Tag: overdoses

Drugs, King County, Mayor Harrell

What’s Behind the Recent Decline in Overdose Deaths in Seattle?
D. Williams, a LEAD program participant, in his tiny home in North Seattle.

While Seattle’s outgoing mayor and city attorney credit drug arrests and prosecutions, public health evidence suggests other causes.

By Andrew Engelson

Fatal overdoses have declined for two years in a row in Seattle—a sliver of hope in the ongoing opioid epidemic. Mayor Bruce Harrell has claimed greater enforcement of the city’s drug laws has saved lives. Others, including health experts at King County, argue that evidence-based public health approaches should get the credit.

According to Public Health Seattle & King County, the number of fatal drug overdoses in King County has declined 31 percent since hitting a peak in 2023. So far in 2025, the county has confirmed 796 fatal overdoses, including 564 that involved fentanyl—a slight dip since this time in 2024, following a decline of about 22 percent between 2023 and 2024.

Harrell’s office credited a 42 percent increase in felony drug dealing arrests by the Seattle Police Department, along with new programs that have increased access to treatment and buprenorphine, for lowering the number of overdoses. 

“Our comprehensive approach to the fentanyl crisis is showing real results, helping keep our neighborhoods safe,” Harrell said in a statement. “We are aggressively targeting and arresting the drug traffickers and dealers who bring these deadly poisons into our city, and I am grateful for our strong partnership with King County prosecutors in holding offenders accountable.”

But Brad Finegood, who leads the public health department’s opioid and overdose response, said the drop in fatal overdoses in King County is likely due to a multi-pronged public health effort across the county that includes increased access to injectable buprenorphine, a drug that helps suppress cravings for more dangerous opioids like fentanyl, and a massive campaign to distribute the overdose reversal drug naloxone. 

While the decrease is encouraging, Finegood said the numbers are “still at an unacceptable number, and they could go back up real easily.”.

Data as of November 25, 2025.

It’s been two years since the city of Seattle passed a law making it a misdemeanor to possess illegal drugs or use them in public (previously, possession was a felony that the King County Prosecutor’s Office generally declined to prosecute). SPD has used the law to refer about 800 people arrested for minor drug offenses into the LEAD diversion program, which offers people accused of low-level offenses a way to avoid charges and access services. About 500 of those referrals 500 came about as the result of an arrest; the other 300 were “social contact” referrals, in which police officers refer someone to the program without an arrest. 

Meanwhile, outgoing City Attorney Ann Davison’s office prosecuted 215 people under the new drug law between October 2023 and January 2025. Last month, the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD) published a report critical of the law, finding that of the 215 people prosecuted using the law since October 2023, only six completed treatment or received a substance use assessment. 

Drug policy in Seattle will likely look much different in the next four years under progressive mayor-elect Katie Wilson, who campaigned on a public health-focused approach to the fentanyl crisis, and under former prosecutor Erika Evans, who will be replacing Davison, a Republican, as city attorney. Evans says she wants to significiantly reduce the number of people prosecuted for drug use and possession and to “bring back a reimagined community court”—a therapeutic court Davison dismantled in 2023.

Evans called the fact that just six people prosecuted under the drug use law went through treatment or evaluation a “huge failure.” 

“As the next city attorney, [I’m] going to be working to expand our partnership with LEAD to make sure folks that are dealing with substance use disorder are getting connected with services and treatment,” she said.

D. Williams is just one of many people who turned his life around thanks to LEAD.

Williams, who asked PubliCola to use only use his first initial and last name, lives in a cozy 10 foot-by-10 foot shelter at Catholic Community Services’ Junction Point tiny house village in north Seattle. After serving jail time for convictions on possession charges and violating a no-contact order, Williams was in a bad state. 

“It was all bad: homeless, addiction,” Williams said. “Lack of self-worth. A lot of hatred.”

After five people close to him died in close succession, Williams decided he needed to make a change.

In the summer of 2024, Williams asked an officer for a social contact referral to LEAD. He was connected with Casey Pham, a case manager at Evergreen Treatment Service’s REACH program, and started treatment. But like many drug users, Williams only stayed for a few days before leaving the program and going back to using. “I was really sick, real bad,” Williams says of his experience of withdrawal. “But I kept pushing. I kept being persistent.”

Williams said that each time he relapsed, he regretted it. “Every time I did it again, it was with that much more hatred inside of me, and that’s a heavy burden to carry.”

Another time when he sought treatment, William was told he’d need to wait 14 days for an opening. He told the organization, “I don’t know if I’ll even be here. I can’t wait that long.”

Despite the barriers, Williams eventually completed treatment, and though his path to recovery still has its ups and downs, he has a roof over his head and is attending computer science classes at North Seattle College.  “I feel much better. I can lift my head up now,” he said. “I don’t have to walk around with that shame on my back.”

