Jaahnavi Kandula

‘A horrific stain on our state:’ on Tacoma’s Northwest ICE “Processing Center”

/

Tacoma Detention Center:

I wrote about the recently filed lawsuit against the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWICP), aka the immigration detention center in Tacoma. In addition to the lawsuit, I cover other reports that have found human rights violations and abuses within the facility, going back to 2008, as well as new legislation proposed by Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck to put a year-long moratorium on new or expanded detention centers within Seattle city limits. 

It’s worth noting that The Geo Group, the company that runs the private and for-profit NWICP, is making huge amounts of money right now, reporting an almost 700% increase in profits in 2025 compared to 2024. 

It’s also worth noting I was unable to determine the status of the contract between The Geo Group and the U.S. government. The last contract was set to expire last fall. 

State Senator Yasmin Trudeau told me she didn’t see what else we could call this detention center besides a concentration camp. She brought up that detainees are often held indefinitely, with no right or ability to contact their family or for their family to know where they are. She discussed the possibility that they can be deported to a country that isn’t even their country of origin. She talked about conditions in which people are starving, have feces in their food, put in solitary confinement (which I go into more detail about in the article). She talked about the lack of due process and basic rights.  

While it is horrifying to sit with the reality of what’s happening in this camp in Tacoma, and in concentration camps being stood up and already extant across the country, I urge all of us to refuse to look away. As Trudeau told me, the NWICP is “a horrific stain on our state.”

Seattle News:

I attended DESC’s grand opening of a new permanent supportive housing building called Clover Place. It’s just south of Woodland Park on 99/Aurora Ave. N.

I also sat down and chatted with Julie Kang, who is running for the open D5 seat this November. 

I heard from the new Seattle City Attorney’s Office that City Attorney Erika Evans issued a memo officially ending her predecessor Ann Davison’s policy of seeking blanket affidavits of prejudice, which Davison had instituted to prevent elected Judge Pooja Vaddadi from hearing most criminal cases at the Seattle Municipal Court. The ACLU of Washington and Evans have jointly moved to dismiss the litigation around Davison’s policy. 

The City of Seattle settled with the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed in January 2023 when then-SPD Officer Kevin Dave ran into her at 74mph while she was in a crosswalk. The City paid the family $29 million plus the $11,000 that then-SPD Officer Daniel Auderer joked about. Both Dave and Auderer were fired from SPD.  (Note: I originally incorrectly said the payment was $110 million, which was the original amount being asked for in the lawsuit. My apologies.)

In January, the City was found negligent in the death of Antonio Mays Jr. in the CHOP in June 2020 and instructed to pay $30.5 million. 

Ben Noble of Council Central Staff is officially retiring in March and will be replaced by Lish Whitson. Whitson’s new deputy director will be Calvin Chow. 

HardPressed has been doing a steady stream of investigative reporting this month, revealing the existence of a secret CCTV camera belonging to SPD that sits on top of the 12th Avenue Arts building in Capitol Hill and another major step taken in SPD’s mission to launch its own drone program. HardPressed also documented SPD’s assistance in providing arrest records for an ICE detention. 

An Office of the Inspector General (OIG) sentinel event review was conducted for the SPD response to counterprotesters at an anti-trans rally held by an extremist group in Cal Anderson Park last spring. The report found that SPD had multiple failures in their response to the counterprotesters. The review process was cut short because DivestSPD published an article about a specific event at the rally with information from the panel, which was supposed to be confidential. 

This leak not only cut the process short, but apparently deeply upset SPD, putting the future of sentinel event reviews in question. However, PubliCola reminds us that SPD has a history of ignoring the recommendations from these reviews, which means their value remains debatable. 

As Glen Stellmacher said on Bluesky, “The specific underlying purpose of the Sentinel Event Review process is to “enhance police legitimacy.” It is not a method of accountability, that’s why it’s conducted in secret. Its whole purpose is to manufacture recommendations that enhance police legitimacy.”

