Tag: Sue Rahr

Police

Kevin Dave, Officer Who Struck and Killed 23-Year-Old Student in 2023, Appeals His Firing
The intersection of Dexter and Thomas, where police officer Kevin Dave struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula.

By Erica C. Barnett

Kevin Dave, the Seattle police officer who struck and killed 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula in January 2023, is appealing his firing and seeking reinstatement as a police officer, PubliCola has learned. Interim police chief Sue Rahr fired Dave earlier this month, noting that he had violated several SPD policies on emergency driving as well as the law.

Dave was driving 74 miles an hour—about three times the speed limit—on a wet, rainy night two years ago when he hit Kandula, who had just entered a marked crosswalk on Dexter Ave..

Last year, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Dave, finding that he was responding to a “legitimate emergency”—a reported overdose in South Lake Union. Former police chief Adrian Diaz claimed at the time that Dave was responding “as an EMT” with training in overdose reversal.  However, a disciplinary report signed by Rahr in October found that Dave met all three of the requirements for vehicular homicide—regardless of whether the prosector’s office, using a higher standard of proof, charged him with a crime.

Dave told OPA investigators that he was “responding to a ‘life or death situation,'” the report says, and that he would not have been able to reverse the overdose in time if he had driven more slowly. However, PubliCola’s reporting revealed that the person who called 911 to report the “overdose” was, in fact, “freaking out” after taking too much cocaine; he walked down to the street outside his building before calling 911 and was lucid and relatively calm.

Overdose reversals—which involve rescue breathing or Narcan— are for opiates, and their purpose is to get an unresponsive person breathing again. There is no such thing as an overdose reversal for cocaine.

According to Dave’s discipline report, he told Office of Police Accountability investigators that in the seconds prior to the collision, he “saw a ‘long straight road’ ahead [and] had a ‘clear line of sight,'” so didn’t feel the need to activate his siren before accelerating rapidly. (Dave also claimed he wanted to avoid community complaints about the noise).

But, Rahr’s report notes, “OPA found that you drove faster than was reasonably necessary to safely arrive at the scene under the circumstances, citing, again, the multiple crosswalks and reflective signs indicating the possible presence of crossing pedestrians.”

As for possible “community complaints” about siren noise, the report says, “It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate circumstance for using a continuous siren than the factors [you] faced.”

“When OPA noted that an independent investigative entity concluded that the collision might have been avoided if you had been traveling at 50 MPH, you described this as ‘hindsight’ and stated that if you ‘had been doing 20 miles an hour, a collision wouldn’t have occurred, but that speed isn’t reasonable for someone who’s going to have brain damage in under five minutes because of an overdose,” the report continued. Dave also told investigators that Kandula’s “inattention” and the fact that she “ran out in front of” his car were partly to blame for her death.

“You said:  ‘I’m not a jerk, I haven’t s[o]wed mistrust in the community,” Rahr’s report notes, as “an apparent attempt to distinguish your conduct from that of” Daniel Auderer, the officer who was fired after joking with his fellow police union leader Mike Solan about Kandula’s death.

Dave’s attorney argued that he couldn’t possibly have anticipated a pedestrian stepping out into a crosswalk on Dexter Ave., and argued that he was dazzled by all the signs, lights, and reflective construction barriers that lined Dexter Ave. at the time. But Rahr said these factors “should have caused you to slow down,” not speed up.

“The signs warning you that pedestrians might be crossing ahead, the reflection of your lights off of those signs, the oncoming headlights in your eyes, the construction barriers lining and narrowing the lane and inhibiting your view, and the presence of well-marked crosswalk itself, all should have caused you to proceed cautiously rather than speed through the obvious hazard zone. ”

“The most basic foundational principal of emergency vehicle operation is your duty to exercise due care for the safety of all persons when responding to an emergency. It is inconceivable to me that you didn’t understand that at the time of the collision,” Rahr wrote.

