Category: public safety

legislature, Police, public safety, Transportation

Despite Deadly 2022, Traffic Safety Bills Fail to Gain Traction

By Ryan Packer

After 2022—the deadliest year on Washington state roadways since the early 1990—it seemed likely that traffic safety would get significant attention during this year’s legislative session. But following a key early March deadline for bills to pass out of their house of origin, a number of promising bills are off the table.

A bill to reduce Washington’s blood-alcohol threshold for a DUI from 0.08 percent to 0.05 percent was a top priority for safety advocates, winning early support from a broad group of transportation sector organizatios, including the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, and the National Safety Council. However, the bill failed to make it through the Senate, in part because legislators opted to debate a bill allowing more police pursuits instead during the final hours before a key deadline.

Another safety bill that failed to advance would have required car dealers to put warning labels on large trucks and SUVs that are designed in a way that puts pedestrians and cyclists at greater risk; the bill would have also increased fines for traffic infractions committed by people driving those vehicles. For decades, federal programs have rated the “crashworthiness” of specific types of cars and trucks, but as Americans have opted for larger and larger SUVs, that rating hasn’t taken the safety of people outside the vehicle into account,

A bill that would have prohibited drivers from turning right at any red light within 1,000 feet of a school, park, or other high-traffic public facility received strong support from walking and biking advocacy organizations but never got a committee vote in either the house or the senate. In 2018, Washington, D.C. piloted right-turn-on-red restrictions at 100 high-volume intersections, finding a 92 percent reduction in drivers failing to yield to pedestrians compared to before the restrictions were added. Based on that data, the district broadly adopted the restrictions citywide in 2022.

“There is data showing that Black people are getting stopped at a rate of four times their share of the population, and unhoused individuals make up half of jaywalking stops. [The law against ‘jaywalking’] isn’t being enforced to promote safety.”—Matthew Sutherland, Transportation Choices Coalition

Legislators also weren’t ready to pass a bill that would have prohibited traffic stops for non-moving violations like broken taillights, or a proposal that would have to banned most “jaywalking” stops of pedestrians crossing outside legal intersections. One issue was that there isn’t enough data yet to determine the impact eliminating such laws has on pedestrian safety.

“Certainly [we] want to look at how we reduce disproportionality in our transportation space, but we need to flesh out how this fits into an overall safety strategy,” Marko Liias (D-21, Edmonds), chair of the Senate’s transportation committee, told PubliCola.

Matthew Sutherland, the Advocacy Director at Transportation Choices Coalition, said police use jaywalking stops as a pretext for targeting vulnerable people.  “Folks are being harassed,” he said. “There is data showing that Black people are getting stopped at a rate of four times their share of the population, and unhoused individuals make up half of jaywalking stops. This isn’t being enforced to promote safety.” Sutherland also noted that the jaywalking bill would have shifted more of the burden of pedestrian safety from pedestrians onto drivers, a controversial element of the proposal.

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Liias said some bills didn’t advance because they weren’t bolstered with enough relevant supporting data. “I’m really trying to ensure that we’re data-driven.,” he said. “When we talk to vulnerable [road] users, we know right-turn-on-red is a problem. I think we now need to build the evidence and be able to articulate that piece of it, because we’re asking for a culture shift … and I think people are reluctant to do that without the full picture.”

Convincing data didn’t seem to help the proposal to drop Washington’s blood-alcohol content threshold for a DUI to 0.05 percent, however. Utah, the first state to adopt the lower limit in 2019, saw a double-digit drop in statewide traffic fatalities in the year after the new law took effect, without a corresponding rise in alcohol-related traffic stops or arrests. The bill was expected to prevent around 30-40 deaths in Washington state annually, but it received significant pushback from the restaurant and hospitality industries, which were concerned about increased liability for servers and bartenders who overserved patrons. Supporters of the bill, including Gov. Jay Inslee, said they looked forward to its return next year.

Liias pointed to several traffic safety bills that are still advancing where the impacts are more clear-cut. One bill would allow the Washington State Department of Transportation to use automated cameras to ticket drivers speeding on state highways. Another would require drivers under 25 to complete a driver’s education class before receiving their license, eliminating the current loophole allowing drivers 18 and older to get a license after passing a written test. Only around half of drivers under 25 licensed in Washington have received comprehensive driver training and those who have not have a crash rate that’s significantly higher than those who have.

“I knew coming into session that we aren’t going to achieve Target Zero in the next two years,” Sen. Marko Liias said, refering to a goal Washington has had in place since 2000 to eliminate serious traffic-related injuries and fatalities. “I think we’ve put this issue on the map, and now we’re starting to build that comprehensive set of policies that will help us get headed in the right direction toward zero.”

But Liias also noted the significant hurdles to changing behavior, even with the potential benefit of saving lives. “We’re used to doing things across the safety space in one way, and shifting to a new framework and a mindset takes time for folks.”

In the other chamber, Representative Jake Fey (D-27, Tacoma), chair of the house transportation committee, said there has been some progress on traffic safety, citing a bill that will provide hiring incentives to Washington State Trooper recruits: $10,000 over two years for cadets and $15,000 over two years for lateral hires from different police departments. That bill is now in the Senate after passing the House with only one vote in opposition.

Fey told PubliCola he considers efforts to increase the number of police on state roadways complementary with trying to reduce unnecessary stops. “Part of the intent was to make troopers and other law enforcement available for other important work, and not dealing with minor things that have the net effect of targeting certain populations,” Fey said. But with Democrats incredibly divided over police issues, hope for future movement on the issue could be dim.

With nationwide trends, like vehicle design, generally outside of state control also having a big impact on increasing traffic fatality numbers, the best legislators were hoping for was small progress on the issue this session. “I knew coming into session that we aren’t going to achieve Target Zero in the next two years,” Liias said, refering to a goal Washington has had in place since 2000 to eliminate serious traffic-related injuries and fatalities. “I think we’ve put this issue on the map, and now we’re starting to build that comprehensive set of policies that will help us get headed in the right direction toward zero.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drugs, Police, public safety

Caller Was Lucid, Waiting to “Flag Down” Aid Car, When Officer Heading to Scene Struck and Killed Pedestrian Nearby
File:Seattle Fire Department - Aid 2 (Medic One vehicle).jpg
Photo by Joe Mabel; CC by 2.0 license.

By Erica C. Barnett

The 911 call to which Seattle police officer Kevin Dave was allegedly responding when he struck and killed student Jaahnavi Kandula in a marked crosswalk was not, as police and fire officials have implied, an opiate overdose that had to be reversed by paramedics under police supervision. In fact, a single aid car responded to the caller, who was lucid and alert when he dialed 911, and was finished within about 20 minutes. The call came from an apartment building 6th Ave. North, a few blocks from where Dave struck Kandula on Dexter Ave. on the night of January 23.