WA State News:

I wrote about why civil rights, privacy, and LGBTQ+ advocates are concerned about the current societal push for age verification systems for social media platforms. In particular, I focused on HB 1834, a bill designed to protect kids from “addictive algorithms” that are common in social media platforms. There was a legal argument about whether the wording in the bill would encourage big tech companies to implement age verification systems in order to avoid liability. 

In an update on Monday, the Attorney General’s Office has said they’re going to stop trying to pass the bill this session. Because HB 2112, another bill that explicitly called for age verification, is also dead for the session, privacy advocates can take a little breath. SB 5984 seems to be avoiding pushing for age verification for now, although it still bears watching. 

Also on Monday, the Senate passed the so-called ‘Millionaires’ tax, which will now head to the House. Governor Bob Ferguson had some additional requirements for the new tax, which he’d like to see implemented before signing. 

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen and Rep. Shaun Scott–who represent the same Seattle district–had a public spat in the middle of a Stranger article. Scott said his Well Washington Fund, which would levy a statewide payroll expense tax, could be implemented and start being assessed by 2027 or possibly even late 2026. Pedersen said this wasn’t true. 

So The Stranger checked with The Employment Security Department, who said Scott was correct. Oops. Both lawmakers are up for election this November. 

State Democrats are also considering backtracking on an increase to the estate tax they passed last year, with the proposal passing the Senate on Monday. 

The new state revenue forecast came out on Monday, and in pleasant news, it’s not looking quite as terrible. The state’s revenue is up $1.855 billion from the last forecast in November. This forecast covers the bienniums of 2025-2027 and 2027-2029. 

Finally, in surveillance news, Amazon-owned Ring canceled its contract with Flock Safety after a controversial Super Bowl ad. However, it seems like their contract with Axon might still be on, at least for now. 

Recent Headlines:

About ICE:

About Everything Else:

 

‘A horrific stain on our state:’ on Tacoma’s Northwest ICE “Processing Center” Read More »

Seattle is the only large city in the US that hasn’t had a homicide in 2025

/

Seattle News:

Seattle is the only large American city that has not yet experienced a homicide this year. 

There was a public safety committee meeting on Tuesday where councilmembers discussed the new less lethal weapons legislation. I wrote about that meeting for The Urbanist. Warning: at times it got rather colorful!

Today, the Council narrowed down the list of candidates for the open D2 council seat from 20 applicants to 6 finalists: Chukundi Salisbury, Mark Solomon, Adonis Ducksworth, Thaddaeus Gregory, Edward Lin, and Hong Chhuor. There will be a public forum for these finalists on Tuesday, January 21 at 5:30pm at Columbia City Theater, hosted by Seattle CityClub. Current councilmembers will make their final selection on Monday, January 27. 

Pedro Gomez, who served as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s director of external affairs, has resigned after facing rape allegations from someone with whom he was having an after-hours business meeting. Marcus Harrison Green interviewed the woman pressing charges who was torn between her views as a prison abolitionist and her desire to protect her community and hold Gomez accountable.

This week PubliCola followed up on the 30×30 pledge made by SPD to have 30% of their sworn staff be women by 2030. In 2024 86% of the 84 new officers hired were men, a number reflective of gender breakdown in applicants more generally.

PubliCola also reported that Kevin Dave, the SPD officer who was fired last week, two years after hitting and killing Jaahnavi Kandula, has appealed his firing. The Public Safety Civil Service Commission held an initial hearing on this appeal on January 16, but the case could take a long time to be decided.

King County News:

King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay was just unanimously chosen by his fellow councilmembers to be the Chair of the King County Council. He is also running for the County Executive position in November, as is fellow Councilmember Claudia Balducci. 

King County Council has a vacancy due to Dave Upthegrove’s recent election to Public Lands Commissioner. Councilmembers will have to select someone to fill Upthegrove’s spot, and committee assignments are expected to be made in February. 

WA State News:

Last week I went down to Olympia for a special media event before the legislative session began this Monday, January 13, which I found very enlightening. As a result, I wrote a piece for The Urbanist: Ferguson Pushes Budget Cuts as Washington Legislature Seeks New Revenue. 

