Tag: Seattle Police Department

Mayor Harrell, Police, public safety

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

By Erica C. Barnett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

City Council, Drugs, Mayor Harrell

After Watering Down Language About Diversion, Committee Moves Drug Criminalization Bill Forward

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council’s public safety committee approved legislation on Tuesday that will empower City Attorney Ann Davison to prosecute people for public drug use and simple possession. Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda cast the lone “no” vote, saying the council should be “focusing how on how we get people into public health services, not how we double down and recreate a punitive system … to prosecute more people.” Committee chair Lisa Herbold, along with Councilmembers Andrew Lewis, Sara Nelson, and Alex Pedersen, voted yes.

The legislation now heads to the full council, which will take it up on September 26—or sooner, if Herbold and council president Debora Juarez decide to amend council rules to push it through faster.

Substantively, the bill is more or less the same as a version the council narrowly rejected, with Lewis casting the deciding vote, in June; that is, it criminalizes public drug use and simple drug possession at the local level, mostly aligning the city’s law with state legislation that made public drug use and simple possession gross misdemeanors earlier this year. (Unlike state law, the city bill exempts cannabis.)

The newest version, which includes pages of new “whereas” clauses describing the fentanyl addiction crisis and stipulating that the city does not want another drug war, says police should show a preference for diversion to treatment and other programs when deciding whether to book people for drug use or possession. The new reference to diversion mirrors the new state law, which says that police are “encouraged to offer a referral” to treatment or  diversion programs “in lieu of arrest.”

Proponents of the bill, including Lewis, called this new clause a substantive change that helped transform the bill into a “balanced” piece of legislation. “What we’re really focusing on here is how to take full advantage of our provider community and the resources that they bring to to the forefront to facilitate warm handoffs from law enforcement” into programs like LEAD (Let Everyone Advance With Dignity), a successful pre-arrest diversion program, Lewis said. The state law adopted earlier this year also encourages LEAD referrals, mentioning the program by name 36 times.

“We have spent the last three years finding one-time funding sources to plug that gap at LEAD. If the funding gap from last year is the same [in Harrell’s 2024 budget], it will start to impugn our ability to actually do what this bill purports that it will do.”—Council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda

For those who end up arrested under the new law, Lewis said, the legislation also provides the option of pre-trial diversion, in which the city attorney’s office would decline to file charges if a person agreed to go through one of several programs offered through Davison’s office. “If they complete that referral, then they decline the the case,” Lewis said during a recent episode of the Seattle Channel’s “Seattle Inside/Out.”. “They won’t pursue it. Incredibly effective program. Twice as many people who go through pre-file diversion do not re-offend as people who go to jail. Very important statistic.”

While this may be true, as PubliCola has reported, the city’s pre-trial diversion programs are targeted toward young adults and people who are generally high-functioning; they are specifically inappropriate for the chronically homeless and profoundly addicted people the drug legislation is meant to target.

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An amendment by Sara Nelson removed language requiring officers “make a reasonable attempt to contact and coordinate efforts for diversion, outreach, and other alternatives to arrest consider diversion” before arresting someone under the law. That amendment, which passed 3-2 (with Mosqueda and Herbold voting “no”) effectively means that it will be up to officers to decide whether to direct people to diversion based on unidentified criteria. The bill says that the mayor plans to issue an executive order stating that diversion is the city’s “standard approach.”

Some councilmembers appeared reassured by this rhetoric, as well as apparent closed-door commitments from Harrell’s office to find money for diversion programs, which are chronically underfunded. But as Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda noted at Tuesday’s meeting, the bill itself commits no new funding to any of the city’s existing diversion programs, which are already stretched thin. This means that the council is putting great faith in Harrell’s budget, which won’t be released until late September. Historically, the mayor’s budget has underfunded diversion programs like LEAD, leading the council to add funding to keep existing programs going.

