaching at a high speed, then heard a loud thud as the car hit Kandula. This witness did not initially mention hearing a siren. “I saw a police car coming, maybe two blocks away, and then I heard a loud sound,” he said, adding later that the reason he knew it was a police car was because “I saw light.”

“Usually when you hear that noise of a collision, of a car hitting something—a curb or something, another car—you hear brakes beforehand. Like, you hear screeching brakes and then you hear a crunch or whatever. But this time, there was no brake sound at all. It was just the sound of the front of the car hitting something.” 

The interviewer asked the witness twice  to describe what he heard, then asked explicitly if he heard a siren before Dave struck Kandula. “I believe I did,” the witness replied, but added, “I don’t remember” any details about it.

“I think what threw me off,” the witness continued, “was that usually when you hear that noise of a collision, of a car hitting something— a curb or something, another car—you hear brakes beforehand. Like, you hear screeching brakes and then you hear a crunch or whatever. But this time, there was no brake sound at all. It was just the sound of the front of the car hitting something.” 

Another witness said she heard Dave chirping his siren intermittently before he struck Kandula.

In the moments after the collision, the video shows Dave calmly calling in the incident and immediately attempting CPR until other officers arrive to take over. Speaking to another officer minutes after the collision, Dave said, “She was in the crosswalk; she saw me. She started running through the crosswalk —I slammed on my brakes—instead of staying back where she should.” Later, Dave is crying and distraught, telling one officer he is “not okay” and muttering, “I fucked up” to another as officers try to comfort him.

“There’s nothing for me to do right now but sit. That is the fucking worst thing,” Dave says later, while sitting in the passenger seat of another officer’s SUV. “You just have sit. So many questions that are unanswered, so many questions.”

Dave’s body-worn video includes a dispatcher describing the 911 call to which Dave was responding, making it clear that the person who called for help was conscious and staying on the phone with 911 until medics arrived

After the collision, Diaz said Dave was responding “as an EMT to a priority 1 emergency call,” implying that Dave was rushing to deliver life-saving emergency care. Subsequent reporting by PubliCola revealed that the caller had, in fact, used too much cocaine and was “freaking out” but lucid and standing outside his apartment as he waited for medics to arrive.

Photos taken in the aftermath of the collision, also provided in response to our records request, show that the impact cratered the front of the SPD SUV Dave was driving, crushing its hood and shattering the windshield. The photos and video show a debris field that included Kandula’s clothing, shoes, backpack, and art supplies, including a notebook that was crushed under the wheel of Dave’s SUV.

Police, public safety

Seattle Police Officer Was Driving 74 MPH When He Hit and Killed 23-Year-Old Pedestrian
Overhead view of the intersection where SPD officer Kevin Dave struck and killed 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk in January
Overhead view of the intersection where SPD officer Kevin Dave struck and killed 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk in January

By Erica C. Barnett

CONTENT NOTE: This story contains graphic descriptions related to a fatal traffic incident. 

Seattle police officer Kevin Dave was driving 74 miles per hour immediately before he struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula in a marked crosswalk at the intersection of Dexter Ave. and Thomas St. in January, according to documents obtained by PubliCola. The report says Dave hit his brakes less than one second before impact, striking Kandula at a speed of up to 70 miles per hour. The speed limit on Dexter, where Dave was driving an SPD SUV, is 25 mph.

“The speed at which Ofc. DAVE was traveling did not allow [Kandula] or him sufficient time to detect, address and avoid a hazard that presented itself,” an SPD analysis of the collision concludes.

According to the Transport Research Laboratory, the fatality rate for a collision at 70 miles and hour is close to 100 percent.

“Had Ofc. DAVE been traveling 50 MPH or less as he approached the intersection and encountered [Kandula] and Ofc. DAVE and responded in the same manner, this collision would not have occurred,” SPD’s forensic analysis of the collision concludes. That analysis estimates Dave was driving 70 mph on a road with a high level of car and pedestrian traffic, including many crosswalks.