As my readers doubtless know, I cover Seattle’s budget season in some detail every year, and I was pleased to be able to apply some of that budget knowledge to understanding what’s going on with the state’s budget right now. I posted on Bluesky that the state budget that gets passed this year will have reverberations for years to come. We’re still experiencing consequences from the austerity practiced at the state level from the Great Recession, so that gives you an idea of how impactful lawmakers’ choices are this year: how much and where will they cut, what programs will they delay (and what will their plan be for making sure the delay isn’t permanent?), and will they pass new revenue options to help ease the difficulty? 

Even the legislature’s decision as to whether to raise the property tax cap for local municipalities (cities and counties) will have strong ripple effects either way, as King County, for example, continues to struggle with its budget as its revenues have had no way to keep up with expenditures due to the high inflation a few years ago. 

On Wednesday, our new governor, Bob Ferguson, gave his inaugural address, which seems to have made Republicans happier than Democrats. You can read a recent interview with Ferguson here. Ferugson also signed three executive orders on his first day: one to work to protect reproductive rights in Washington and two related to housing regulations and permitting. 

Nick Brown, the new Attorney General taking over the office from Ferguson, is unhappy about the cuts Ferguson has said he wants the office to make. The Seattle Times reported that Ferguson protected the office’s funds while he was Attorney General but as governor has changed his tune. Brown opposes the cut, saying it will impact the office’s ability to take on civil rights and anti-trust cases.

In Praise:

I was thinking over the winter vacation about how to incorporate joy, hope, and a positive vision into the work I do. For those of you who know me personally, it will come as no surprise that these are part of my daily project of living, and yet it is also true that in my journalism work, I am most often covering very serious topics that can be emotionally taxing and discouraging to engage with. 

I also think that political thought does not need to be inherently bleak and depressing, a statement which I realize is especially bold on this particular weekend. But perhaps it is more important now than ever to remember this. 

For an example, I offer up the novel I’ve been working on for the past year, the second in the Satori Chronicles series, entitled Stars, Hide Your Fires. The first novel in that series was distinctly a dystopia, but this new one is not. This new one imagines how a society could be better: not perfect, not a utopia. Indeed, one of the main themes of the book is that societies cannot be static and perfect but must be continually invested into and engaged with or risk falling into complacency and potential injustice. But better. 

In the process of writing this novel, I’ve realized that what seems on the surface to be a simple act–to imagine a world that is a bit better than this one or the dystopia portrayed in the first book–can feel subversive. It was, it turns out, not always easy to imagine such a world and how to set an interesting story within it. It was certainly more difficult than following the tried and true path of the dystopia. In spite of its challenges, it has been a rewarding experiment, trying to create this more positive vision. 

In that spirit, I am experimenting with adding this “In Praise” section to the newsletter. I have been waffling about it, not wanting to create more work for myself, but this morning I was reading Orwell’s Roses, a book by Rebecca Solnit, and I came across this quotation from George Orwell and realized I’d made up my mind:

“A correspondent reproaches me with being ‘negative’ and ‘always attacking things.’ The fact is that we live in a time when causes for rejoicing are not numerous. But I like praising things, when there is anything to praise, and I would like here to write a few lines–they have to be retrospective, unfortunately–in praise of the Woolworth’s Rose.”

What a wonderful thing to publish in a column! Orwell wrote this at the beginning of 1944. Now here, at the beginning of 2025, some of us might also feel like the causes for rejoicing may not be numerous. But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to take some time to appreciate the roses. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle is the only large city in the US that hasn’t had a homicide in 2025 Read More »

Murder numbers dropped dramatically across the nation in 2024

/

Seattle News:

First, SPD interim Chief Sue Rahr decided to fire Kevin Dave, the officer who hit and killed Jaahnavi Kandula two years ago. You can read all about it in my article for The Urbanist.

The Seattle Times is suing SPD for alleged public record violations. This is great news, as it is intensely difficult to get public records from SPD, and Seattle Times is a local outlet with deep enough pockets to fund a lawsuit to try to address the issue. 