“We have spent the last three years finding one-time funding sources to plug that gap at LEAD,” Mosqueda noted. “If the funding gap from last year is the same [in Harrell’s 2024 budget], it will start to impugn our ability to actually do what this bill purports that it will do.”

Additionally, Mosqueda noted, the city faces a budget shortfall, starting in 2025, of more than $200 million a year. “Everyone should have that front and center,” she said.

Without new funding, the primary impact of this recommendation could be that existing diversion programs, such as LEAD, start getting new referrals primarily from police, instead of the community-based referrals that now make up the bulk of their work. For most of its existence, LEAD stood for “Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion”; last year, the group changed its name to reflect the shift in its priorities. Reverting to the old model would mean, “effectively, that the only entry point to LEAD is by a police officer,” Mosqueda said.

The committee also voted 3-2 for another amendment from Nelson that water down the second purportedly substantive change to the legislation, which originally would have required officers to use their discretion and judgment to “determine whether the individual, through their actions and conduct, presents a threat of harm to others” before making an arrest.” Nelson’s amendment changes “will” to “may,” making the use of discretion itself discretionary.

The change won’t have much practical impact, since the original version of the bill already defined “harm to others” so broadly it included any “street disorder” witnessed by “businesses, transit riders, and people traveling to school, work, retail stores, or trying to enjoy the City’s parks and other public places.”

But it does codify the notion that police officers get “confused,” as Nelson put it, “in the moment [about] … what we are expecting them to do,” and that requiring them to use their judgment before arresting drug users will make it harder for them to do their jobs (and, presumably, drive them away). “There are practical concerns for officers and prosecutors … includ[ing] time burdens and confusion for the prosecution of criminal cases to time burdens and confusion for officers that are trying to enforce our laws,” Nelson said. Given recent revelations about the way officers behave behind closed doors, one could reasonably argue that officers need more oversight and guidance from the city, not less.

Earlier in the meeting, Mosqueda proposed tightening the definition of “harm to others” to include only physical harm, as opposed to feeling uncomfortable or unsafe. That amendment failed, after Nelson said that someone “being exposed to fentanyl” should be enough to justify an arrest. During public comment, Rev. Harriett Walden, a member of the Community Police Commission, said she “had a fentanyl exposure and almost died.” According to numerous studies, fentanyl vapor contains almost no trace of the drug, and does not pose any physical risk to people who aren’t smoking it.

Police, public safety

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

By Erica C. Barnett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Uncategorized

“Take Care of Our Own”: SPD Precinct Captain’s Letter Urges Cops To Handle “Minor Misconduct” Internally
South Seattle Police Precinct
Image via City of Seattle

By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, the new acting commander of the city’s south police precinct, Captain Rob Brown, sent a document titled “Captain’s Expectations” to his officers and supervisors, laying out a set of expectations that included an exhortation to “take care of our own” by handling “minor misconduct” internally, rather than reporting it to the Office of Police Accountability. The letter also said officers should view themselves as forces of “good” whose job is to “intervene and stop evil” in the world.

The letter begins with a number of benign directives for supervisors: Set clear expectations, teach officers about policies and procedures, ensure that officers’ uniforms look professional. Then—in what could be interpreted as a suggestion not to report misconduct—Brown says supervisors should address “well-intended error[s]” internally by reviewing potential misconduct and addressing policy violations through internal processes such as training or counseling. “If we don’t do so, then the prescribed discipline will be imposed by our external critics without our say in the matter.”

“Don’t leave to our detractors or our robust systems of accountability to seize upon the error and attempt to dictate the resulting discipline,” Brown continues. “Take care of our own.”

The Office of Police Accountability reviews allegations of misconduct and recommends discipline, if any, to the police chief.

Contacted by PubliCola, Brown said his intent was “absolutely not” to disparage OPA or suggest that supervisors and officers keep information from them.