At first, SPD said Dave (who they did not initially identify) was responding to an emergency “at the request of” Seattle Fire Department first responders; later, they said he was heading to the scene “alongside” SFD. After SPD, in response to questions from PubliCola, said the call was an overdose, the Community Safety and Communications Center told us that police are dispatched to overdoses as a matter of longstanding policy. Later, Police Chief Adrian Diaz said Dave was responding “as an EMT” to a medical emergency.

In mid-February, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins repeated this explanation in a letter to the Community Police Commission, saying “overdose patients can become violent” after an overdose reversal, which can send an overdose victim into withdrawal. Officials from the fire department elaborated on this statement to PubliCola, saying they need police present when responding to overdoses because people revived from opiate ODs may have used stimulants like meth, whose effects come on in full force once the opiate overdose is resolved. They also said that other people on the scene can threaten or steal items from paramedics working to revive an overdose victim.

“I’m just trying to breathe right now and I’m trying to not freak out,” the man says. “It’s hard to think.” The dispatcher says he’s sending an aid car and tells the man to “flag them down” when he sees them.

But a review of the 911 call that resulted in Dave’s response—which PubliCola obtained, along with the incident report, through a record requests—reveals that the person who called in to report the “overdose” was a man who had walked down from his apartment and into the street to call 911 about what he thought might be a drug-related medical emergency.

In the call, which the fire department partially redacted, the caller is lucid, rational, and a bit frantic; he gives his full address and says he’s “freaking out” and having trouble staying calm. The caller sounds like he’s overstimulated, not overdosing on an opiate like fentanyl, as both police and fire have repeatedly implied.

“I’m just trying to breathe right now and I’m trying to not freak out,” the man says. “It’s hard to think.” After hearing more about the man’s symptoms, the dispatcher asks him if he’s been through this before and if he has any other relevant medical history or complications; the man answers no. Then the dispatcher says he’s sending an aid car and tells the man to “flag them down” when he sees them.

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An aid car is the lowest level of response to a drug-related call like this one. A spokesman for the fire department confirmed that the department sends one aid car staffed with EMTs trained in basic life support when a person is having a “suspected overdose” and is awake, as this caller was. The department sends an additional advanced life support medic unit with two additional paramedics when the person is awake and has a “confirmed overdose,” and sends two basic life support units and an advanced life support unit when the overdosing person is “unconscious, unresponsive, and not breathing normally,” the spokesman said.

Overdose deaths from stimulants are less common than deaths due to opiates, but they do happen; last year, according to the King County Department of Public Health, there were 158 stimulant-related overdose deaths, and there have been 18 this year so far.

A police department spokesperson did not respond to questions about SPD’s policy about driving practices when responding to a low-level drug call like this one. Nor have they responded to questions about how fast Dave was driving or whether he was taking reasonable care when he struck and killed Kandula in a marked crosswalk a few blocks away. “I am not able to share any further information than what’s already been shared since this is an open case,” the spokeswoman said.

The man who placed the initial call declined to comment.

Drugs, Health, Police, public safety

More Cops Are Training as Emergency Responders. Is That a Good Thing?

By Erica C. Barnett

The death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, killed by a police officer driving to respond to a suspected overdose, has revived a longstanding dispute between Seattle’s fire and police departments about who should respond to medical emergencies, particularly overdoses.

Last month, after SPD announced that officer Kevin Dave was rushing to respond to an overdose in his capacity as an emergency medical technician (EMT), SFD union leader Kenny Stuart wrote a letter to Mayor Bruce Harrell objecting to the “troubling trend” of SPD officers “being trained and certified as Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and … deployed to medical emergencies in our city.”

The issue with this, Stuart continued, is that the fire department—not SPD—is responsible for emergency medical response as part of the county’s Medic One system; “randomly allowing additional EMTs from other city departments to self-dispatch or to perform EMS functions” has “led to delayed scene security, delayed medical care, decreased continuity and coordination of care, and general confusion in life-threatening emergencies.”

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking his response to Stuart’s letter, if any, on Friday.

SPD’s EMS trainings are not funded by the city; instead, the Seattle Police Foundation solicits donations to pay for trainings and equipment. The police foundation website says the police need trained EMTs to respond to life-threatening situations at active crime scenes before it’s safe for fire department medics to enter. The head of the EMS program, SPD officer Tyler Verhaar, did not immediately respond to a request for an interview; we’ll update this post with his comments if we hear back.

“If police continue to respond to [medical calls] unchecked, you will end up with officers who are EMTs jumping calls so they can get some good publicity, and that’s not what it’s about.”—Retired assistant fire chief A.D. Vickery

Stuart, from the firefighters’ union, declined to talk on the record about the union’s opposition to SPD officers responding to medical emergencies. But former SFD assistant chief A.D. Vickery, who started at the department in 1968 and retired in 2020, said he’s heard alarming reports about police officers “racing to the scene, putting everybody at risk, so they can be the first one to the patient.”

“The Fire Department responds to hundreds of thousands of alarms. We are very cautious. There’s lots of people on the rig all working to make sure we get to the scene in a  appropriate period of time without creating a hazard,” Vickery said. “If police continue to respond to [medical calls] unchecked, you will end up with officers who are EMTs jumping calls so they can get some good publicity, and that’s not what it’s about.”

SPD has declined to comment on the circumstances that led to Dave striking and killing Kandula in a crosswalk the night of January 23. Initially, an SPD blog post said the then-unidentified officer was responding to a nearby emergency call “at the request of” the fire department; later, a department spokeswoman updated the post to say SPD was responding “with” Fire. Subsequently, police chief Adrian Diaz said Dave was “responding as an EMT” to the initial 911 call itself.

Many police department officers are equipped with Narcan (naloxone) nasal spray, which can restore breathing by rapidly reversing the effects of opioids like fentanyl, sending a person who is overdosing into abrupt withdrawal. Although fire department EMTs have carried nasal naloxone since July 2022, the department prefers to deliver oxygen first to restore an overdose victim’s breathing.

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“With the increase in people using both methamphetamine and fentanyl at the same time, our teams then work to stabilize the patient’s breathing with small doses of naloxone ([which]also avoids a painful opiate withdrawal from excessive naloxone) and reverse the overdose,” SFD medical director Dr. Michael Sayre said.

According to one theory, bringing people back slowly also makes it more likely they’ll agree—in their groggy state—to go to the hospital, where they can access opiate withdrawal meds and learn about treatment options. “Some patients, once recovered from the drug’s effects, may refuse transport. That is a concern because it is a lost opportunity to connect patients with support services… that could be offered through the emergency department,” Sayre said.

Although the fire department doesn’t want SPD responding to medical emergencies themselves, they do want police on site when they respond to overdoses. One reason, which Fire Chief Harold Scoggins cited in a recent letter to the city’s Community Police Commission, is that overdose patients can purportedly “become violent” after they’re revived. A spokeswoman for the fire department said patients who overdose on fentanyl while also using meth, in particular, can “become quite agitated… risking harm to themselves and others around them,” because “when both substances are present, the sedative effects of fentanyl are reversed by naloxone, and the stimulant effects of methamphetamine then predominate.”