The Mayor’s Office sent out a press release celebrating 2024 as the first year SPD has hired more officers than it lost…by one. Given Dave was then immediately fired at the start of 2025, they pretty much broke even. It’s also worth noting that an increase in the number of applications to become an SPD officer does not necessarily translate into a higher number of officers who are ultimately hired. In fact, before he left, former Chief Adrian Diaz mentioned at a committee meeting that the department often has to reject lateral applications because the candidates aren’t suitable for SPD. 

Next week there will be a public safety committee meeting on Tuesday, 1/14 at 9:30am. The sole item on the agenda is the less lethal weapons legislation first discussed in December. There are ten proposed amendments to the base bill, and a committee vote is expected. There will be public comment at the beginning of the meeting. 

King County, WA State, and U.S. News:

The King County assessor, John Wilson, who is now running for King County Executive against King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay, was accused of stalking and harassment by his domestic partner and now-fianceé.

In spite of a significant state budget deficit, Governor-elect Bob Ferguson wants to find $100 million over the next biennium to provide grants to local municipalities to hire more police officers. The idea of helping hire more officers has bipartisan support, but there is an open question as to where exactly the money will come from.  I’ll have more about the state budget situation and legislative priorities for this session coming soon at The Urbanist.

Nationally, murders and other violent crime have dropped dramatically. The New York Times looked at data through October 2024 and reported that “if the drop in murders continued at the same rate for the rest of the year, 2024 had the largest percent decrease — nearly 16 percent — ever recorded nationwide.”

Other violent crimes also fell, as did overall property crime. These latest numbers suggest what I’ve been suggesting for some time already: namely, that the Covid-19 pandemic and the chaos it wrought was a root cause for the higher crime numbers we saw nationally from 2021-2023.

Data analyst Jeff Asher also wrote about this trend, saying, “America’s crime trends in 2024 were remarkably positive with an enormous decline in murder, a continued small but steady decline in violent crime, and a sizable decline in motor vehicle theft on the heels of several years of surges. The nation’s murder rate has largely erased the post-COVID surge and was roughly around or [at] 2019’s level while reported violent and property crime were likely amongst the lowest rates recorded since the 1960s and 1970s.”

Recent Headlines:

 

Murder numbers dropped dramatically across the nation in 2024 Read More »

“Prince” Diaz out, Barnes in, and the outgoing governor wants to tax the rich

/

Housekeeping:

As we reach the end of 2024, I’d like to thank you for joining me for another year of local news, politics, and analysis. And a special thank you to my financial supporters on Patreon, who help to cover Notes from the Emerald City’s hosting fees. 

I’ll be taking the next two weeks off to rest, rejuvenate, and get ready for whatever 2025 brings! I hope all of you have a wonderful end to 2024. 

Seattle News:

I had two stories out in The Urbanist this week: one is an interview with Seattle City Attorney candidate Rory O’Sullivan, and the other is an analysis of the new less lethal weapon crowd control legislation being voted on by Seattle City Council next month.

Big news this week is that Mayor Bruce Harrell fired former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz, who was removed as Chief earlier this year and given a “special assignment” within SPD, continuing to collect his generous salary. You can read about the whole sordid saga at The Stranger, PubliCola, two articles at The Seattle Times, two articles at KUOW, Cascade PBS, or you can go straight to the source and read the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation report.

Diaz had “an intimate or romantic relationship” with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, who he hired and directly supervised. Tompkins didn’t have previous law enforcement experience. A romantic card written by Tompkins featuring an Ewok was found, in which Tompkins compared Diaz to a Disney prince and talked about his kiss. 

How to express true love

Investigators also found multiple SPD employees who said Diaz often talked and bragged about having a sexual relationship with Tompkins. 

The relationship and Diaz’s denials of it violated several SPD policies. Harrell fired Diaz as a result of the investigation’s findings. 

In June, soon after he had been demoted, Diaz went on Jason Rantz’s talk show and said he was “a gay Latino man” to defuse rumors of the romantic relationship with Tompkins. Diaz is now denying allegations of the affair with Tompkins and saying the investigation was flawed.