“Or that you did not understand the risk to pedestrians that YOU created by driving through a crosswalk at freeway speed, on a dark, wet night, through a construction zone with limited visibility,” Rahr’s report continued. “The risk you created FAR outweighs the risk to a possible overdose victim suffering potential brain damage if you had arrived a few minutes later so you could drive at a safer speed. As it was, you never made it to that call at all.”

The Public Safety Civil Service Commission will hold an initial case conference meeting on Dave’s appeal on January 16, but it could be months before the full commission considers his request for reinstatement. Dave remained a paid SPD employee for two years after killing Kandula.

Police, public safety

SPD Fires Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula Two Years Ago
photo of Jaahnavi Kandula
Jaahnavi Kandula

By Andrew Engelson

On Monday, interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr sent an email to SPD staff announcing that she had fired officer Kevin Dave, who struck and killed 23-year-old graduate student Jaahnavi Kandula in a South Lake Union crosswalk in January 2023 while driving 74 miles per hour. 

PubliCola obtained the email, which was first reported on by The Stranger, from SPD. In it, Rahr noted that the Office of Police Accountability found that Dave had violated four SPD policies. Officers must adhere to laws; officers should modify emergency response when required; officers are responsible for the safe operation of their vehicles; and officers should use emergency lights during emergency responses.

 “I understand and accept that many will not agree with this decision,” Rahr wrote, adding that Dave was trying to get to a “possible overdose victim” and “did not intend to hurt anyone that night.” Rahr concluded, however, that “I cannot accept the tragic consequences of his dangerous driving. His positive intent does not mitigate the poor decision that caused the loss of a human life and brought discredit to the Seattle Police Department.”

The “possible overdose victim” was actually lucid and standing outside his South Lake Union apartment building when he called 911 to say he was “freaking out” on cocaine, telling the 911 dispatcher that his symptoms were “starting to go away.”

PubliCola previously reported that SPD knew before hiring Dave that he had been fired from the Tucson Police Department in 2013 for a “checkered past” that included discipline for several incidents, including one for a “preventable” collision. Dave was also questioned in an erratic driving incident after his firing; a Tucson police officer who spoke with Dave reported that he “appeared to be on some type of narcotic.” PubliCola also found that at the time of the collision with Kandula, Dave did not have a valid Washington driver’s license.

King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion declined to press charges against Dave. City Attorney Ann Davison issued Dave a $5,000 second-degree negligent driving ticket, which he initially challenged, but later agreed to pay.

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Kandula’s killing became an international outrage after police union vice president Daniel Auderer was caught on a body cam video taken shortly after the crash joking with police union president Mike Solan that SPD should “write a check for $11,000” because the young woman had “limited value.” Last July, Rahr fired Auderer, who responded with a $20 million tort claim for wrongful termination. 

In September, Kandula’s family announced they were suing the city of Seattle for $110 million plus $11,000, in a direct reference to Auderer’s comment about her “limited value.”

A PubliCola analysis of GPS data from SPD vehicles during the month of January 2023, when Kandula was killed, found that officers, including Auderer, regularly drive at excessive and dangerous speeds. In November, SPD updated its emergency vehicle operations policy, which had been extremely vague—instructing officers to  “drive no faster than their skill and training allows and [what] is reasonably necessary to safely arrive at the scene.” 

Elections, Police

Seattle Nice: Sue Rahr Knows She Doesn’t Know Everything

By Erica C. Barnett

On the latest episode of Seattle Nice, we discuss my interview last week with Seattle’s interim police chief, Sue Rahr. During our interview, Rahr was candid, open about her goals, and—unusually for someone in her position—willing to say, repeatedly, that she isn’t an expert on everything and is open to changing her mind if the evidence points somewhere unexpected.