Curious how often first responders actually encounter hostile situations from bystanders, I requested the fire department’s database of assault reports from EMS calls. In 2022, first responders logged 135 such incidents, which ranged from verbal abuse and threats to punches, “donkey kicks,” and a “wrestling match”; one person threw a hamburger at a fire truck.

But the main reason fire EMS wants police at the scene of overdoses, according to Vickery, is to “control the scene to allow the EMTs or the medical personnel to do their jobs” without having to worry about bystanders or opportunistic thieves. “The environment that the overdoses take place in now is a much more hostile environment,” Vickery said. “In 1968, you might have an overdose in a particular area and it really was isolated to the room and the people that knew them, but there was not this the hostility that exists today.” Overdoses often occur on streets or in encampments, including many that first responders won’t enter without SPD backup.

Curious how often first responders actually encounter hostile situations from bystanders, I requested the fire department’s database of assault reports from EMS calls, which only includes incidents that involved formal reports (in other words, it isn’t comprehensive). In 2022, first responders logged 135 such incidents, which ranged from verbal abuse and threats (“Stated that he was going to kill us and that we were ‘motherf***ers””) to punches, “donkey kicks,” and a “wrestling match”; one person threw a hamburger at a fire truck.

Only a few of the reported incidents involved people brought back from an overdose with naloxone who were “combative” afterward and had to be restrained.

Overall, the reports unsurprisingly include many people in obvious crisis—like the person who was “slamming his head against the sidewalk several times before being restrained by SFD crews for his own safety as well as ours,” or the “well-known [patient]” who threw water on fire fighters before “barricading himself” inside a bathroom.

The tension between police and fire about their roles as first responders isn’t going away, as the police foundation continues to solicit donations for “training, certification, and medical supplies” for cops to respond to emergency calls. Vickery says he has no problem with police officers getting EMT certification on their own time, but says “there needs to be clear delineation” between the role of police providing backup at medical emergencies and fire personnel responding to those emergencies as EMTs. “The fire department doesn’t arrest people—stay within the realm of what your responsibilities are and support each other,” he said.

public safety, The C Is for Crank, Transportation, Uncategorized

Defensive Vision Zero “Top to Bottom Review” Recommends More of the Same

graph showing increase in Seattle traffic deaths from 2015-2021By Erica C. Barnett

Last July, incoming Seattle Department of Transportation director Greg Spotts promised a “top-to-bottom review” of the city’s Vision Zero program—a set of strategies, adopted in 2015, that are supposed to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030. Six months later, that review—titled, rather unimaginatively, “SDOT Vision Zero Top to Bottom Review”—is here. The diagnosis: Seattle is doing lots of great stuff, but if it wants to do better, it needs to do even more of the same—but only to the extent that it can, given all the obstacles that are outside the city’s control.

The review, a 37-page report supplemented by a graphics-heavy 22-page “overview,” includes exactly 100 recommendations—a nice round number that suggests padding. And indeed, almost a quarter of the strategies the report suggests are things SDOT is already doing—for example, “[c]ontinue to clarify and measure desired outcomes of educational programs. Many others are vague to the point of abstraction. What does it mean, for example, for a road engineering department to “[b]e willing to reduce vehicle travel speeds and convenience to improve safety,” or to “[b]uild SDOT Senior Team capacity as ambassadors for Vision Zero”? It’s understandable that this review doesn’t include specific project recommendations for specific streets; what’s perplexing is how few of the recommendations involve quantifiable results: Improve how? Build capacity in what sense? Accelerate how much, and by when?

The overview that accompanies the report does is a bit more specific, highlighting five “momentum-building actions” for 2023. This year, the report says, SDOT should phase in more No Turn on Red signs in downtown Seattle “in time for tourist season and the MLB All-Star Game”; add more leading pedestrian intervals—crosswalk signs that switch to “walk” before cars start moving—”where existing signal systems can support” the change; continue working with Sound Transit to improve safety along light rail in Southeast Seattle; address equity concerns about automatic traffic cameras; and change the role and title of SDOT’s chief engineer to include a focus on safety.

All these goals are limited in scope, either explicitly (protecting downtown tourists but not the rest of the city) or by caveats; they also fail to incorporate measurable goals or milestones that might allow Seattle residents to determine, at the end of the year, whether SDOT did what it said it would do. How many new no-right-turn signs is “more”? Who decides how many pedestrianized intersections are possible, and where? How will we know if the city has addressed equity concerns and is ready to move on to installing cameras to stop people from speeding through school zones?

Lowering the speed limit to 25 mph is fairly meaningless if you design roads to function like highways—as anyone who has tried to cross the street on Rainier Ave. South, where traffic lights are frequently more than a quarter-mile apart, can attest.

The report also fails to address safety on the broadest level, emphasizing individual behavior over the systems that enable and encourage dangerous driving. This echoes Seattle’s previous reports on Vision Zero, including a June 2022 presentation that contains many of the same graphics and recommendations as the new “Top To Bottom Review.” The 2022 report, presented just before Spotts arrived in Seattle, was actually more explicit than the new report in calling out road design as a central issue in traffic deaths, but it also suggested drivers just need to act differently: “We need people driving to slow down,” it implored.

Map showing traffic deaths and serious injuries in Seattle

Careless driving does involve individual choice, but being a “safe driver” is much easier in a system that doesn’t encourage going 60 mph in a 25 mph zone. Lowering the speed limit to 25 mph, for that matter, is fairly meaningless if you design roads to function like highways—as anyone who has tried to cross the street on Rainier Ave. South, where traffic lights are frequently more than a quarter-mile apart, can attest. 

To its credit, the report does note that traffic deaths happen most often on big, busy arterial roads, and acknowledges that crashes “often occur as a result of the way our transportation system has been designed.” However, it fails to recommend meaningful, immediate changes that might reverse bad past design decisions, such as narrowing streets and slowing down traffic to make collisions between cars and other road users less frequent and less deadly.

“One safety treatment is to analyze a street and see if reconfiguring lanes could improve safety and keep people and goods moving,” the report says, referring to the once-controversial idea of restriping roads to reduce the number of lanes. But the “safety treatment,” in reality, isn’t “analyzing” and “seeing if” highway-style city roads would benefit from conversion to slower streets; more than 12 years after the city’s first “road diet,” the concept is proven and does not need more study and analysis. We could just do it!

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And even the recommendations that gesture at future changes to road design focus on the need to educate drivers on what they’ll lose, presenting a reduction in “convenience” (speed) as a negative result of greater safety. If SDOT is going to make roads safer, the report says, it has to let drivers know about the “expected impacts” to their “travel.” It also says that any changes to streets, such as restriping, must “maintain[…] transit and freight networks.” That could be a problem on dangerous arterials like Rainier Ave. S., which serves as a major transit and freight corridor (and is one of the most deadly streets in the city.) Pitting “convenience” against safety is also a false choice; there’s nothing convenient about shutting down a road because another driver has struck and killed another pedestrian.