“Fundamentally, our role in society is to fight evil. Evil is visited upon a family that happens to live in a house that is the random backstop for a gang shooting. Evil is the urge to rob a store at gunpoint to feed an insatiable addiction. Evil is the act of a drunk driver that plows head on into a car driven by a single mom headed home from work.”

“I never actually said OPA, for one thing,” Brown said. “I talked about external critics, and we’re often dealing with external critics that will actively look for and find minor policy violations. If we’re looking at minor misconduct [and addressing it] so they know it’s unacceptable, that keeps OPA from having to be involved in that process because the frontline supervisor has located the issue.” Dealing with minor misconduct internally, Brown added, helps keep OPA from being overloaded with insignificant cases.

The Open Oversight website, which includes a database of OPA complaints, shows that Brown—a former bike officer—has been the subject of 14 complaints since 2015. Most of those were not sustained, generally because an OPA investigator concluded they were unfounded, but they show that Brown has had extensive contact with the office that investigates potential officer misconduct.

On Monday, the Seattle Times reported that a federal judge found evidence that Brown, who is white, stopped and detained a Black delivery driver because of his race. OPA dismissed the racial bias complaint as unfounded, but the judge found evidence that Brown’s treatment of the driver, including the decision to draw his gun, showed signs of racial bias; she also found that a subsequent search of the driver’s trunk by Brown and other officers was illegal.

Brown was given a referral to training for one incident, in 2018, involving his supervisory responsibilities. Two of the incidents were designated “contact log,” which often (but not always) indicates that OPA doesn’t have enough information to investigate, while OPA referred another four incidents for “supervisor action,” or training to address performance issues or minor policy violations.

Later in the document, Brown tells officers that their job “matters more than any other profession to the maintenance of a free society.

“Fundamentally, our role in society is to fight evil,” Brown continues.”Evil is visited upon a family that happens to live in a house that is the random backstop for a gang shooting. Evil is the urge to rob a store at gunpoint to feed an insatiable addiction. Evil is the act of a drunk driver that plows head on into a car driven by a single mom headed home from work. You are here to intervene and stop evil, or at least do the best you can to restore safety and order.”

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Asked about his repeated references to “evil”—an extreme and potentially loaded term—Brown said, “When I chose that word, I did not at any point characterize people as evil—I characterized acts as evil. … I did choose those words, ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ because I really wanted to strongly say to the officers how valuable the work they do is. 2020 was really hard, and I wanted to send a very clear message that what these officers are doing out on the streets, it’s very, very important.”

The South Precinct, which includes all of Southeast Seattle, has had a number of high-profile shootings in recent weeks, including an incident in the parking lot of the Rainier Beach Safeway in which five people were shot, and is home to the one of the city’s most dangerous streets for pedestrians and cyclists, Rainier Ave. S.

Read Brown’s full letter, which also says that supervisors should respond to serious calls alongside officers, here.

Addiction, Crime, Drugs, Mayor Harrell

Harrell’s “$27 Million Drug Diversion and Treatment” Plan Would Allow Prosecutions But Add No New Funding
Mayor Bruce Harrell and City Councilmember Sara Nelson, who cosponsored the original drug criminalization bill.

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposal to reintroduce a local drug criminalization ordinance has been widely described as a “plan to combat opioid addiction” that would—as the Seattle Times put it—”[c]ommit $27 million toward enhanced treatment facilities, new addiction services and improved overdose response.”

But this characterization is misleading. For one thing, the $27 million includes no new funding. For another, that total includes both one-time spending and a small annual allocation from last year’s state opioid settlement that will trickle in over the next 18 years.

Of the $27 million, $7 million consists of leftover federal Community Development Block Grant funding that the city did not spend in previous years—a one-time allocation that Harrell’s spokesman, Jamie Housen said will provide “capital funding to prepare existing facilities to provide care and treatment services for substance use disorders.”

Of the $27 million, $7 million consists of leftover federal funding that the city did not spend in previous years. The rest is the total amount the city estimates it will receive from the statewide opioid settlement over the next 18 years—a little over $1 million a year each year, on average, through 2032.