It’s almost unheard-of for political leaders (which is, in part, what a police chief is) to utter the words “I don’t know,” since that would be an admission of fallibility; how many times have you heard a mayor or city councilmember express uncertainty, or acknowledge that other points of view may also be valid? Flash back to the council’s public safety chair, Bob Kettle, expressing contempt this week for the city’s Office of Civil Rights, which suggested more outreach to marginalized communities that are about to be under 24/7 camera surveillance, or Councilmember Tanya Woo’s insistence that she knows how to handle homelessness because she leads a group that does outreach to encampments in one neighborhood.

Rahr, although a politician, dissembles far less than most. While she was vague about her plans to make SPD a more appealing place for women to work (a tough road, given SPD’s reputation as a deeply misogynistic workplace), she was straightforward about the likely effects of the new Stay Out of Drug Areas and Stay Out of Prostitution Area zones.

In contrast to supporters, like Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Cathy Moore, who have claimed these banishment zones will inspire people to address their addiction or escape exploitative sex work, Rahr acknowledged that she’s playing Whac-a-Mole. “The police cannot solve the problem of addiction. They can’t solve the problem of untreated mental illness,” Rahr said. Her objective is to temporarily “disrupt” areas of concentrated criminal activity, she said, to “try to make the public area safe for people to walk around.”

Do I agree with Rahr that making it easier for aspiring cops to pass the first barrier to entry—the police exam–is a step in the right direction? No (I find the arguments made by the agency that administers these tests convincing), but I appreciate that she has reasons that go beyond “we don’t have the luxury of being picky”—Rahr argues that SPD should look more at a person’s entire background, rather than eliminating potentially good candidates because they were caught shoplifting as teenagers or failed a polygraph test.

Expect fewer fireworks than usual in this discussion about Rahr—followed by my usual exasperation about our second subject, Kshama Sawant, who’s out there making a fool of herself by allying with possible Russian asset Jill Stein’s “Stop Harris” campaign. Unfortunately, despite my prediction a little over a year ago, we are still talking about Sawant.

Police

Interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr: “I’m Super Optimistic About Where We’re Headed”
Photo by Andrew Engelson

By Erica C. Barnett

PubliCola sat down with Interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr last week to talk about police recruitment and hiring, how the department plans to enforce the new SOAP and SODA laws, and how the process of hiring a new permanent police chief is going.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Erica C. Barnett (ECB): I want to talk about recruitment, starting with SPD’s advertising contract. I’ve heard there’s pushback from officers who say the ads (which show male officers performing heroic acts) that they’re not really representative of what an officer does on a day-to-day basis. What do you think of the ads, and do you think that they’re working?

Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr (SR) You know, I don’t know how you measure if they’re working or not. I know that the ads are not popular with police officers. I think there are more effective ways, in my opinion, to inspire and motivate people to apply the Seattle Police Department. One of the things that I have been pushing really hard for, and that we have actually incorporated into some of the videos that we have developed, show female officers doing action assignments in policing. And it’s important to me that we portray what real police work looks like. And sometimes real police work is, you know, sitting down, talking to a child and comforting them. Sometimes real police work is running down the street trying to catch somebody. I just think we need to have realistic ads, and we need to make sure that we’re showing all kinds of different officers doing the work.

ECB: And what about the hiring bonuses? Do you think that they’re the reason more people are applying to be police officers, or are the recent raises a bigger factor?

SR: There’s many different things that impact recruiting numbers—it could be the recruiting campaign, it could be the pay raises, it could be a whole number of things. I don’t have the expertise, and I don’t know who has the expertise, to parse out which one of these different factors increased recruiting.

But I do know that our numbers are up. The way that civil service is processing the applications and administering the testing—that’s being done differently. So instead of getting very large batches of names, it’s metered out so we’re getting a more manageable number of applications. We have really enhanced our backgrounding capacity by contracting with two different organizations that do some of the basic, mundane work of background investigations.

We’re just getting ready to sign a contract with a company that’s developed an app. When a recruit applies, they download the app on their phone, and the app is enhanced with AI, so that we’re staying in constant contact with that applicant. It’s called a high-touch strategy. We know with Millennials and Gen Z, a huge component of effective recruiting is to stay in close touch with them. Once a recruit has expressed interest in coming to work for us, we want to bend over backwards to make them feel welcome. We’re putting together a mentoring-type program where we assign applicants to a person in the department who then stays in contact with them.