KUOW also published an interesting piece on how they broke and developed this story.

In another SPD shake-up, SPD Deputy Chief Eric Barden, interim Chief Sue Rahr’s second in command, announced his retirement last Friday, effective immediately. Rahr said Barden is leaving after 38 years to take care of his sick mother. You might remember Barden from a controversy earlier this year when it came out he’d been accused of domestic violence and had allegedly asked a Pierce County deputy to lie about it, a move that resulted in him being placed on the Brady list for dishonest police officers. 

Rahr is appointing Assistant Chief Yvonne Underwood as acting deputy chief and will soon appoint Capt. Lori Aagard to be the acting assistant chief over professional standards.

In MORE big news, Harrell has announced the new permanent SPD Chief: Shon Barnes, the police chief of Madison, Wisconsin, who got some press this week after a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison left three dead. Barnes will need to be confirmed by the City Council before assuming leadership of SPD. You can read more about it at The Seattle Times, Cascade PBS, KUOW, and the City’s press release. 

I will note three red flags that go along with this news. First, there was no public process that went along with the selection of the new Chief. While the public process has often seemed performative to me in the past, I think not having it at all is an unfortunate step in the wrong direction. 

Second, it sounds like Barnes is a proponent of police in schools. In fact, Barnes was at one time a history teacher, and talking to the school resource officer at his school at the time played a role in his decision to enter policing. School resource officers were removed from Seattle Public Schools in 2020 in response to the George Floyd protests. 

Third, Erica Barnett of PubliCola found a 2022 article from Madison about its disparity of arrests: “Less than 7% of Madison’s population is African-American, but Blacks made up 47 percent of those arrested during the first quarter of this year.”

In other news, the CARE alternative response expansion is running behind schedule. Originally CARE was supposed to be covering the entire city by the end of the year. Now it sounds like they won’t be covering that much area until the end of June.

There is more news in the case of SPD Officer Kevin Dave, thanks to The Stranger: “On Wednesday, Seattle Police Officer Kevin Dave admitted to driving negligently when he struck and killed 23-year-old college student Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk last year. In exchange for Dave admitting to the citation, agreeing to pay a $5,000 fine, and attending driving school, the Seattle City Attorney’s Office (CAO) asked the court to waive a 90-day license suspension for Dave.”

The Office of the Inspector General released an audit this week of “Disciplinary Determinations for SPD Sworn Personnel.” PubliCola reported it found that the majority of the time, officers receiving discipline have punishments at the minimum or below of recommended punishment, due to Diaz’s decisions. The same finding was in the 2021 audit, meaning previous Chiefs leaned in a similar direction discipline-wise. It will be interesting to see if Shon Barnes bucks the trend in this regard. PubliCola reports: “The audit also found that there is still a massive backlog of 106 officer appeals awaiting arbitration, with most of those (82) still unresolved since the 2021 audit.”

Washington State News:

Governor Jay Inslee is going out with a bang by proposing a state wealth tax, a 1% annual tax on worldwide wealth of more than $100 million. Just to be clear, anyone who has more than $100 million is very, VERY rich. He is also proposing to raise taxes on businesses, with a temporary 20% tax increase on about 20,000 businesses with high revenues, followed by a 10% across-the-board business tax increase. 

Here is a flavor of the arguments in favor of the wealth tax and against the wealth tax. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this in 2025. 

Inslee’s budget also includes $5.5 million for additional security for Seattle during the World Cup in June of 2026.

Recent Headlines:

“Prince” Diaz out, Barnes in, and the outgoing governor wants to tax the rich Read More »

SPD officers are some of the best-paid workers in the city

/

Election News:

First, the elephant in the room. Last week we had an impactful election.

While the nation elected Republican Donald Trump to be our next president, local results were much more promising for progressives. Interestingly, Washington was one of only two states (along with Utah) who shifted further left rather than right. 