Besides focusing on driver behavior, the review often uses old data to reach conclusions that may be less applicable in a post-lockdown world. For example, the report concludes that reducing speed limits on arterial streets to 25 mph is a Vision Zero success story, using data from 2018 and 2019 data to show that “lowering speed limits and increasing sign density alone—without any marketing campaigns, additional enforcement, re-timed signals, or engineering changes to the street—resulted in lower speeds and fewer crashes.” But that date all comes from before the pandemic, when fatalities spiked nationwide as people drove faster on emptier streets, disregarding speed limits and driving impaired more frequently.

City Councilmember Tammy Morales represents Southeast Seattle, where roughly half the traffic deaths in the city occur. Last week, she expressed dismay that the city’s Vision Zero report failed to call for “dramatic or swift action to combat the unprecedented number of collisions, injuries, and fatalities on our streets, particularly in District 2. Changing signal timing and adding leading pedestrian intervals will not change the geometry of our streets, and as a result, will likely not change the behavior of users on these dangerous stretches of roadway. These actions are a start, but we need to fundamentally change our streets to address this crisis.”

The Vision Zero Top To Bottom Review indicates that, at an unspecified point in the future, the department will be releasing a formal Vision Zero Action Plan to implement concrete steps to reduce traffic deaths and injuries. For those impacted directly or indirectly by traffic violence, the time for action was years ago.

legislature, Police, public safety

Bill to Allow More Police Pursuits Would Sunset in 2025

By Ryan Packer

Two years ago, as part of a slate of police reform bills, state legislators passed a law barring police officers from pursuing people who fail to pull over when an officer directs them to do so. The only exceptions were if the officer had probable cause to believe the person had committed a violent or sexual crime, or when the officer had reasonable suspicion—a lower standard—to believe they were driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

On Thursday, the House’s House Community Safety, Justice, and Reentry committee advanced an amended version of House Bill 1363, which would allow pursuits under the lower reasonable suspicion standard for a broad number of offenses, including any violent offense, but would not allow police pursuits for any non-violent property crimes. Organizations like the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs have blamed the change in the law has been blamed for a spike in property thefts statewide, particularly stolen vehicles. Law enforcement agencies across the state had been putting their weight behind the original version of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Alicia Rule (D-42, Blaine), that would have allowed pursuits for all criminal offenses. 

Committee chair Roger Goodman (D-45, Redmond) put forward the new version of the bill, which he said is intended to “limit the scope of this bill, but also to keep the conversation going.” The bill includes a 2025 expiration date; if the legislature doesn’t adopt new pursuit rules before then, the rules for pursuits would automatically revert to the 2021 law. 

Only one member of the committee, Rep. Darya Farivar (D-46, Seattle), voted against advancing HB 1363, saying she wants to make long-term changes to the current law this year. While 1363 moves forward on the House side, Democrats in the state senate are advancing a proposal to take a broader look at pursuits.

“I’ve never seen, in my 31 years of law enforcement, the state and the condition of our state when it comes to open lawlessness and complete disregard for our laws that keep the community safe.”—Kent Police Chief Rafael Padilla

When they passed police pursuit law in 2021 reform, legislators said they wanted to reduce the number of high-speed police pursuits because of the risk they posed to the public, including pedestrians. According to an analysis by retired University of Washington researcher Dr. Martina Morris, just three people (all bystanders) have been killed as the result of police pursuits since the new law went into effect in July 2021, compared to nine in a comparable period immediately pre-reform.

Advocates for changing the law, including multiple mayors (though not Bruce Harrell), the Association of Washington Cities (AWC), and the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, said the new law resulted in significant numbers of people taking advantage of it to flee police.

Many cities (though not Seattle) included the issue at the top of their official legislative agenda for 2023. “In 2021, AWC was an engaged supporter on many of the police reforms that the Legislature adopted, but we understand that law enforcement is complex and that sometimes legislation needs revising when the impacts become clearer,” the AWC more than 200 local elected officials said in a letter to legislators this week. ”In the case of the limits adopted on police pursuits, we think revisions are necessary to improve public safety outcomes in our communities.”

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“I’ve never seen, in my 31 years of law enforcement, the state and the condition of our state when it comes to open lawlessness and complete disregard for our laws that keep the community safe,” Kent Police Chief Rafael Padilla told the House Community Safety, Justice, & Reentry committee last month.

Police accountability advocates argue that rolling back the law would erase progress toward reform. “From our view, we’ve got something that’s working. It’s not fun, it’s not comfortable, we have a lot of work to do as a society to figure this stuff out. This bill absolutely does not represent what that positive change and momentum needs to be,” Kurtis Robinson, president of the Spokane NAACP speaking on behalf of the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, told that committee.

Morris’ analysis found that the law has been effective. (An earlier version of the analysis included two deaths caused by a driver who believed he was being pursued. Morris removed that incident during a review of all the pursuit incidents after its inclusion was questioned.)

“Estimates are that on the order of 30 percent of all pursuits end in an accident. When I’m talking about the fatalities, these were the key thing we were interested in, but it’s the tip of the iceberg in terms of the damage that’s caused by pursuits.”—Retired UW researcher Dr. Martina Morris

Morris told PubliCola the benefits of reducing police pursuits go beyond lives saved. “There are public safety risks from pursuits. Fatalities are just one of the parts of the collateral damage with these vehicle pursuits,” she said. “There are also injuries, property damage, and estimates are that on the order of 30 percent of all pursuits end in an accident. When I’m talking about the fatalities, these were the key thing we were interested in, but it’s the tip of the iceberg in terms of the damage that’s caused by pursuits.”

The data primarily comes from the website fatalencounters.org, a database created by researchers at the University of Southern California to track all types of deaths occurring nationwide where police officers are involved. Individual police departments are not required to provide information on these events on their own, so the information has to be obtained through media reports.

An alternative to HB 1363 is currently working its way through the state senate. Senate Bill 5533, sponsored by former Washington State Trooper John Lovick (D-44, Lake Stevens) would keep current state law in place until 2024 while a work group within the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission, comes up with a model pursuit policy for the state to adopt, and do so by fall of 2024. This proposed model policy would outline exactly when police should be able to pursue suspects, and would be created in coordination with representatives of the state’s law enforcement groups.

Any model policy would likely only be binding on police departments who wanted to adopt a more loose pursuit policy; cities like Seattle, which had more stringent requirements on when officers could pursue, would be able to leave those policies in place, leaving open the possibility that some departments could decide to stick with current state law.

But the bill creating a model policy has come under fire by some Republicans, like Sen. John Braun (R-20, Centralia) who said it would be “letting legislative Democrats off the hook” in an op-ed in the Seattle Times last week. Braun is pushing for an immediate fix.