But the fact that the city attorney’s office still prosecuted 215 people was a waste of resources, DPD contends.

Katie Hurley, special counsel for criminal practice and policy at DPD, said many of the people who end up getting prosecuted for drug misdemeanors were arrested for possessing “incredibly small” amounts of drugs. 

In April, according to Seattle Municipal Court records, SPD arrested a man at 12th Ave. S and S Jackson St.—a longtime hot spot for drug activity—and was charged him with possession based on traces of drugs, tin foil, and a straw. The police report did not mention any attempts at diversion. 

Also in April, a man who had previously been found incompetent to stand trial on an unrelated charge was arrested for smoking an unidentified substance. Despite his previous evaluation, Davison’s office charged the man, and two weeks later he was found incompetent to stand trial. He received no referral to LEAD or services.

Last September, another man was arrested at 12th and Jackson for allegedly smoking an illegal substance. He was booked into jail and charged, but later the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.

“It’s an obscene use of resources,” Hurley said. “It’s very dehumanizing that we’re going to lock a person like this up, considering the amount of resources it takes.”  

Tim Robinson, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, pointed to the city attorney’s new Drug Prosecution Alternative (DPA) program that debuted in August, which offers people a chance to avoid prosecution if they get evaluated for substance use disorder. So far, 34 out of 70 people who received offers to participate in the program have chosen to do so, Robinson said.

DPA participants must agree to a “stay out of drug area” (SODA) order, which banishes a person accused of breaking the city’s drug laws from specific areas; violating a SODA order is a separate misdemeanor.

Evans, the incoming city attorney, said that Davison’s drug prosecution alternative is “pretty ridiculous” because it requires people who are using fentanyl to get an evaluation to see if they have a drug problem. “If they get charged with smoking fentanyl, all that’s required is for them to agree to a SODA order placed on them, and then having to get an assessment that tells them whether or not they have a fentanyl addiction. That is wasting our public dollars.”

The city attorney’s office disagrees, claiming the approach has improved public safety. “Drug overdoses in Seattle have declined since the law was enacted and the areas hit hardest by open-air drug markets have seen some meaningful improvement,” Robinson said. “There is more work to be done, but Seattle is safer today than it was four years ago as measured by crime statistics and public opinion polls.”

Items SPD recovered from a felony drug bust (photo via Seattle Police Department).

In September, SPD’s blog featured a flurry of posts about drug seizures and arrests, with accompanying photos of baggies of drugs, cash, and confiscated guns—part of the surge of felony arrests that Harrell said contributed to the recent reduction in overdose deaths.

But a closer look at the cases reveals that many of these arrests were for small-time deals by people who are likely drug users themselves. 

A post on September 29 celebrated SPD arresting a 34-year old man found with a “handgun, $203 cash, and 0.9 grams of Fentanyl.”

A post on September 24 described the arrest of a man on First Hill who had a gun and about 147 grams of cocaine, meth, fentanyl and heroin (about the weight of a deck of cards) who was booked into jail on gun and narcotics violations.

Another September post officers nabbing a suspect and confiscating a whopping $62 in cash, 4 grams of meth, and a set of brass knuckles. 

SPD did not respond to requests for comment on the increase in drug distribution arrests.  

Evidence suggests that disrupting the illicit drug supply can actually lead to an increased risk of overdose, as drug users switch to lesser-known dealers who may be selling a more toxic supply.

Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina whose work on harm reduction earned him a 2025 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, said attributing the decline in overdoses to arrests “seems really naive.”

“There’s no reliable evidence that drug seizures of this magnitude lead to declines in overdose,” Dasgupta said. A peer-reviewed study of trends in drug arrests and overdose rates in Indianapolis, published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2023, found that on average, one week after a police drug seizure, the number of fatal overdoses doubled within a 500 meter radius of the arrest.

“I think the way to interpret these data [about overdoses in Seattle] more scientifically is that overdoses are dropping despite the felony arrests,” said Dasgupta, who was involved in the Indianapolis study. “It’s not the other way around.”

Lisa Daugaard, the co-director of Purpose Dignity Action and creator of the LEAD program (for which she, too, received a genius grant) said it’s ineffective to focus on small-time drug dealers, pointing to research by Dasgupta and other scientists.

“Disrupting harmful dynamics has an obvious superficial appeal, but in a time of ultra-toxic illicit drug supply, many interventions that seem appealing actually are counterproductive,” Daugaard said.

Dasgupta, who worked with harm reduction experts in Seattle while conducting his research, says the decline in Seattle’s fatal overdose rate is likely the result of four trends that are happening across the country. First, he says, illicit drug manufacturers are making the drug supply less toxic by improving quality. “This is a market correction, independent of any law enforcement action,” Dasgupta said.