“I heard a siren approaching,” a witness said.” I saw her … start to move faster as though, like, ‘I need to get out of the street, there’s a siren coming. And then I heard a loud thud.” According to SPD’s analysis of the incident, “it is believed that she was attempting to reach an area of perceived safety.”

“[A pedestrian’s expectations when crossing a street are that they will likely encounter traffic traveling at speeds near the posted speed limit,” the report says. “A driver’s expectation of a pedestrian in a crosswalk and the likelihood of a pedestrian being seen by a driver in the crosswalk are heightened.”

According to SPD’s vehicle inspection report after the crash, Dave struck Kandula so hard that his hood crumpled—sustaining a long gouge from her elbow at the point of contact—and smashed his windshield. After hitting her, Dave got out of the car to get his EMT equipment, but had to force the passenger side door open because the car’s fender was pushed back, obstructing the door. Kandula’s AirPods flew into the air during the collision; one was retrieved almost 100 feet down the street.

Image of damage to the Ford SUV SPD officer Kevin Dave was driving when he struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula in January.
Damage to the Ford SUV SPD officer Kevin Dave was driving when he struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula in January.

A witness described Kandula walking into the intersection, then attempting to run. “I heard a siren approaching,” the witness said.” I saw her … start to move faster as though, like, ‘I need to get out of the street, there’s a siren coming. And then I heard a loud thud.” According to SPD’s analysis of the incident, “it is believed that she was attempting to reach an area of perceived safety.” Once she was in crosswalk, Kandula had “little time to assess her options to respond to the threat” given the speed the car was going, the report says.

As we reported exclusively earlier this week, SPD has referred Dave’s case to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to determine whether to press charges against Dave. According to the reports obtained by PubliCola, Dave appears to be living in Arizona, where he worked briefly as a  police officer and loss prevention officer, according to reporting by DivestSPD, before SPD hired him in 2019. He received his police certification on June 12, 2020.

The incident report quotes Dave telling a sergeant who responded to the scene that Kandula “was in the crosswalk, she saw me, she started running through the crosswalk. Slammed on my brakes. Instead of staying back where she should before crossing, she just zips,” then made a motion with his hands from left to right.

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The Seattle Police Department has said that Dave was responding “as an EMT” to an overdose nearby when he struck Kandula. Separately, the department has also suggested that he needed to be present to ensure the safety of first responders, because people who overdose on opiates can be violent or belligerent when they regain consciousness. As we’ve reported, the call actually came from a person who was “freaking out” because he used too much cocaine, and who was conscious, lucid, and standing outside his apartment building when medics from the fire department arrived.

The report details the minutes leading up to the collision. At 8:01, a dispatcher reported that someone had called in to report that they thought they were overdosing on cocaine. At 8:04, Dave reported he was en route to the call. At 8:05, the dispatcher updated Dave and another officer responding to the call that “the person overdosing is calling it in himself. … He wants to stay on the phone with us until officers arrive.” Two minutes later, Dave struck Kandula in a crosswalk.

Seattle law allows an officer responding to an emergency to “exceed the maximum speed limits so long as he or she does not endanger life or property, but says that exemption doesn’t “relieve the driver of an authorized emergency vehicle from the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons using the highway nor from the duty to exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian.”

In response to questions from the Community Police Commission about Dave’s use of “emergency” high-speed driving when responding to the 911 call, Police Chief Adrian Diaz said Dave was “responding to assist the Seattle Fire Department with an overdose according to established interdepartmental protocols.”

Seattle law allows an officer responding to an emergency to “exceed the maximum speed limits so long as he or she does not endanger life or property, but says that exemption doesn’t “relieve the driver of an authorized emergency vehicle from the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons using the highway nor from the duty to exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian.”

The law also requires emergency vehicle operators to “use audible signals when necessary to warn others of the emergency nature of the situation.” The report notes that Dave had his emergency lights on and was “chirping” his siren at intersections but did not have his siren “activated consistently.”