Three of the four Washington state-level initiatives backed by millionaire and hedge fund manager Brian Heywood failed, with Washingtonians voting resoundingly in support of progressive revenue, public education, long-term care insurance made possible by universal participation, and prioritizing the climate and environment. Only the initiative regarding natural gas access succeeded and is now likely to face legal challenges. Initiative 2109, which would have repealed the state level capital gains tax, passed with a resounding 63.91% of votes. 

In Seattle, Alexis Mercedes Rinck decisively triumphed over Tanya Woo. The Council had appointed Woo earlier this year to fill the at-large seat vacated by Teresa Mosqueda, who moved over to the King County Council (where, btw, she is busy working on making their budget process a little more transparent). Rinck currently has 197,428 votes, which is 57.94% of the total vote. The newly formed Progressive People Power PAC spent around $177,000 supporting Rinck.

Meanwhile, Democratic Socialist Shaun Scott, running against Andrea Suarez to be state representative for the 43rd Legislative District, won with 68.53% of the vote. 

Discussions now abound about what these local results could mean for the 2025 elections, when Seattle will be voting for the positions of mayor, city attorney, and the two at-large councilmembers, including Council President Sara Nelson’s seat. 

Budget News:

The second and final Seattle budget public hearing is tomorrow, Tuesday, November 12, beginning at 5pm. Sign up for public comment here. That hearing is followed by three full days of budget meetings to discuss councilmember amendments, so you know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the week. 

Councilmember Cathy Moore proposed a 2% capital gains tax to go into effect at the beginning of 2026. Her co-sponsors are Councilmember Tammy Morales and Councilmember Rob Saka. Her proposed “spending plan” is expressed in a single sentence: “Proceeds of the capital gains excise tax are intended to support rental assistance to rent burdened households, down payment assistance to low, moderate, and workforce households, and food assistance to food insecure households.”

Meanwhile, Budget Chair Dan Strauss’s proposal regarding changing the JumpStart tax legislation would, just as the Mayor’s original proposal did, do away with required percentage allocation of the tax revenue to pay for affordable housing, Green New Deal, and equitable development investments, a policy move I continue to oppose.

Morales has proposed amendments to the Mayor’s proposed JumpStart legislation. She has also proposed two statements of intent (SLIs) regarding progressive revenue, investigating a professional services excise tax and a digital ad tax.

A city budget tracker tool that provided increased transparency to the budget process has been removed. I will say as someone who has followed Seattle’s budget process closely since 2020, there has been a marked difference in reduced transparency this year, especially as key documents aren’t being shared publicly until the very last moment.  

Seattle criminal legal system news:

Andy Engelson reported there was another death in the SCORE jail in August, meaning 8 people have died there in the past 2 years. Seattle has been actively working on a contract with SCORE.

SPD Deputy Chief Eric Barden sent an email to all officers last week celebrating the end of the King County Jail’s booking restrictions for misdemeanors and instructing officers to increase arrests. 

The Office of Police Accountability (OPA) sustained allegations against SPD Officer Kevin Dave, who ran over and killed Jaahnavi Kandula with his patrol car on January 23, 2023. The next step is for discipline to be decided.

Interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr is apparently clashing with the OPA and its civilian director Gino Betts. She has overturned or modified more disciplinary recommendations from the OPA over the last six months than had been done by former Chief Adrian Diaz and former Chief Carmen Best during the last five years. 

Meanwhile, Jamie Tompkins, who was Diaz’s former chief-of-staff who was put on leave from SPD recently, just resigned. There were rumors that she and Diaz were romantically involved.

Ron Willis, an SPD officer, was suspended again (for 90 unpaid hours) for filing excessive overtime hours. PubliCola reported he “reported working 133 hours in a single week, including 93 hours of overtime, plus 10 hours of vacation.” He was first suspended for the same offense back in 2021. Willis has appealed his punishment, saying it’s “excessive.” It’s worth clicking over to the article to read excerpts from Rahr’s report on the matter, in which she sounds quite exasperated by how unrepentant Willis appears.

DivestSPD revealed that five other SPD officers reported more overtime than Willis last year, meaning “it’s mathematically impossible that they didn’t violate the same rules as he did.” However, they do not appear to be under current investigation by the OPA.