Because what we’re really up against is, who can hire good recruits the fastest, and because we’re a large organization, historically, we’ve had a fairly slow process, and we’re trying to get more nimble at that so that we can offer a job much more quickly.

“I believe that the best predictor of future behavior is, how did this person behave in their previous job? What behavior have we seen them demonstrate? As opposed to, how are they responding in a testing environment?”

ECB: There has been a narrative on the current city council that the police test the city uses is too challenging, and that the city should shift to a test that most people pass. The Public Safety Civil Service Commission [the agency that administers the tests] has pointed out that the test was designed to help SPD comply with the consent decree by weeding out people who lack the aptitude to be police officers. You’ve defended adopting a test that lets more people through the gates. Why?

SR: My goal is to get the largest possible pool of candidates, and so I’m just looking at this pragmatically. That is, if I’m a person who wants to apply for a police job, I’m going to [choose] the website [with] the test that sends my results to, you know, 100 different agencies. It would take extra motivation for me to go to the other website that tests for a much smaller number of agencies.  The things that we’re looking for, we will discover in checking references and doing background investigations, I don’t know of a written test that can predict bias or future intention of using force. It would take a lot to convince me that.

And again, I want a huge caveat. I am not an expert on this. I am simply saying from a pragmatic, common-sense standpoint, I believe that the best predictor of future behavior is, how did this person behave in their previous job? What behavior have we seen them demonstrate? As opposed to, how are they responding in a testing environment? In my experience, learning about previous behavior is where I would find the most value, and that’s where I want to put my focus.

ECB: What you’re saying makes me think of Kevin Dave [the officer who struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula, who had a history of alarming incidents in his previous position], to be honest. There was so much previous behavior there that SPD, I think, should have caught and didn’t. He obviously made it through the testing and hiring process. So how do you prevent people like that from getting hired in the future, especially if you make it easier to pass the test?

SR: We have to do a much better backgrounding process. I don’t know what happened in that case. To be honest, I haven’t reviewed the case yet, because I’m still waiting for [the Office of Police Accountability] to do their investigation. So when I get the investigation from them, I will review the entire file. I’m really, really surprised to hear that he was hired with that that information in his background, and I am going to look at what happened. How did we miss that, or if we knew it, why on earth did we hire him? I don’t have the answers to that. But that’s disturbing. I can’t defend that. I don’t know why it happened.

“I don’t think the polygraph should ever be used as a conclusion to anything.”

ECB: One of the things that you have talked about is changing the minimum qualifications to be an officer and considering potentially disqualifying factors on a “case by case basis.”

SR: So I’ll give you two specific examples. One: I have directed the unit to stop doing the oral board panels, and that’s based on what I’ve learned—[that] the value added by an oral board panel is very, very low. And there is research that oral board panels are more likely to introduce bias. [In an oral board], you have a panel of representatives, usually from the department, and what you’re testing is the person’s ability to conduct themselves well during an interview. We do an extensive personal interview of the applicant so we get an idea about their communication skills, their ability to engage in a human conversation, I just don’t think that there is a lot of value added by conducting an oral board. It takes up time and it slows down the process, and I am very skeptical about the value that it adds.

We had another practice: If a person failed their polygraph exam, they were immediately eliminated. I don’t think the polygraph should ever be used as a conclusion to anything. I had experience in the sheriff’s office where we had candidates that had excellent backgrounds, they had excellent job references, and failed the polygraph, and my practice was, let’s interview them and find out why they failed the polygraph, and if we came up with a plausible explanation, then we’re going to go ahead and hire you because all of the predictive behavior that we know about you, like prior performance, all that. Even the state Criminal Justice Training Commission requirements don’t set a threshold for what constitutes passing a polygraph. It simply has to be administered, which I think is fine.