Police, public safety

Case of Cop who Killed Pedestrian in Crosswalk Referred to King County Prosecutor
The intersection of Dexter and Thomas, where police officer Kevin Dave struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula in January.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department, which could soon be released from a federal consent decree imposed in 2012, has been noticeably silent about the outcome of its internal investigation into officer Kevin Dave, who struck and killed a pedestrian, Jaahnavi Kandula, in January while on his way to the scene of a drug-related 911 call nearby.

However, PubliCola has confirmed that SPD has referred Dave’s case to the King County prosecutor’s office, which is reviewing the case and will decide whether to charge Dave with a crime. According to the prosecutor’s office, it’s unlikely a decision will come before July.

SPD declined to respond to questions; a spokesperson said the department had “no updates or timelines in regards to the investigation of this case.”

The department has claimed that the officer, Kevin Dave, was responding “as an EMT” to an overdose; separately, both SPD and the Seattle Fire Department have said the reason Dave needed to get to the call quickly is that people coming out of opioid overdoses can behave erratically and violently, threatening the safety of first responders.

However, the audio of the 911 call, which PubliCola received through a records request, revealed that the caller had used cocaine, not opiates, and was breathing heavily but calm when he called 911 to report that he was “freaking out.” He met medics from the fire department outside his apartment and declined additional care.

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The King County Prosecutor’s Office was not immediately able to say whether SPD’s referral was statutory—meaning the department was required by law to send it to prosecutors—or a case where the department believes the officer may have committed a crime. SPD declined to provide any information about the case, saying they had “no updates.”

Back in February, the Community Police Commission asked Police Chief Adrian Diaz to explain why Dave engaged in “emergency” (high-speed) driving; Diaz responded that Dave was “responding to assist the Seattle Fire Department with an overdose according to established interdepartmental protocols.”

In a followup letter on June 9, prompted in part by a KUOW report revealing that few officers have taken the emergency driving courses required by a new state law loosening restrictions on police pursuits, the CPC’s co-chairs asked Diaz for details about how many officers have completed emergency driving courses and to explain why the department’s requirements for emergency vehicle operations (what Dave was purportedly doing when he struck Kandula) are lower than its policies for pursuing a person who is attempting to flee.

SPD previously confirmed that it was conducting a criminal investigation into Dave. Earlier this year, the department “categorically” rejected PubliCola’s public disclosure requests for documents related to the investigation, citing the fact that the investigation was still ongoing. A spokesperson did not respond to our question about when we could file another request without it, too, being “categorically” rejected. Since the referral to the prosecutor’s office suggests that SPD’s internal investigation may be complete, PubliCola has filed another records request.

Dave is still employed by SPD.

City Council, Guest Contributor, public safety

As a Firefighter, I Oppose Criminalizing “Interference” with Seattle Fire Department Personnel
Photo by Joe Mabel; CC by SA 3.0 license.

By LéTania Severe

The Seattle City Council is considering legislation to protect firefighters responding to emergencies, making it a crime to physically interfere with them as they try to provide aid.

This proposal, which would expand the existing law against “obstructing” police officers to include Fire Department personnel, will not only fail to protect firefighters, it will make things worse for them and the communities they serve—particularly the Black community members who face disproportionate arrests and prosecutions under the existing “obstruction” statute.

How do I know this? For the last five years, I have been a firefighter/EMT for Central Pierce Fire and Rescue, giving me a front-row seat to the challenges of the job.

While my firefighting work is in Pierce County, I currently live and rent in Seattle’s District 2. I also have a PhD in Sociology and have spent the last 17 years researching homelessness, housing, and criminal legal system policy in Seattle and the broader region. I am Black, queer, and nonbinary, and I co-led the Black Brilliance Research Project, funded by City Council to answer questions around how we build community safety and community health. These experiences have equipped me to assess the current bill before City Council and compel me to speak out against it.

Firefighters are called to respond when people are having their worst day. Firefighters remind each other about this often. It helps ground us so that we don’t take people’s behavior or words personally. As firefighters, we work for the people. We don’t force our service onto people; that’s not our job. We ask them why we were called and what they need.

​​Firefighter work is stressful and grueling. I can tell you from experience that 24-hour shifts do not result in us showing up to calls with our best selves. Being woken up in the middle of the night to answer the community’s call for help when you are already sleep-deprived is demanding and keeps firefighters in a heightened “fight mode” for the entirety of our shift.