Second, Gen Z is less inclined to use opioids than its predecessors. “We have a million and a half kids who lost parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents to an overdose in the United States,” Dasgupta said. “That experience of going to those funerals, I guarantee you, is way more likely to change their behaviors and attitudes towards opioids than any educational campaign.”

Third, Dasgupta said, drug users have learned not to use alone, and when they have the resources available, to get their drugs tested for potency.

And fourth, Dasgupta credits “all the community-based interventions that are going on. Clinic-based interventions have greatly expanded availability of addiction treatment as well as naloxone, especially having that be accessible with as little red tape as possible.”

The county public health department is on pace to double the amount of naloxone it distributes through community-based organizations in 2025 over last year, with 30,000 doses distributed in the first half of this year. The department has also trained more than 2,700 people in how to administer naloxone since 2024. In addition, the agency has installed vending machines with free naloxone at five sites across the county.

Finegood says community groups have reported back to Public Health that naloxone from those vending machines have reversed at least 800 overdoses, and 85 percent of drug users told county researchers that they now keep naloxone around when they use. 

Making treatment and medications available to those who want to quit using or reduce their drug use has also been a priority, Finegood said. “We’re continuing to work on lowering those barriers so people can provide access.” 

A fleet of methadone vans run by the county are helping bring treatment closer to where people typically use drugs. 

And in August, the Downtown Emergency Service Center opened the Opioid Recovery & Care Access (ORCA) center, which provides 24/7 care to people recovering from overdoses.

Public Health, Finegood said, has also made an injectable version of  buprenorphine much more accessible by setting up a hotline where users can easily and immediately get a prescription when they’re ready. Finegood also praised the city’s first-in-the-nation pilot buprenorphine program, in which Seattle Fire Department paramedics can administer the drug after overdose to anyone who requests it. 

Kristin Hanson, a spokeswoman for the Seattle Fire Department, said first responders have administered 160 doses of buprenorphine since the program began in 2024.

Finegood says continuing to focus on making access to treatment easier has been a key pillar in Public Health’s efforts to stop the deaths. “We need to continue to do what we know is working, and what evidence shows is working: which is lowering barriers to care,” he said. “Because people want care, people want help. We should be giving people access to care when they’re in a place where they’re willing to receive it, and giving them what they want.” 

Addiction, City Council, Drugs, housing, human services

Auditor: City Needs to Implement Smarter Strategies to Reduce Overdoses and Drug-Related Crime

By Erica C. Barnett

The City Auditor’s Office released a report on Tuesday calling for an “place-based problem-solving approach” to addressing overdoses and drug-related crime, basing its recommendations on local and national research as well as a case study focused on two blocks of Third Avenue between Blanchard and Virginia Streets, where there were 11 fatal overdoses, ten of them in or outside of the three permanent supportive housing buildings in the area.

This section of Third, according to the audit report, had the fourth-highest concentration of overdoses and “crime incidents” in the city; the top ten spots on this list are all in or around downtown, encompassing much of Third Avenue along with hot spots just outside downtown, including 12th and Jackson in the International District, around Harborview hospital on First Hill, and in the area around Pike and Broadway on Capitol Hill.

A “place-based” approach to overdoses and street crimes, according to the report, would include making the areas where drug use and illegal street vendors concentrate more appealing to people using the streets for other purposes— essentially dispersing drug activity and improving overall street safety by activating the sidewalks. For instance, the report identifies opening up sight lines in areas that are currently blocked by construction scaffolding and low-growing shrubs, opening up storefronts that are currently vacant to increase “natural guardianship,” and making other changes that are specific to conditions at specific locations, such as eliminating back-in angled parking on Blanchard Street.

City Council Public Safety Committee chair Bob Kettle put out a statement in response to the audit, saying it showed the need for “additional meaningful action that includes a coordinated effort to address permissive factors at the intersection of public safety and public health.” However, few of the recommendations explicitly involve police or a crackdown on the “permissive environment” Kettle often cites as a reason for crime. (The report does recommend that that Seattle police start investigating fatal overdoses, and says King County transit police should “increase patrol checks of bus stops and shelters” and enforce the Metro code of conduct.)

Instead, the audit points to the community-based project Rainier Beach: A Beautiful Safe Place for Youth, which used a framework developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) to identify non-arrest interventions to address youth crime and victimization in Rainier Beach. Although the project wasn’t connected to an immediate reduction in crime, a followup report found that it “significantly improved community members’ perceptions of serious crime and the police in the short and medium term” and suggested that “even communities with entrenched crime problems can leverage this capacity to reduce crime in the longer term.”

The report also emphasized the need for “evidence-based” approaches to drug use, including medications like naltrexone and methadone that help people reduce or eliminate their opiate use, “wraparound human services,” recovery housing, and harm reduction for people who continue using drugs.