Rahr answered press questions in May after Mayor Bruce Harrell announced her appointment.

ECB: What about other things in people’s backgrounds that might be disqualifying under SPD’s current standards, like reckless driving?

SR: I do know that driving behavior is another one of those areas where past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. So depending on what the what the person’s age was [and] how often they got traffic citations, that would be more of a case by case basis.

I certainly don’t want to unnecessarily weed out a good candidate. And I think as we, as we open our mind to people with different backgrounds and different life experiences, I think we need to really be thoughtful about, you know, is this really a disqualifier?

I mean, I remember when having a tattoo was a disqualifier. My God, we wouldn’t have any cops if having tattoos was a disqualifier. And, you know, wearing a beard. Those two things, 20 years ago, were unthinkable, and there were all sorts of beliefs about the kind of people who get tattoos and have beards.

Continue reading “Interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr: “I’m Super Optimistic About Where We’re Headed”” →

Courts, criminal justice

Fact Check: No, It Doesn’t “Take Five Convictions” Before Youth Can Be Detained for Firearms Felonies

By Erica C. Barnett

At a city council briefing this week, interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr said she had recently learned that “it takes multiple convictions of firearms laws before juveniles are held in detention and held accountable.”

Rahr was responding to comments by Councilmember Maritza Rivera about the need to address gun violence in schools.

“What I have heard,” Rahr continued, “is, it actually takes five convictions before they are actually held in detention. That’s astounding to me. That is absolutely frightening to me.”

Prompted by a reader, we decided to fact-check Rahr’s claim. Turns out, juvenile offenders are absolutely held in detention for firearms offenses, even without a conviction.

According to King County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Jimmy Hung, who heads the juvenile division of the prosecutor’s office, “whether a child is held in detention pre-adjudication is entirely up to the judges, applying the legal standard for holding youth. In practice, I can assure you that children who are charged with felony possession of firearms are regularly held in juvenile detention, even with no prior history.”

SPD spokesman Randy Huserik confirmed that it “Actually, it requires four convictions for this crime before they can be held in a STATE detention facility.” If that is what Rahr meant, it’s significantly less “frightening” and “astounding” than what she seemed to be implying, which is that young people are being convicted of multiple firearms felonies without ever being “held accountable” by being locked up in jail.

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Under state juvenile sentencing guidelines, firearm possession is a Class C felonies subject to local sanctions, which include confinement in juvenile detention for up to 30 days. (More serious felonies come with harsher sanctions, including automatic confinement in a state detention center and sentences of up to five years). After four convictions, young offenders can be held in state juvenile jails, also known as “juvenile rehabilitation” centers, for up to 36 months. These sentencing guidelines have been in place since 1994, when state legislators stiffened penalties for juvenile offenders.

Bob Kettle, head of the council’s public safety committee, said he would add increasing sanctions for kids convicted of firearm possession to the “add that to the list for [the Office of Intergovernmental Relations] to work with Olympia in the upcoming [legislative] sessions, and the list is growing.”

On Thursday, Axios reported that Rahr walked back another statement she made about state law regarding juvenile witnesses,”clarifying that a 2021 state law doesn’t stop police from questioning juveniles who witness crimes.” Previously, Rahr said that the law—which requires police to provide access to an attorney before interrogating minors in criminal investigations—was impeding an investigation into a deadly shooting last month at Garfield High School.

Drugs, King County, Mayor Harrell, Police

County Jail Will Begin Booking Again for Drug Use, Other Misdemeanors In the “Downtown Activation Zone”

By Erica C. Barnett

The King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention has agreed to begin booking people arrested for simple misdemeanors, such as violating a recently passed law criminalizing public drug use and possession, at the request of interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr, PubliCola has learned. The new policy will only apply to people arrested in the so-called Downtown Activation Zone, which stretches from the Chinatown-International District to the Denny Triangle, north of Belltown.