These conditions are among the biggest challenges we face. But the proposal before the council, which criminalizes community members for interfering with firefighters, does nothing to address the stress and impact on our bodies caused by our work.

The proposed legislation does nothing to address any of the underlying reasons that trigger the need for an emergency response. In fact, our community has seen money moved out of these areas of upstream intervention in order to put more money into policing the results of these failures.

Sometimes as firefighters, the stress we shoulder aggravates the situations we enter. In my experience, these are the times when we experience “obstruction” from the patients we serve. For example, impatient firefighters sometimes wake someone up from an overdose too fast by administering Narcan too quickly. In these situations, the person’s body will react with shock and confusion. That person should not be blamed for their body’s response. When we arrive on a call to an individual experiencing a mental health crisis, we should hold them in grace as we focus on helping them move through it and then do our best to address the root causes of that crisis.

Other examples of our own stress as firefighters aggravating the situations we enter include firefighters escalating stressful situations instead of showing compassion and using de-escalation skills; firefighters taking a patient’s refusal of services personally and attempting to force their services on a patient who does not want it; and firefighters not respecting the agency of patients

This bill doesn’t address any of these situations. Instead, it makes things worse by criminalizing the very communities we are called to serve.

We all know that firefighters are often called to intervene because of bigger system failures. Indeed, the proposed bill’s language acknowledges as much: “[I]t is well known that the challenges faced by all our public safety employees at the City of Seattle have increased with the rise of the opioid epidemic, economic uncertainty, and multiple public health crises – COVID, mental health, and substance use.”

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And yet the proposed legislation does absolutely nothing to address any of the underlying reasons that trigger the need for an emergency response. In fact, our community has seen money moved out of these areas of upstream intervention in order to put more money into policing the results of these failures. This bill, which expands expensive and harmful criminal legal system responses to social problems, continues the same pattern.

This bill claims to “give our fire department employees in the line of duty an additional tool for their personal safety and the ability to secure the scene of a medical health response or fire response, particularly in the case of bystander intervention while firefighters and paramedics are providing aid.”  But this legislation won’t actually prevent “bystander intervention,” because it relies on the police to respond and arrest only after an alleged interference. This bill does not deter anything. Instead it will make things worse by criminalizing behavior that can be better mitigated by addressing root causes. 

What could a better bill do? 

A better bill would move funding for addressing overdose calls from SFD and SPD to community members instead. Bystanders safely administer Narcan in the field every single day. They save lives and they do so compassionately, because unlike firefighters, they often know the person, or the person is a member of their community.

It is well established that firefighters and police officers are extremely ill-equipped to meet the needs of community members experiencing a mental health crisis. I have never received good training on responding to calls in which individuals are in mental health crises and I’d bet that Seattle firefighters haven’t, either.

The common denominator between overdose and mental health calls is that they require an immense amount of patience. When fire departments are understaffed, patience goes out the window. Again, this bill does not address this problem. There are many things that can improve our job, such as more training, more staffing, better schedules, addressing system failures, more tools to regulate our nervous systems on shift, de-escalation training, Narcan administration training and mental health crisis response training.

What if rather than expanding a system that causes harm, we actually focused more on assessing which social safety nets have utterly failed the folks who need us? What if we moved funding out of SFD and SPD to empower community members to respond to mental health crises?  What if we actually committed to addressing the root causes?

I suspect we will be told that addressing root causes is impossible given Seattle’s budget deficit. But it’s never too late to reallocate funding from our bloated punishment budgets (police, courts, and prosecutors) toward making firefighter jobs and our community safer. If the City Council cares about firefighter safety and community safety, they will vote NO on the current obstruction bill, and fund community response instead.