The rest, $20 million, is the total amount the city estimates it will receive from the statewide opioid lawsuit settlement over the next 18 years—a little over $1 million a year each year, on average, through 2032. That’s less than seven-hundredths of one percent of the city’s general-fund budget, and about three-tenths of one percent of the Seattle Police Department’s budget.

Housen said the $1.1 million a year will go toward “programs addressing addiction and improving our treatment and service provision systems.”

Those are surely worthy goals (spending on any kind of treatment or social service is almost certainly better than further criminalizing addiction), but they do not amount to the “enhanced treatment facilities, new addiction services and improved overdose response” Harrell announced his plan would pay for. Nor is the opioid settlement funding new; we’ve been reporting on what it will mean for Seattle, and how the state has directed cities to spend the money, since last year.

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So what does the bill actually do? Exactly what an earlier version of the bill, which the council rejected 5-4, would have done: Empower City Attorney Ann Davison to prosecute people for simple drug possession or for using drugs, except alcohol and marijuana, in public. The substantive portion of the bill, which comes after nearly six pages of nonbinding whereas clauses and statements of fact, is identical to the previous proposal.

In addition, and less substantively, the bill directs the Seattle Police Department to adopt policies governing arrests under the new law, and says that these future policies must “state that diversion and referral to services is the preferred 2 response to possession and public use while acknowledging that arrests are warranted in some situations,” including situations that threaten any person’s safety.

Harrell’s task force on addiction, which includes subgroups that are discussion diversion, treatment, and the role of the municipal court, continues to meet. According to Housen, the groups are focusing on “court systems, arrest and pretrial diversion, and treatment programs” and “are tasked with advancing efforts to improve connections between systems, map and identify gaps in diversion programs, and strengthen partner coordination.”

City Council, Crime, Police

Audit: Police Could Do More, Without Hiring Extra Cops, To Address Retail Theft Rings

By Erica C. Barnett

A report from the city auditor’s office on the city’s response to organized retail theft concluded that the city, particularly the Seattle Police Department, is not doing everything it can to combat local commercial fencing operations that resell goods stolen by individual “boosters,” typically “”people who are homeless and people with substance use disorder,” who receive drugs or small amounts of money in exchange for bearing most of the legal risk for organized theft operations.

The audit, pointedly titled “The City Can Do More to Tackle Organized Retail Crime in Seattle,” points to a number of actions the department could take, without hiring additional staff or increasing its budget, to target people organizing thefts and directing the resale of stolen retail goods. City Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Lisa Herbold announced the audit last year, and its chief author, the City Audit Office’s Research and Evaluation Director Claudia Gross Shader, presented its findings to Herbold’s public safety committee Tuesday morning.

Cities, like Auburn, that have been successful at reducing organized theft have succeeded by taking down the organizers of fencing operations—”cutting off the head of the snake,” as Gross Shader put it Tuesday.

The police department and City Attorney Ann Davison have rolled out numerous initiatives to crack down on the people at the bottom of the fencing food chain—Davison’s “high utilizers” initiative, for example, imposes extra penalties on people arrested repeatedly for stealing from stores—but have not taken meaningful steps to disrupt theft rings by focusing on the people actually running them, the report concludes.

According to the Washington Organized Retail Crime Association, organized retail theft refers to operations in which street-level shoplifters steal items in exchange for drugs or small amounts of money on behalf of fencers, who resell the items in markets that range from sidewalk setups to international theft and resale rings.

Under state law, however, a single shoplifting incident is considered “organized” if a person steals merchandise worth $750 or more in a single incident. As PubliCola has documented, the city has used the organized theft statute to prosecute people stealing valuable items without determining whether they are actually part of any organized theft ring.