Finally, new census data for 2023 shows that in Seattle, law enforcement workers have the second highest level of compensation, with median earnings of $124,600. The highest level of compensation is enjoyed by tech workers (specified as computer and mathematical workers), who earned a median of $157,200. 

As The Seattle Times reports: “While the median earnings for law-enforcement workers was $32,000 lower than that of tech workers last year, the gap could shrink. In May, the Seattle City Council approved a new contract with the Seattle police union that includes significant increases in compensation, and which will make Seattle officers the highest paid in the state.”

The new SPOG contract also meant significant backpay for SPD officers, which would be reflected in their 2024 earnings.

Meanwhile, for 2023, legal workers (aka lawyers) were ranked fourth with median earnings of $116,061. And community and social service workers had median earnings of $58,810, less than half that of the median law enforcement wage.

Recent Headlines:

 

SPD officers are some of the best-paid workers in the city Read More »

What would Seattle do without JumpStart?

/

Seattle News:

Budget Chair Dan Strauss released his balancing package for the 2025-2026 City budget this week (presentation here). This new budget proposal actually increases the amount of JumpStart dollars moved from JumpStart spending priorities to the General Fund, which now clocks in at a gobsmacking $305 million. 

As The Stranger reports: “Strauss’s balancing package proposed two new tiny shelter villages, additional funding to the storefront repair program, four new 911 dispatchers, another $10 million for the Seattle Police Department (SPD), Council Member Rob Saka’s goofy proviso to remove the traffic barrier on he compared to former President Donald Trump’s border wall, and much more.”

You can read more about Saka’s plan to remove a traffic calming measure right next to a preschool here. Not only is the amount he put under proviso for this project a stunning $2 million, but at the budget meeting, Strauss announced that Saka had told him this self-serving measure that will actually decrease safety for those in the neighborhood was his top priority for the budget. You can’t make this stuff up.

You can read my op-ed at The Urbanist about the Mayor’s proposed JumpStart legislation that would remove the guardrails on JumpStart tax revenue spending, permanently siphoning it into the General Fund as needed. The proposed legislation also gets rid of the JumpStart oversight board that was meant to provide much needed oversight and transparency to the expenditures of this major source of progressive revenue for the City. Unsurprisingly, I argue that these are both poor ideas. 

Before we get to this week’s SPD drama, some Seattle Municipal Court news: the ACLU of Washington is suing the Seattle City Attorney over their blanket policy to file affidavits of prejudice against sitting Judge Pooja Vaddadi for all criminal cases. The ACLU states: “The city attorney’s actions go beyond a mere impediment to functionality – the city attorney has effectively removed a sitting judge from the bench.”

On Monday, former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz and SPD Communications Director Jamie Tompkins were placed on paid administrative leave. Diaz is still receiving his annual “chief’s” salary of $339,000, and KIRO reports he hasn’t been seen at Police Headquarters in weeks. 

KUOW reported Diaz was placed on leave for allegedly lying during an investigation. The investigation in question was conducted by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) around a complaint that Diaz had hired a romantic partner to a top-level position at SPD, assumedly Tompkins. KIRO reported Diaz also potentially violated department policy.

Diaz responded by filing a $10 million tort claim against the city, Mayor Bruce Harrell, and Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess. The claim alleges Diaz was discriminated and retaliated against, as well as harassed, when he expressed his sexual orientation to Harrell and Burgess, and also alleges Diaz refused to commit an “illegal act.”

Regarding that illegal act, The Seattle Times reports: “While he was chief, Diaz was also directed to take actions he believed would violate police officers’ due process rights and other regulations, Downs said, declining to share specifics.”

In other news, PubliCola reports that SPD officers have a demonstrated pattern of speeding, even when they’re not responding to high level emergency calls: “The data shows that SPD officers regularly drive at speeds higher than 80 mph and sometimes even over 90 mph, on streets with speed limits between 25 and 30 mph. Officers consistently drive well over 70 mph on perennially dangerous streets such as Aurora Ave. (which accounts for 20% of Seattle’s traffic fatalities) and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S, where the SPD dataset showed at least 270 instances of speeds exceeding 70 mph.”