LéTania Severe PhD (they/them) is a Black, queer, non-binary researcher and firefighter who organizes with Seattle Solidarity Budget, a cross-movement coalition of over 200 organizations, fighting for a city budget that divest from harmful systems like police, courts and jails and reinvests in meeting community basic needs including housing, transportation, climate change resilience and more. LéTania is also a coordinator for Seattle’s new Community Response Network, which trains community members to respond to emergencies in their own communities.
Drugs, Police, public safety, Transportation

Full 911 Audio Sheds More Light on SPD’s Explanation for Deadly Crash; Bill Expanding Police Pursuits Passes Legislature

1. Unredacted audio of the 911 call to which Seattle police officer Kevin Dave was allegedly responding when he struck and killed student Jaahnavi Kandula in January further confirms that the caller had used cocaine, not opiates, and was breathing heavily but calm when he called 911 to report that he was “freaking out.” PubliCola obtained the audio through a records request.

Police Chief Adrian Diaz has said Dave was responding “as an EMT” to provide medical aid at a Priority 1 overdose call when he hit Kandula. Dave is certified as an EMT, but there is no evidence beyond Diaz’ statement that he was responding as a medic rather than a police officer, and the 911 call itself contradicts that claim.

SPD has also said police need to be present when Fire Department medics are reviving someone from an opiate overdose in order to provide backup if the person is violent when they come to and to keep people from stealing items or intervening while SFD medics are occupied with rescue breathing and other lifesaving measures. However, the full recording of the 911 call makes it clear that the caller had used cocaine, not opiates, and told the dispatcher his symptoms were “starting to go away” by the end of the six-and-a-half-minute call.

In the first moments of the recording, the caller, a man in his 20s, told the dispatcher, “I did cocaine and I don’t know if I’m having an overdose. I think I’m over-amped.” After being transferred to a dispatcher for Medic One, the Seattle Fire Department’s emergency medical response team, the caller added that he was “trying not to freak out” and was standing outside his apartment building. “Do you think you’ve overdosed?” the dispatcher asked. “I looked it up and I think so,” he said. “I’m extremely anxious,” the caller added, and “shaking a little bit.”

The original dispatcher then kept the man on the line, telling him to breathe and getting more information. “Am I going to get in trouble?” the man asked. “Oh, no,” the dispatcher responded. “I’m still just kind of freaking out right now, but it’s starting to go away,” the caller said. By the end of the call, the dispatcher and caller were joking about the weather. “At least it’s not raining today, right?” the dispatcher said. “That’s one way to look at it, yeah,” the caller responded.

SPD is doing an internal investigation into whether Dave was acting within SPD policy when he hit Kandula in a marked and lighted South Lake Union intersection. Three months after the crash, the department has not said when it will conclude its investigation.

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2. The state senate gave final approval Monday to a bill that will lower the standard of evidence required for police officers across the state to initiate vehicle pursuits, sending the bill to Governor Jay Inslee’s desk.

Under SB 5352, sponsored by Senator John Lovick (D-44 Lake Stevens), officers will only need to have a “reasonable suspicion” that a driver has committed a violent crime or is driving under the influence. The bill reverses a 2021 change in state law that raised the standard for most offenses, apart from DUI, to a higher “probable cause” standard, which requires more evidence, with the aim of reducing pursuits overall.

The policy change nearly failed to move forward earlier this session, when state house leaders declined to bring their version of the bill to the floor for a vote ahead of a key deadline, prompting state senate leaders, in a dramatic move, to bring the bill to the floor even though it had never received a hearing in that chamber.

“I am asking you to vote no because the people trusted us, and they are disappointed that we are rolling back something that they thought put us on the first step to accountability.” —Debra Entenman (D-47, Covington)

Inslee is expected to sign the bill. “I think we need to move this needle, I think that’s where the public is,” he said in early March. 

The house approved the bill on April 10, with opposition from both Republicans who wanted it to go further and allow more pursuits for non-violent offenses like auto thefts, and from Democrats who say the current policy, which allows fewer pursuits, is saving lives.

Many Democrats view the reversal as a step back for police accountability in Washington. Before the house floor vote earlier this month, Representative Debra Entenman (D-47, Covington) noted that the bill reversed recommendations made by legislative task force created in 2020 in response to nationwide protests over racial injustice.