But waiting would also provide additional time for Washington to see how the current law is impacting public safety— whether Dr. Morris’s conclusions continue to bear out. “I can’t create more time for this law to have been in place,” she said of the relatively small sample size at the heart of her study. “But the legislature can.”

 

Drugs, Police, public safety

“Overdose Patients Can Become Violent”: Fire and Police Respond to Questions About Pedestrian Death
File:Seattle fire department medic 80.jpg
Atomic Taco, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Erica C. Barnett

On Wednesday, the Seattle Police and Fire Departments responded to questions from the Community Police Commission about some of the circumstances that may have contributed to the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old pedestrian who was killed in a marked crosswalk by SPD Officer Kevin Dave. Dave was driving to join Seattle Fire Department EMTs at a suspected overdose in South Lake Union. According to the response from Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, Seattle Fire Department policy requires police to be present when SFD responds to overdoses, because “overdose patients can become violent during treatment to reverse the overdose.”

The CPC asked the Fire Department to explain the reason it requires police officers to be present when Fire responds to overdose calls, posing four questions about the policy, how it came about, and “What percentage of drug overdose calls prior to the implementation of this policy included compromised safety, assaults, and/or injuries to SFD personnel related to reversing the effects of an overdose?”

In his response, Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins said that the requirement “goes back at least 20 years and is designed to provide scene safety for firefighters and paramedics as overdose patients can become violent during treatment to reverse the overdose.” He did not answer the CPC’s question about how common it is for people coming out of overdoses to be violent, saying only that “[e]ncountering combative patients or bystanders on emergency responses has unfortunately become a reality for firefighters and paramedics.”

Narcan (or naloxone), the widely available overdose reversal drug, is used daily by non-emergency responders, including drug users themselves, and other public employees are trained to use it in the absence of paramedics or any armed response. In 2019,  then-Washington state health officer Kathy Lofy signed a “standing order” that made Narcan available over the counter without a prescription to any person who wants it, calling it a “very safe,” life-saving medication.

“When weighing the decision to respond using emergency driving, officers must consider if the incident is life threatening, road conditions, vehicle and pedestrian traffic, weather, speed, lighting, and their own driving abilities.”—Police Chief Adrian Diaz

In his letter, Scoggins said SFD has developed a “new method for tracking assaults and threatening behavior experienced by firefighters in the field,” in general, and has begun reporting this information. PubliCola has asked SFD for this data and will update this post with additional information when we receive it.

Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz also responded to the CPC’s questions. After describing the training officers receive in “emergency driving”—driving under emergency circumstances, such as a high-priority call where someone’s life is at risk—Diaz said officers are justified in taking “risks [that] “can result in severe consequences for the public and the officer. … When weighing the decision to respond using emergency driving…. [o]fficers must consider if the incident is life threatening, road conditions, vehicle and pedestrian traffic, weather, speed, lighting, and their own driving abilities.”

Diaz said the fact that the overdose was a Priority 1 call would not, in itself, necessitate emergency driving. “The priority level is a factor to consider but is not generally controlling,” Diaz wrote. “While many Priority 1 calls would warrant emergency driving under our current policy and training, not all do and officers are expected to consider the totality of the circumstances.”

PubliCola has filed a records request the audio from the initial 911 call; SPD categorically denied a separate request for all recorded audio related to the Kandula’s death, citing their ongoing investigation into the incident.

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In a conversation with PubliCola last week, SPD Chief Adrian Diaz noted that Dave is a licensed EMT who was headed to the scene of a medical emergency, implying that he was on the way to respond to the reported overdose, not to provide security for the Fire Department. On February 6, the head of the Seattle Fire Fighters Union, Kenny Stuart, expressed frustration about SPD officers getting trained as EMTs and responding to medical emergencies like overdoses directly, saying this was the responsibility of the fire department, not SPD. (It’s a longstanding, ongoing issue.)

“Our EMS delivery system under the Medic One program is arguably the best in the country, and randomly allowing additional EMTs from other city departments to self-dispatch or to perform EMS functions at an incident does not improve or support the level of care we demand from this program,” Stuart wrote. “In fact, it unnecessarily complicates our response and diminishes the service that the public depends on and expects.”

Seattle Fire Department firefighters and paramedics are “the only personnel that are dispatched as EMTs” to medical emergencies, Stuart continued, “and they should be the only personnel who deliver EMS to the people of Seattle. We need our police officers to provide scene security and protect us so we can do our jobs effectively.”

Several years ago, SFD’s medical director told PubliCola the fire department preferred to use rescue breathing—a method to restore breathing in overdose victims without Narcan—followed by intravenous naloxone to facilitate a slower return to normal breathing without putting a person into instant opiate withdrawal. We’ve asked SFD whether this is still the department’s policy, and how the emergence of fentanyl has impacted overdose response, and will update this post when we hear back.

PubliCola has also reached out to Stuart.

Police, public safety, Transportation

Police Accountability Group Wants Answers on Fatal Collision

By Erica C. Barnett

UPDATE February 15, 2023: The Seattle Police Department and Seattle Fire Department chiefs responded to the CPC’s questions in separate letters today.

The CPC asked the Fire Department to explain the reason it requires police officers to be present when Fire responds to overdose calls, which are categorized as Priority 1 calls, the most urgent priority level. (Officer Kevin Dave was responding to an overdose call when he struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula last month).

In his response, Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins said that the requirement “goes back at least 20 years and is designed to provide scene safety for firefighters and paramedics as overdose patients can become violent during treatment to reverse the overdose.”

Although the letter continues, “Encountering combative patients or bystanders on emergency responses has unfortunately become a reality for firefighters and paramedics,” Scoggins does not quantify how often this happens or why; Narcan, the widely available overdose reversal drug, is used daily by non-emergency responders, including drug users themselves, and other public employees are trained to use it in the absence of paramedics or any armed response.

Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz also responded to the CPC’s questions. After describing the training officers receive in “emergency driving”—driving under emergency circumstances, such as a high-priority call where someone’s life is at risk—Diaz said officers are justified in taking “risks [that] “can result in severe consequences for the public and the officer. … When weighing the decision to respond using emergency driving…. [o]fficers must consider if the incident is life threatening, road conditions, vehicle and pedestrian traffic, weather, speed, lighting, and their own driving abilities.”

Diaz said the fact that the overdose was a Priority 1 call would not, in itself, necessitate emergency driving. “The priority level is a factor to consider but is not generally controlling,” Diaz wrote. “While many Priority 1 calls would warrant emergency driving under our current policy and training, not all do and officers are expected to consider the totality of the circumstances.”

Original story follows.

It’s unclear how fast Dave was driving or whether his decision to engage in emergency driving was within department policy.