Although Councilmember Sara Nelson, in a letter responding to the audit, wrote that the rise in fatal overdoses “reveal[s] the limitations of relying on our current harm reduction approach to address a drug that is so cheap, ubiquitous, and deadly,” the report actually endorses harm reduction strategies like needle exchanges and naloxone distribution, and calls harm reduction “an essential component of overdose prevention framework.”

The report does note that housing is not a panacea for preventing overdoses, which happen indoors as well as on the street. In 2023, 279 people in subsidized, permanent supportive, or abstinence-based recovery housing died from overdoses in Seattle. “Although housing is essential for addressing homelessness, new research suggests that housing alone does not sufficiently address overdose risk,” the report notes

Nelson, a proponent of abstinence-only treatment, said this finding shows that the city should consider “modifying our current low-barrier, housing first model for city-funded affordable housing projects.”

However, the research the auditor’s report cites did not call for erecting barriers to housing or adopting a “treatment first” model that requires people to get sober before they “qualify” for housing and stay sober if they want to keep it—quite the opposite.

In fact, the author of the forthcoming study has written that existing research suggests the need for both low-barrier housing and “co-location of safe consumption sites, on-site provision of harm-reduction supplies, and expansion of peer workers” at permanent supportive housing sites. The study itself aims to confirm that it’s possible to implement “gold-standard” strategies like harm reduction in permanent supportive housing, not test whether these strategies are worth pursuing.

The study involves implementing three evidence-based strategies—overdose response, harm reduction, and support for substance use disorder treatment—in 20 existing permanent supportive housing buildings in New York.

Addiction, Drugs, homelessness, Mayor Harrell

Downtown Recovery Center Will Give Drug Users New Options After an Overdose

By Erica C. Barnett

The Downtown Emergency Service Center will open Seattle’s first post-overdose recovery center at its headquarters at the historica Morrison Hotel building in Pioneer Square next year. The Overdose Response and Care Access (ORCA) Center, part of a larger new behavioral health clinic, will be a dedicated space for drug users to stabilize, rest, and access voluntary treatment, including long-acting medication, after experiencing a nonfatal overdose.

Currently, when emergency workers revive someone experiencing an overdose in downtown Seattle, their options are basically: Transport the person to Harborview Medical Center or let them go. Those who walk away from an overdose typically seek out more drugs to counteract the effect of overdose reversal drugs like Narcan, which can send users into a state of painful, intense withdrawal.

The ORCA Center offers a third option for emergency workers to take people immediately after an overdose—”breaking the cycle of repeated overdoses” as Mayor Bruce Harrell put it Thursday, “by stopping painful withdrawal symptoms [so] people [can] find a pathway to recovery and support.” Admission to the ORCA Center will be voluntary, as going to the hospital after an overdose is today.

Thursday’s announcement took place in the second-floor area that will house the recovery center, which looks out on Third Avenue through large, semicircular windows. For decades, this floor housed a large, crowded shelter, along with day rooms and a clinic (and, at one time, an enclosed indoor smoking area). Today, the space is a hollowed-out construction zone, with two rows of metal lockers the only visual reminder of the building’s former purpose. Rooms that once held dozens of metal bunk beds are stripped to the studs, with cords hanging from the ceiling, and the floors have been stripped to their bare plywood bases.

PubliCola first reported on DESC’s plans last summer, after Harrell announced he would use $7 million in unspent federal funds to “provide care and treatment services for substance use disorders” in Seattle. DESC will receive $5.65 million of that total to help build out the new $12 million facility, which will also be funded through state and county grants and private donations. The remaining $1.35 million will go to Evergreen Treatment Services, which is building out a new campus on Airport Way.

Recent floods forced ETS to reimagine the facility, which will now include a “fire station-style” building to house its mobile units, which provide methadone treatment to hundreds of clients in downtown Seattle. ETS will also receive another $1 million from the city to add another unit to its mobile-clinic fleet, which ETS director Steve Woolworth described as another important part of the continuum of care for people with opioid use disorder.

Methadone is a highly effective treatment, but federal law requires patients to travel to a physical clinic to get doses until they “earn” take-home doses—a hurdle to recovery that’s even more daunting for people who lack a stable place to live. “Expecting folks who are living unsheltered… to come to a fixed location can’t be the only strategy we’re investing in to address community health,” Woolworth said. “And so what you’ll see from us will be a much more adaptive, flexible and mobile approach to taking medication out to where people are.”

The new recovery center won’t be a shelter, although it will have places for people to sleep. Legislation that established new licenses for 23-hour crisis clinics in 2023 stipulated that these clinics are supposed to offer “recliner chairs,” rather than beds, which is one way these clinics are distinct from hospitals or shelters. But, Malone noted, “true stability” will require places for people to live on a more permanent basis. Continue reading “Downtown Recovery Center Will Give Drug Users New Options After an Overdose” →

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

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.