“I am asking you to vote no because the people trusted us…and they are disappointed that we are rolling back something that they thought put us on the first step to accountability,” she said. 

Last year, the legislature rolled back another 2021 law that prevented police from using force to prevent people from walking away from investigative stops, also known as Terry stops.

A previous version of the pursuit bill included a 2025 sunset date, but that’s no longer in the bill. Some of Washington’s largest police departments, like Seattle and Tacoma, already have policies in place that require a higher standard of evidence to pursue a suspect.

—Erica C. Barnett, Ryan Packer

homelessness, King County, public safety

After Removing Encampment, Burien Considers the Options: Provide Shelter, Ban Camping, or Both?
Image via City of Burien

By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, after failing to come up with an alternative location for a longstanding encampment on the west side of the building that houses both Burien City Hall and the local branch of the King County Library, the city of Burien formally evicted the 30 or so people who had been living there for months.

But they didn’t go far. As Scott Schaefer at the B-Town blog reported, most of the people forced out of the encampment moved to a city-owned site just one block west of City Hall, infuriating some residents and prompting demands for harsh anti-camping policies as well as sanctions against Burien Planning Commission Chair Charles Schaefer, who said he directed encampment residents to the new site.

This was the setting for Monday night’s Burien City Council meeting, where council members proposed several potential approaches to addressing encampments, including a total encampment ban in certain, unspecified “zones”; strict enforcement of drug laws; reinstating Burien’s overturned trespassing ordinance; and reallocating city funds to stand up a temporary encampment by the King County Courthouse a few blocks away. Burien already bans encampments in parks, but nowhere else, which is why the encampment next to City Hall was able to linger for so long.

During the meeting, Council member Jimmy Matta pushed back on an encampment ban proposed by Councilmember Stephanie Mora, noting that the Ninth Circuit US District Court, ruling in the Martin v. Boise case, barred cities from sweeping encampments unless shelter beds are available—and Burien has no year-round adult shelters or sanctioned encampments.

“I see the same things as you see,” Matta said. “I don’t like my children to see [those things]. I don’t like to see people using drugs. But at the same time, I know we don’t have the resources for [shelter], and on top of that, the Ninth Circuit court says that we have to have placements for them.” Cities like Seattle get around the requirement by sweeping encampments when shelter beds become available, Matta continued, but a similar approach in Burien would require the city to come up with funding and a location for a shelter—which, in turn, would likely face opposition from the same people who just want Burien’s homeless population gone. [Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story erroneously attributed this quote and the sentiments expressed in the preceding paragraph to City Manager Adolfo Bailon; we regret the error.]

This contingent was out in force at Monday’s council meeting, where public commenters who supported shelter, housing, and supportive services for encampment residents were greatly outnumbered by those demanding that the council eliminate the “campers” by any legal means. For an observer from Seattle, the tone of many comments were reminiscent of the debate about homeless encampments before and especially during the pandemic, when people frequently used dehumanizing terms and the language of eradication to talk about homeless Seattle residents.

“I wasn’t surprised by how people felt because of how things went down with the encampment being essentially relocated, rather than cleared. It’s also true that the people who were there were going to go somewhere… without a real solution that can pull people indoors instead of having them on the street.”—Burien LEAD program manager Aaron Burkhalter

One commenter, for example, referred to homeless people living in Burien as “this unpleasantness” and expressed his “shame, embarrassment, and utter disgust” that encampment residents were allowed to move one block, where they are now “in my front yard.” Another told council members they should “take [encampment residents] home with you” instead of allowing them to sleep on public property. An eighth-grade student at a local private school said she was “tired of seeing men’s privates everywhere I go,” adding that she was no longer able to run or walk in Burien because “the unhoused people have found a loophole in your system.” Several commenters referred conspiratorially to a “coordinated” effort to increase the number of homeless people in the city.

“I wasn’t surprised by how people felt because of how things went down with the encampment being essentially relocated, rather than cleared,” said Aaron Burkhalter, the LEAD project manager for Burien, who also spoke at Monday’s meeting. “It’s also true that the people who were there were going to go somewhere… without a real solution that can pull people indoors instead of having them on the street.”