The Seattle Community Police Commission, one of three city police oversight bodies, sent letters to the Seattle Police Department and Seattle Fire Department last week seeking information about policies that may have contributed to the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, the 23-year-old woman who was struck and killed by SPD officer Kevin Austin Dave last month. Kandula was crossing Dexter Ave. in a marked crosswalk when Dave, who was driving in an SPD SUV to join Seattle Fire Department first responders at a potential overdose nearby, struck and killed her.

SPD has not responded to questions about how fast Dave was driving or whether he stopped to help Kandula after striking her. In a statement , Police Chief Adrian Diaz noted that Dave is an EMT and said he “did have his emergency lights on and was clearing intersections with his siren,” a comment that implies Dave had “cleared” the crosswalk where Kandula was walking.

According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, a person struck by a vehicle at 25 miles per hour, the speed limit on Dexter, stands just over a 10 percent chance of dying from their injuries; at 40 mph, that risk goes up to 45 percent, and 75 percent of people hit at 50 mph will die.

The CPC’s questions for SPD revolve around the department’s policies and training for “emergency driving,” including how officers are trained to decide when driving faster or with less caution outweighs the risks, whether an officer who hits a bystander on the way to a call is supposed to stop and render aid, and whether officers are trained to always treat every high-priority call as an emergency requiring a speedy response. (Overdoses are classified as Priority 1 calls, the same category as active shooters and armed robberies).

The questions for the fire department concern an SFD policy that requires police to accompany them on overdose calls; as we’ve reported, this policy appears to stem from concerns that people revived from overdoses may be violent toward first responders, although it’s unclear how often this has actually happened or whether the presence of police has been effective at reducing this purported risk.

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CPC co-chair Joel Merkel, who spearheaded the letter, says the department’s manual includes detailed instructions for pursuing drivers who fail to stop (an issue that’s at the heart of a heated legislative battle in Olympia right now), but comparatively little information about how officers are supposed to drive when responding to various types of emergencies. Last year, lawmakers barred police from chasing drivers except for violent crimes and suspected DUIs; despite data showing the new law has already saved lives, lawmakers are considering legislation that would roll back the partial ban.

“One of the reasons the vehicle pursuit bill was enacted in 2021 is because operating a police vehicle outside of a normal traffic pattern is very dangerous. Well, so is emergency response,” Merkel said. “When I as looking at SPD’s policies on pursuing vehicles and emergency response, I saw a huge variable—there’s a ton of parameters on pursuits, but if you look at the emergency response policy it’s comparatively [vague].”

“There’s a ton of non-governmental responses to overdoses that don’t involve the police and they go just fine.”—Joel Merkel, co-chair, Seattle Community Police Commission

Similarly, Merkel said, the CPC couldn’t find a written policy requiring police to respond to overdoses or documentation of people attacking first responders upon being revived by emergency breathing or Narcan. “There’s a ton of non-governmental responses to overdoses that don’t involve the police and they go just fine,” Merkel said.

It’s unclear whether this call even involved an overdose reversal; a Fire Department spokeswoman said “the patient was evaluated and did not want to be transported to the hospital” but did not provide additional details about the incident.

Spokespeople from both departments told PubliCola they plan to respond to the CPC’s questions as early as this week.

According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, a person struck by a vehicle at 25 miles per hour, the speed limit on Dexter, stands just over a 10 percent chance of dying from their injuries; at 40 mph, that risk goes up to 45 percent, and 75 percent of people hit at 50 mph will die.

 

human services, King County, Police, public safety

King County Council Approves Body-Worn Cameras, Puts Popular LEAD Program on Notice
King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay
King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay

This post has been updated to include comments from King County Council budget committee chair Joe McDermott.

By Erica C. Barnett

The King County Council’s budget committee adopted the county’s two-year budget Thursday, including a controversial amendment that would require King County Sheriff’s deputies to wear body cameras on the job—while providing ample leeway for officers to turn their cameras off and review camera footage before giving a statement in most cases.

The King County Police Officers’ Guild agreed to the $4 million body-worn camera program as part of its latest collective bargaining with the county, adopted this week. While the proposal would finally bring King County in line with the Seattle Police Department, whose officers began wearing body cameras five years ago, it also provides broad leeway for officers to turn off their cameras whenever they perceive an “exigent circumstance” that could justify their decision, or when they’re going into a location where a person might have a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” such as someone’s home.

The policy also gives officers unusual latitude to review bodycam footage before providing their version of events in all cases except allegations of “serious force”—opening up the possibility that an officer could use video footage to craft a more consistent or convincing story.

“The list and breadth of the exceptions in the policy are dangerously close to swallowing the [body-worn camera] rule.”—King County Office of Law Enforcement Oversight director Tamer Abouzeid

On Wednesday, Tamer Abouzeid, director of the county’s Office of Law Enforcement Oversight, sent a letter to county county members urging them not to adopt the proposed policy. “The list and breadth of the exceptions in the policy are dangerously close to swallowing the rule,” Abouzeid wrote, citing both the “exigent circumstance” exemption and the proposal to let officers turn off cameras in any location where there’s a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” The privacy exemption, Abouzeid argued, could empower officers to “stop recording inside someone’s home, which is often essential to establishing an accurate account of what happened.” 

Councilmember Girmay Zahilay said he would prefer to renegotiate the body camera policy with the sheriff’s union than adopt a policy that didn’t make stakeholders, including community groups, “feel like there’s going to be accountability.”

Councilmember Claudia Balducci said she agreed the policy was far from perfect, but argued that a flawed policy was better than having no body cameras at all. “I don’t think all of this is baked by us moving forward. I think that we can change some of these things together working with the executive and the sheriff’s office,” Balducci said.

“I think the [new] policy is a good policy that we should implement, and by all means evaluate as we move forward,” council budget chair Joe McDermott told PubliCola. “Legislative bodies have an obligation, also, to evaluate and make sure we have the policy implications we intended and we don’t have unintended consequences.”

Zahilay ended up casting the lone vote against the body camera proposal.

The council also agreed to fund five new investigators for OLEO, which had requested funding for 12 new staffers, not all of them investigators.

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In an unrelated budget amendment that caught its target by surprise, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci proposed requiring the Public Defender Association to go through a competitive procurement process next year if it wants to retain county funding for the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) diversion program, which is active in Seattle, Burien, and White Center. LEAD provides case management and services to people who are involved in the criminal legal system due to poverty or behavioral health conditions, including people experiencing homelessness. King County provides LEAD with about $5 million a year through its Mental Illness and Drug Dependency program.

Explaining her decision to single out LEAD for special scrutiny, Balducci said, “I think regular re-procurement is a best practice and it is regularly used for county programs exclusively. I think that fundamentally what you get out of this is that there’s a formal process, supported by the council in the budget, that will efficiently communicate between [the Department of Community and Human Services] and the providers about the cost of the programs, ensuring an open and fair process, and will springboard an updated contract that creates a clear basis for continued work in this area.”

Balducci did not immediately return a call seeking more information about her amendment.