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The audit puts a number on this tendency to focus on cases that do not appear to be “organized” in any meaningful sense: Of the 49 “organized retail theft” cases SPD referred to the King County Prosecutor’s Office in 2022, 45 involved thefts that qualified because they were above the $750 threshold, while only the remaining four indisputably involved fencing. The 45 people in the former category were disproportionately Black (38 percent) and included people who were homeless and had substance use disorders.

According to the audit, responding to calls from just the top 100 retail locations in the city used up almost 19,000 hours of police time, equivalent to the work of nine full-time officers—”a significant body of work” that could be streamlined, the report suggests, by using tools like “rapid video response” (essentially a police version of Zoom) to interview store employees instead of sending officers all over town.

Although the report says nothing about police hiring, City Councilmember Sara Nelson said it validated her efforts to secure more funding for police recruitment, and suggested (for the second time in a week) that if the council would  “just lift” a budget restriction that requires council approval before SPD can spend salary savings from unfilled positions, “they could spend that those resources on whatever they need to help with the crime situation.”

Although a report on place-based strategies specifically called for eliminating “extreme measures” like the razor-wire-topped fences the city installed to prevent people from accessing a parking lot at 12th and Jackson, the fences remain, giving the area the feel of a prison camp.

Chiming in a few minutes later, Councilmember Alex Pedersen said the “defunding movement against the police” movement had led to the loss of more than 400 police officers, which he said contributed to the spike in retail theft that began in 2020.

The audit found that although the city does participate in a number of collaborative efforts to address organized theft rings—including state and federal task forces focused on the issue—SPD could be doing a lot more to access existing resources outside the department. For example, the US Department of Justice offers free assistance implementing a strategy called Problem Oriented Policing, or POP, that addresses the conditions that lead people to do things like working for fencers with the goal of preventing crime rather than just reacting to it.

“Although POP has existed since the 1980s, SPD has not systematically implemented it,” the audit says. “In fact, SPD’s lack of experience with POP was seen as a limiting factor in a federally funded pilot project designed to address two downtown Seattle crime hot spots.”

The city should also invest in “place-based strategies”—better lighting, activating vacant lots, and other non-law-enforcement approaches—to make “hot spots” less appealing places for people to operate illegal street markets. SPD proposed 68 such strategies last year for the intersection of 12th and Jackson, a frequent target of aggressive “hot spot” policing operations, but the city has only implemented three of them.

Although the SPD report specifically called for eliminating “extreme measures” like the razor-wire-topped fences the city installed to prevent people from accessing a parking lot at 12th and Jackson—specifically because they make the area feel “unsafe”—the fences remain, giving the area the feel of a prison camp.

Another problem the auditors identified is that when police arrest shoplifters who work for fencing operations, they rarely interview the people they arrest to find out how the operations work, squandering opportunities to disrupt the market for stolen goods.

Last year, as part of an effort to build cases they could actually prosecute, the prosecutor’s office created a checklist of information SPD needed to provide before sending a case to the county. According to the audit, none of the five cases SPD filed after getting the checklist had all the required information, and all five are currently on hold because they lack information the prosecutor needs to move forward. The audit recommends training detectives in how to use the checklist, which includes four items and detailed instructions on how to obtain them.

Police, public safety

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

By Erica C. Barnett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Police, race

SPD Chief Says He Doesn’t Know How Fake Tombstone for Police Shooting Victim Ended Up On Display In Precinct Break Room
Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz appeared before the Community Police Commission Wednesday morning to address a body-worn video showing a fake tombstone with the name of Damarius Butts, who was killed by four SPD officers in 2017, displayed on a shelf above a microwave in a break room at the department’s East Precinct on Capitol Hill. The video also shows large Trump 2020 flag hanging on a back wall of the room.

The Office of Police Accountability (OPA) is investigating the incident.

During his comments, Diaz did not directly apologize for the display, saying only that he “acknowledged the impacts that we created after George Floyd’s murder, and I apologize for those impacts—those impacts that we’re here discussing today.” Diaz added that since 2021, when the video was taken, the department has taken a number of steps to create a “healthy environment,” including a relational policing program called Before the Badge and trainings in a system called Outward Mindset. He also noted that officers were under a great deal of stress during and after the 2020 protests.