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At the end of the meeting, which , the council put off proposals to bring back the trespassing law and expand the city’s camping ban. During a special meeting next week, the council will hear more about a proposal to use the county-owned parking lot as a short-term managed encampment; receive information on how the State v. Blake decision, which overturned the state’s main drug possession law, impacts the city’s authority to crack down on drug use; and get an overview of camping bans in other cities, including Marysville and Lakewood.

The council will also consider sanctions against Planning Commissioner Schaefer for informing people they had the right to set up tents on city-owned property a block from City Hall; during the meeting, some commenters suggested he should be forced from his position for providing this information.

Burkhalter said he expects the city will remove the relocated encampment soon, scattering the people living there to “a number of different sites around the city.” While some, including City Manager Bailon, have expressed the hopeful thought that many of the encampment residents are from other cities and will move out of town, Burkhalter considers that wishful thinking.

Still, he said, he’s optimistic that the city will come up with a longer-term solution, such as temporary housing in a nearby hotel or in an existing residential building in Burien. “All the pieces are in place to get people into those spaces, and after that, it’s just a matter of how do we prioritize who gets placed in such a way that we are addressing criminal behavior and the public camping that people are so concerned about, in a way that people can get significant services,” Burkhalter said.

criminal justice, King County, public safety

Over Protests, King County Prepares to Transfer 60 to Des Moines Jail
Former city attorney candidate and public defender Nicole Thomas-Kennedy testifies: “The people that are [in jail] cannot afford to buy their freedom. That is why they are there. “
By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, the King County Council held off on a decision on whether to approve a contract that would move up to 150 men living at the downtown jail to the South Correctional Entity (SCORE), a non-county-owned jail in Kent, after several council members said they had concerns about the scope of the agreement, access to visitors and attorneys at SCORE, and the use of additional jail space to address persistent problems at the downtown jail, where the population and average length of stay have increased.

As PubliCola reported last year, the county’s approved 2023 budget includes $3.5 million for a contract between the county and SCORE. The agreement to move an initial 60 people, which the council will vote on tomorrow, April 4, is that contract.

During a lengthy public comment period at last week’s council meeting, attorneys, advocates, and people who had been incarcerated asked the council to reject the agreement, arguing that moving people from one jail to another would not address the underlying problems at the jail, where six people died—four of them by suicide—last year.

The proposed agreement includes a list of conditions that would make a person ineligible for transfer to SCORE. Several commenters, including a former psychiatric evaluations specialist at SCORE, said it was easy for people to fall through the cracks or develop mental health conditions in jail.

“Your choice is not between overloading SCORE and overloading the King County Jail,” public commenter Madeleine Pfeiffer said. “Just three years ago, you were faced with a public health crisis and the King County Jail and you reduce the population by 50 percent in a matter of days—why not now? Why aren’t the deaths in the King County jail a crisis now that warrants the reduction of population there?”

Several commenters noted that SCORE has also seen its share of high-profile deaths, including that of Damaris Rodriguez, a woman with mental illness who died after four days in solitary confinement; her family received $2 million in a partial settlement with the jail. According to a staff memo, the county “intends to contract with SCORE to house people who do not have serious mental or physical health issues … low-level, healthy people[.]”

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The proposed agreement includes a list of conditions that would make a person ineligible for transfer to SCORE, including people who have attempted suicide in the past or shown suicidal ideation in the 72 hours before booking and people displaying a “current psychotic episode.” But several commenters, including a former psychiatric evaluations specialist at SCORE, said it was easy for people to fall through the cracks or develop mental health conditions in jail.

County budget director Dwight Dively told the council the executive branch had issues with several amendments council members proposed to make the agreement more palatable, including restrictions on how many people could be moved to SCORE without additional council approval and an amendment that would require SCORE to meet the conditions the Department of Public Defense says it requires to adequately represent their clients housed there. Dively called these amendments “problematic”—in the first case, because the county is continuing to jail more people for longer periods, and in the second, because “different jails operate in different ways.”

The council will meet and vote on the agreement at its meeting at 1:30 Tuesday afternoon.