But DCHS, which falls under the jurisdiction of King County Executive Dow Constantine, has reportedly clashed with the PDA in the past over how the group runs LEAD, which started in the Belltown neighborhood in 2011. Alluding to this “tension,” Councilmember Rod Dembowski asked why the council would want to start down a path that could lead to the complete defunding of LEAD in 2024—for a body of work that was developed by the PDA and is unique to that organization.

“Are we unhappy with the contract today? What’s going on?” Debowski asked. “This is a very important project. These folks have been instrumental in getting folks help and turning them out of the traditional arrest-prosecute-jail model.”

PDA co-director Lisa Daugaard told PubliCola the organization was unaware of Balducci’s proposal until midway through today’s council meeting, when PubliCola contacted her for comment. “There may be a misunderstanding,” Daugaard said. “LEAD funds go through the project manager [historically and currently, the PDA] to multiple service providers—who were all already selected through a competitive process that the county participated in.” Those service providers, which do the on-the-ground work that makes up the bulk of the LEAD program, are REACH and Community Passageways.

Daugaard also noted that the PDA manages LEAD under the direction of a multi-jurisdictional coordinating group, of which King County is just one member. “The Policy Coordinating Group could decide to conduct a competitive process for the project management function” currently filled by the PDA, Daugaard said. “But King County is not the sole stakeholder in that process, and cannot unilaterally make decisions for this multi-partner initiative. We are reaching out to Councilmembers, and will attempt to sort this out in advance of the 2024 budget process.”

The amendment putting LEAD on notice passed, with only Dembowski and Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles voting “no.” The full council will take up the overall county budget next Tuesday, November 15.

City Council, Mayor Harrell, Police, public safety

Harrell’s Budget Would Resurrect Rejected Gunfire Detection System
Mayor Bruce Harrell and City Councilmember Sara Nelson at a recent event in the University District
Mayor Bruce Harrell and City Councilmember Sara Nelson at a recent event in the University District

By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this year, with the city facing a budget gap of more than $140 million, Mayor Bruce Harrell asked all city departments to come up with potential budget cuts ranging from 3 to 6 percent. His proposed 2023 budget implements some of those cuts, reducing the budgets for the Human Services Department, the Office of Labor Standards, the Department of Neighborhoods, and the Office of Emergency Management, among others.

But one department remains sacrosanct: The Seattle Police Department, whose budget is set to swell substantially despite a well-documented glut of vacant, but still funded, positions. The bulk of that growth will come from re-absorbing city’s parking enforcement officers (moved to the Seattle Department of Transportation last year as part of an effort to civilianize some police jobs) into the department.“The methodology of the Journal of Urban Health study is flawed because the assessment of ShotSpotter’s efficacy was measured using data from across entire counties, when ShotSpotter coverage areas typically only cover a small part of counties. ShotSpotter does not detect and report incidents of gunfire outside of the coverage area where they are deployed. Therefore, the system would not alert officers to instances of gunfire in the majority of the geographic areas that were used to measure ShotSpotter’s impact.”

In addition, SPD will use $16 million in paper savings achieved by not funding some vacant positions to pay for a wide array of new investments, including a new acoustic gunfire detection system to “provide the police department with evidence collection capabilities for use in homicide investigations or other incidents involving firearms,” according to the budget. Setting up the system would cost the city $2 million over the next two years. But the plan will face opposition from many on the city council, who argue that the system will do little to increase prosecutions or decrease gun violence in Seattle.

Gunfire detection systems, typically shorthanded as “Shotspotter” for the name of the company that dominates the market, consist of an array of highly sensitive microphones and sensors mounted on street lights or other elevated structures throughout an area,. These sensors, which are sometimes augmented with cameras, detect and determine the approximate location of outdoor sounds that resemble gunfire and and alert human “acoustic experts” who listen to the sounds and filter out false alarms like fireworks and backfiring vehicles. These experts then alert police, who can be dispatched to the scene.

“This technology allows our evidence gatherers to determine where the shots are fired and … go right to where it was; perhaps there would be a car speeding away,” Harrell said. “Cities across the country have used this technology as an evidence gathering tool, not a violence prevention tool. And it’s been effective.”

If that argument sounds familiar, that’s because some Seattle officials have been making it for more than a decade. Both Harrell and former mayor Mike McGinn presented a virtually identical case for Shotspotter in 2012  when they pushed, unsuccessfully, for the city to fund a gunfire locator system.

But ample real-world evidence, then and now, shows that gunfire detection systems have little impact on gun violence investigations and do not reduce gun-related crime. A large study published last year in the Journal of Urban Health, for example, looked at gun homicides, murder arrests, and weapons arrests in 68 large, metropolitan counties that used Shotspotter between 1999 and 2016. The system, the study concluded, had “no significant impact on firearm-related homicides or arrest outcomes.” The ShotSpotter spokesperson said this study was flawed because it measured data across entire counties, rather than just the areas where ShotSpotter was deployed. “Therefore, the system would not alert officers to instances of gunfire in the majority of the geographic areas that were used to measure ShotSpotter’s impact.”

A 2016 report from the City Auditor’s Office backed up this finding, noting that “there has been little research to date on the efficacy of acoustic gunshot locator systems for reducing gun crime. … Moreover, although a few available studies have found that acoustic gunshot locator systems can result in slightly faster response times by police, there is no evidence that these small gains in police response times have had a deterrent effect or have led to increased apprehension of offenders.”

That report was addressed to then-city council public safety committee chair Tim Burgess (now Harrell’s chief public safety advisor), who sought funding for Shotspotter over multiple budget cycles.

In Chicago, a review of Shotspotter deployment by the city’s Office of the Inspector General found that police found evidence of a gun-related crime in fewer than one out of every 10 dispatches based on a Shotspotter alert. According to Shotspotter, that report was flawed because it isn’t always possible to gather evidence. “Linking an alert with evidence of a shooting can be challenging as some guns do not eject casings and those that do can eject haphazardly. In addition, a high number of alerts happen late at night making evidence collection difficult as well as engaging witnesses,” they added.

Graph showing Murder and weapons arrest rates per 100,000 population among large metropolitan counties, by ShotSpotter Implementation Status 1999-2016
Murder and weapons arrest rates per 100,000 population among large metropolitan counties, by ShotSpotter Implementation Status 1999-2016; Source: Impact of ShotSpotter Technology on Firearm Homicides and Arrests Among Large Metropolitan Counties: a Longitudinal Analysis, 1999-2016

Those arguments, however, apply equally to any gunfire-related dispatch; the issue the Chicago report was raising was the use of Shotspotter to determine how police resources are directed. Moreover, the “no-casings” argument is dubious; the only kind of commonly purchased guns that do not release casings are revolvers, which—according to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms—make up just 9 percent of US guns sales.

Still, Shotspotter is still in use in Chicago and many other cities—a clear sign, the spokesperson said, that it’s working. “The Chicago Police Department consistently describes ShotSpotter as an important part of their operations,” the spokesperson said.