“Over the last three years we’ve lost 575-plus officers, [so] our personnel since that time has changed. We are changing,” Diaz said. “We continue to move this department forward. But change takes time.”

“I want to know why this happened. I want to know why it was allowed to continue. I want to know if anyone has been held accountable. I want to know what is being done so it never happens again. I want to know why killing my son and getting away with with it wasn’t enough. I want answers and so far, I haven’t heard any.”—Stephanie Butts, mother of police shooting victim Damarius Butts

In response to questions from CPC member Adrian Leavitt, who is also the attorney for Butts’ surviving family, Diaz said he had no information about where the tombstone came from, how it ended up at the East Precinct, who propped it up on the shelf, how many weeks or months it sat there, or how many people saw it before it was finally removed.

“As far as some of the other details, as far as officers who saw it, who displayed and who put it up, those are stuff that I think OPA will hopefully be able to kind of unwind and be able to articulate what happened,” Diaz said. “We had a significant amount of officers that left the department, many officers from the East Precinct specifically, and so we still don’t know if some of those officers that left the department were a part of that.”

Butts’ mother, Stephanie Butts, said she was shocked when she learned SPD officers were “so callous that they were heating up food in a microwave below my son’s fake tombstone and didn’t see anything wrong with that. … I want to know why this happened. I want to know why it was allowed to continue. I want to know if anyone has been held accountable. I want to know what is being done so it never happens again. I want to know why killing my son and getting away with with it wasn’t enough. I want answers and so far, I haven’t heard any.”

In an official statement released last week, SPD suggested the tombstone may have placed outside the precinct by a protester, and referred to the shelf in the break room as a “storage shelf” where SPD stored items “until they were discarded.” The video does not show any other items in a similar state of “storage.”

According to Leavitt, the tombstone was taken from a nearby memorial for victims of police violence that featured many similar tombstones representing people killed by police.

Diaz said efforts to improve the culture at SPD have already started bearing fruit. “In a short time, our OPA complaints have seen a drastic reduction compared to four years ago and our use of force has seen a drastic reduction, a 40 percent reduction,” Diaz said. “And up until yesterday, we had not had an officer involved shooting involving a person in 13 and a half months.” On Tuesday, police shot a man in downtown who was suspected of stabbing another person a few blocks away. That shooting is currently under internal investigation, according to the department.

 

Morning Fizz, Police

Arbitrator Reinstates Deputy Who Fatally Shot Driver; SPD Officer Fired for “Inexcusable” Twitter Posts Loses Appeal

1. A private arbitrator has reinstated a King County Sheriff’s Office deputy who was fired in 2021 after fatally shooting a man who was driving a stolen truck with a dog inside.

The deputy, George Alvarez, was driving an unmarked Yukon SUV and in plainclothes when he and his partner, Josh Lerum, began following a stolen truck driven by Black Diamond resident Anthony Chilcott.

According to a report from the county’s Office of Law Enforcement Oversight, after seeing the truck parked on the side of the road, Alvarez T-boned Chilcott’s truck with his Yukon, running it up onto some nearby boulders. When Chilcott tried to escape, the two deputies, whose clothes did not identify them as law enforcement, smashed out both of his front windows with sledgehammers, pistol-whipped him, and shot him in the head. The entire incident, from the initial pursuit to Chilcott’s death, took less than four minutes.

King County agreed to pay a $2.5 million settlement to Chilcott’s family in 2021. Then-Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht fired Alvarez, but not Lerum, saying Alvarez had escalated the situation by pulling up on Chilcott when he was stopped, sticking his hand in the truck, and “continuing to break and pull out windows” when he knew backup was on the way, resulting in “in a series of bad tactical decisions.” Alvarez, according to a 2021 article in the Seattle Times, had shot at least five people while on duty in the past, and was the subject of a previous criminal investigation for “roughing up” an informant.