According to the mayor’s office, the agreement is no different than other agreements with the county to jail people committing otherwise non-bookable misdemeanors in special “emphasis areas” like the corner of 12th and Jackson; however, the downtown zone is orders of magnitude larger than prior emphasis areas, and the change in policy has no end date, unlike hot spot policing efforts.

Since the COVID pandemic, the jail has not been booking people arrested for most misdemeanors. Initially, the jail stopped booking because of health concerns; more recently, the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention has restricting bookings because of a chronic shortage of guards at the downtown jail.

According to SPD spokesman Eric Muñoz, the new policy is already in effect, and officers have been given authority to use their “discretion” to decide which people to book into jail and which to divert to other non-law-enforcement options, such as the CARE Team, We Deliver Care, and LEAD. Muñoz said officers haven’t been directed to focus on any offense in particular. The jail currently books people accused of driving under the influence and domestic violence, as well as people identified by City Attorney Ann Davison’s office as “high utilizers” of the court system.

“It really will come down to the individual officer and the discretionary decision they make,” Muñoz said. “Obviously, downtown, we do have prolific drug use, so I imagine a lot of officers will make that arrest, but we do have a CARE program, we have diversion, so there are a lot of options. So it will come down to the discretion of the officer.”

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Sending people to jail is unlikely to have a significant impact on drug use and other misdemeanors downtown, because the vast majority of people jailed for misdemeanors are in jail for three days or less. According to numbers provided by the DAJD, among this group of people held for short periods, the average stay is 1.2 days, or just over 24 hours.

The average daily population of the downtown jail is typically somewhere between 800 and 900 people, with another 600 or so in the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. DAJD spokesman Noah Haglund said the department is “approaching the upper for the number of jail residents we can safely house with current staffing.” The department hopes to hire another 70 corrections officers for the jail, which is down from a shortfall of about 100 officers for most of last year.

Haglund added that it’s ” impossible to predict an exact number of jail residents we can house, since staffing numbers are always in flux. Our capacity varies day-to-day based on factors such as the number of people we are guarding in the hospital as well as court appearances and medical appointments outside the jail that require transports. Also, the need to separate people into different housing units based on gender, medical needs, or behavioral problems means that some housing units won’t be completely full but will still require the same number of staff to operate.”

The decision is separate from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s decision this week to move forward on a contract with the South Correctional Entity, a jail in Des Moines where the city hopes to send misdemeanor defendants from Seattle. According to an internal SPD memo, the city plans to use SCORE to jail people who commit misdemeanors outside downtown.

A spokesperson for Harrell said that “booking in the King County Jail will remain the preferred option for the City. Prior to beginning bookings at SCORE, the City will create clear policies providing guidance on which crimes and detainees may be booked at SCORE.”

At least six people have died at SCORE in just over a year. Under the proposed interlocal agreement between the city and SCORE, Seattle would have to pay to transport inmates from Des Moines to downtown Seattle for all court hearings, which are frequent in misdemeanor cases. King County ended its short-lived contract with SCORE last year.

Through a contract that has not been “rebased,” or updated to account for inflation and capital costs since 2017, the city pays for about 195 beds in the downtown jail, of which about 80 were filled, on average, last month. In the past, the city and county have agreed to use some of the funding for unused beds for health and housing programs, and last year, the council voted to place a proviso, or hold, on $3 million of the jail bed funding with the intent of putting that money toward inflation on future jail costs or other, non-jail purposes.

Earlier this week, Council President Sara Nelson said that when she learned only 80 city-funded beds were full, her response was “I want my money back.” However, Haglund says that because the city hasn’t been paying the true cost of those beds, “there is no underspend, no money to return.”

“While the city’s bed use is lower than the total outlined in the contract, they have not been paying what it actually costs the county to house people they bring to the jail,” Haglund said. If they had and were being billed at the actual cost to the county, even at their current lower billable population, they would be paying a similar amount as what they’re paying now. There is no underspend, no money to return.”