Other studies have shown that Shotspotter can have unintended consequences unrelated to the system’s ability to locate potential gunfire. Critics point to the potential for racially biased policing and an excessive police presence in communities of color. The Chicago report found that in some cases, officers used the mere presence of a gunshot detection system in an area to justify stopping a person on the street—suggesting that police are on heightened alert in the neighborhoods where the system is deployed.

According to ACLU of Washington Technology & Liberty project manager Jennifer Lee, gunfire detection systems “exacerbate disproportionate policing of communities of color and send police disproportionately into neighborhoods that are already overpoliced.”

Notably, Harrell’s budget says he proposed the system in response to requests from “community liaisons”—”mothers who have been directly impacted by gun violence”—to provide “an ‘equal level of service'” in all neighborhoods. “This group made recommendations in favor of the gunfire detection system technology referencing multiple unsolved homicides in Seattle’s Rainier Beach area,” according to Harrell’s budget.

Gunfire detection technology can also “pick up conversations and sounds that are not gunshots … that can be combined with other information to form an intimate picture of people’s lives,” Jennifer Lee, from the ACLU of Washington, said.

The Shotspotter representative said there is no data to suggest that ShotSpotter “puts police on high alert or creates dangerous situations any more than their response to 911 calls. Rather, ShotSpotter equips police officers with more information than they might typically have when arriving to the scene of a gunshot incident, and they arrive at the scene more situationally aware.”

Other potential unintended consequences include a reduction in 911 calls and an increase in active-shooter alerts at schools, which can lead to traumatic lockdowns. In St. Louis, the number of 911 calls declined dramatically after the city installed Shotspotter “without a corresponding decrease in actual gun incidents,” according to a city council analysis.  And in Washington D.C., Shotspotter detected 249 possible gun-related incidents near schools during a single year, with the neighborhoods surrounding a small number of schools accounting for a disproportionate number of those alerts.

Councilmember Sara Nelson said it was worth funding Shotspotter even if it only “saved [a single] life by allowing an officer to respond more quickly. I think that if any of us were the loved one of that person, we would be happy that we are spending $1 million on this, because life is precious and priceless.”

Any other gunfire detection system, especially one that includes cameras, would probably to undergo mandatory review under the city’s surveillance ordinance, which lays out a lengthy approval process for any new surveillance technology. By seeking $1 million for the technology next year, the ACLU’s Lee says, Harrell is tying up money that could be spent on other, proven gun-violence mitigation programs. “The first step from the mayor’s office should have been to publicly review the technology, draft a surveillance impact report, solicit comments, and seek council approval to see if a budget allocation would even be appropriate,” Lee said. “That money will just sit there in the budget and not be used for actually effective things that have an actual impact on violence.”

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Lee said the ACLU is concerned, among other issues, with the potential chilling effect produced by the presence of dozens or hundreds of microphones, and potentially cameras, in Seattle neighborhoods. Gunfire detection technology can also “pick up conversations and sounds that are not gunshots … that can be combined with other information to form an intimate picture of people’s lives. People might not feel comfortable participating in things like protests, associating with people, going to practicing their religion, freely going to health care clinics, or just gathering in public places.”

If that seems far-fetched, it’s worth recalling that Seattle has a recent history of monitoring people in public spaces, including years of anti-loitering, surveillance, and “drug market” initiatives in the Central District and the installation of surveillance cameras throughout downtown Seattle. Continue reading “Harrell’s Budget Would Resurrect Rejected Gunfire Detection System” →

City Council, Police, public safety

SPD Risk Analysis Recategorized 911 Calls More than Half the Time

Pie chart showing that SPD changed the analysis of the risk of 911 calls 54% of the timeBy Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department presented its initial “risk managed demand” analysis of 911 calls to the city council’s public safety committee earlier this week, a long-awaited presentation that was cut short because council members needed to get to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget speech. The eventual goal of the analysis, which looked at 356 call types and categorized them by the risk of harm they posed to callers, is to come up with a system for routing some calls to non-police responders or co-response teams, in which police serve as backup to service providers; this initial report is just a first step toward that eventual goal.

As we’ve reported, Mayor Bruce Harrell has adopted a go-slow approach to implementing alternatives to police, frustrating some council members who have been pushing for years to implement a pilot for responding to low-risk calls, along the lines of programs already in place in cities across the country, and see how it works. Earlier this month, Harrell’s office indicated they were open to a small pilot along the lines of Eugene’s CAHOOTS program or the Star program in Denver; his proposed budget for 2023 includes about $2 million for this purpose.

First, SPD gave each call type a risk number based on how the city currently responds to calls—an “all-hazards” response that always includes police. Then they applied a “mitigation” factor, essentially asking: What would this call look like if non-police responders were available?

SPD’s analysis looked at 356 different types of calls and categorized them by risk, taking two passes at the question. First, they gave each call type a risk number based on how the city currently responds to calls—an “all-hazards” response that always includes police. Then they applied a “mitigation” factor, essentially asking: What would this call look like if non-police responders were available to go out either alone or in tandem with police?

Between the two rounds, SPD data crunchers manually “recoded” more than half of all calls; 31 percent were “upgraded” to a higher risk level (meaning SPD believes police need to be present) and 23 percent were downgraded to a lower risk, based on the assumption that non-police responders would de-escalate a situation. SPD Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey told the council that, for example, a welfare check might be categorized as Tier 1 (the highest-risk situation, requiring police), but further analysis would downgrade it to a Tier 3, which a social service provider could respond to with police backup.

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In response to questions from committee chair Lisa Herbold and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, Maxey said SPD looked at the risk to people on the civilian end of 911 calls, rather than police, because the estimate of risk to police would have to be based on the current all-hazards response, which created the risk of “bootstrapping” the assumption that the risk to officers is generally higher than it is. “It seems like a completely different exercise to me,” Herbold said. “If you include use of force, then we are skewing the data in favor of a police response,” Maxey responded.

Herbold told PubliCola she was also concerned about the fact that SPD’s modeling required so much intervention by a human being who reversed the initial finding more than half the time. Since SPD’s model “only gets it right about half the time,” she said, “is this one performing the way SPD wants it to perform? Should we think about revising the formula?” It may be, ultimately, that there is no truly objective formula for pinpointing how much risk every 911 call poses to anyone, which means the best course of action could be moving forward with alternative responders based on the imperfect information we do have, rather than perfect information that will never be possible.

During the next phase of the analysis, SPD will begin setting up a “call triage system” in which bots that can process and categorize natural language to help 911 operators categorize calls based on their level of risk, using the “objective” measure of word frequency to augment call-takers’ human instincts. Accenture, a multinational management consulting and data analysis firm that has had a blanket contract with SPD since 2015, is developing that system now.

The public safety committee won’t meet again until December, after adopting the 2023 city budget.