A spokesperson for King County said the county was “disappointed” in the reversal and “stands by its original disciplinary decision. … Given the arbitrator’s order and consistent with our collective bargaining agreement, our Human Resources team will be working with the Sheriff’s Office to determine the next steps for this individual to safely return to service, including determining what additional training is necessary.

The decision by California arbitrator Najeeb Khoury, which reinstates Alvarez without back pay, was posted on the state Public Employee Relations Commission’s website on Monday.

In the decision, the arbitrator argues that the sheriff’s department agreed that Alvarez had failed to de-escalate the situation as he had been trained to do, but said the sheriff’s department had given Alvarez “mixed messages” by encouraging that officers use de-escalation (which the decision describes as “a relatively new concept” at the time of the 2019 shooting) while simultaneously praising the SWAT team member for being a “hunter” who caught “bad guys.”

Additionally, the arbitrator said firing Alvarez was out of proportion to his “failure to perform up to standards on one occasion” and that his decision to use force was understandable given the circumstances.

“Sheriff Cole-Tindall has discretion to determine duty assignments, and the Sheriff does not intend for this individual to return to SWAT duties,” the county spokesperson said. “Deescalation training at the county has evolved since the original incident, and the latest versions help ensure that deputies are better able to respond to situations with best practices.”

According to a 2020 study that examined hundreds of arbitration cases over 15 years, independent arbitrators overturned or reduced police discipline more than half the time, and ordered police departments to rehire officers they terminated 46 percent of the time.

Tamer Abouzeid, the director of King County’s Office of Law Enforcement Oversight, told PubliCola that the decision—which the county has no authority to overturn—highlights the need to reform state law governing arbitration. “Only the state legislature has the power to create consistent standards around police misconduct investigations and discipline, including empowering oversight agencies and department chiefs to hold officers accountable,” he said.

“The decision also highlights that the Sheriff’s Office is using an unnecessarily high burden of proof in making findings, Abouzeid continued, using the high “clear and convincing” evidentiary standard to determine whether an officer violated policy, rather than “the widely accepted ‘preponderance of the evidence’ standard.” This, unlike the arbitrator’s ruling, is a matter of policy and can be changed. “While we do not know whether that would have led to a different result in this case, I hope this decision can act as an impetus for changing the burden in all administrative investigations” to a preponderance of the evidence, Abouzeid said.

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2. Another police officer who was fired for his behavior, Seattle police officer Andrei Constantin, had his appeal dismissed on Tuesday after he failed to show up for his hearing in front of the Public Safety Civil Service Commission. The dismissal means that SPD Chief Adrian Diaz’s decision to fire Constantin over his “inexcusable” social media posts will stand.

The PSCSC, a three-member appointed body that hears appeals from police and firefighters who were fired, demoted or suspended, had blocked out two full days for the hearing. According to PSCSC chair Stacy Connole, who spoke briefly on Tuesday, the commission had “quite extensive discussions” about the schedule for the hearing and had tried to call, text, and email Constantin but was unable to reach him.

According to the SPD disciplinary action report explaining why Constantin was fired, the officer used an anonymous Twitter account to post dozens of “extremely unprofessional, offensive, derogatory, and entirely unacceptable” tweets that “celebrated violence against protesters, ridiculed human beings who were injured or killed, taunted the family members of deceased individuals, and publicly accused SPD of hating its employees, blamed victims of assault, appeared to celebrate a homicide, and stated George Floyd ‘got justice.’” In one case, he told the mother of an activist who was murdered, “Rest in piss bitch.”

Constantin had been the subject of at least nine other disciplinary complaints when he was fired, and received an eight-day unpaid suspension after shattering the driver-side window of someone’s car while they were sitting at a gas station.

Police, public safety

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

By Erica C. Barnett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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