One noteworthy example is former SPD officer Daniel Auderer, who made international headlines when he was recorded mocking the death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula. On the night he went to assess whether Kevin Dave, the officer who hit and killed Kandula, had been driving impaired, he was driving consistently at 90mph and sometimes over 100mph. This was not, of course, in response to an emergency call. 

King County News:

King County’s 100 Days of Action against gun violence is officially over as of October 18. Gun lockboxes are still in the process of being distributed, with several events planned for November. Next, the Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention will develop a five-year plan.

Recent Headlines:

 

What would Seattle do without JumpStart? Read More »

Permanent SPD Hiring Bonuses and Expanded SODA Zones

/

Budget Talk:

Looking for last-minute plans for tomorrow afternoon? Hosted by the 46th District Democrats, I will be joined by Ron Davis tomorrow, Saturday 9/14 at 2pm to give a presentation about the Seattle city budget and the upcoming budget season. We’re meeting at the Northeast Public Library, 6801 35th Ave NE, and the program will be 90 minutes long. Feel free to come on up and brush up on budget basics!

Seattle News:

On Monday morning, the Seattle City Council is holding a special Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee meeting to discuss legislation that would make SPD officer hiring bonuses permanent. It would also increase the lateral hiring bonus from $30,000 to $50,000. Officers would be eligible for these bonuses if they left SPD for a period of at least two years and then elected to return. Any officer receiving a bonus must then serve at SPD for at least five years. The annual estimated cost of this program is $1.5 million.

Last Tuesday, the Public Safety committee met to discuss the SODA and SOAP legislation, both of which they unanimously passed. You can read my live tweets of the meeting here.

Several new SODA zones were added to the legislation: Pioneer Square, Belltown, Capitol Hill, and the University District, and some added blocks to the CID proposed zone. The SOAP zone ordinance was changed so that the SOAP zones will no longer apply to sex workers, only to buyers and promoters. However, the prostitution loitering law is still part of the ordinance.

The Stranger reported that in an initial draft of the SOAP bill, Moore tried to include funding for The More We Love, a one-year-old nonprofit organization that is mostly known for conducting sweeps. As such funding would be required to go through a competitive bidding process, Moore later retracted that part of the legislation. Currently no additional funding for services is included in the ordinance.

The final vote on this legislation will be on Tuesday, September 17 at 2pm. 

In a graffiti case against SPD, a judge has ordered the city to pay over $750,000 in legal fees for the plaintiffs, who won their jury trial back in June. 

In the case of the death of Black Lives Matter protester Summer Taylor, a jury ruled that the state was not negligent, and that the driver who struck Taylor must pay their family $6 million in damages. 

The family of Jaahnavi Kandula is suing Seattle for $110 million plus $11,000 in a reference to SPOG VP Daniel Auderer’s cruel comment about Kandula’s life having no value. PubliCola reported that attorney Vonda Sargent said Officer Kevin Dave should have never been hired, and the fact that SPD knew about his history and still hired him points to a systemic problem. 

The Seattle Indian Health Board is walking away from working with SPD to improve how officers track cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people and behave with Indigenous communities. In doing so the organization is walking away from a contract of $87,500 per year. 

Abigail Echo-Hawk, the organization’s executive vice president told The Seattle Times, “I’m tired of sitting on committees while people die. We’re going to work with entities that want to change, and I hope SPD will eventually be an organization that wants to meaningfully help.” 

PubliCola has given a rundown of the OPA’s current investigations on former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz. There are currently 14 intake investigations on the former Chief that are pending at OPA.

Recent Headlines:

 

Permanent SPD Hiring Bonuses and Expanded SODA Zones Read More »

Seattle City Council to decide whether to keep promise to students

/

Seattle News:

Interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr announced she decided to fire Officer Daniel Auderer, who infamously laughed and mocked the death of student Jaahnavi Kandula last year. 

At this week’s public safety committee meeting, councilmembers unanimously voted to confirm Amy Smith as permanent Chief of the CARE department. Her confirmation will now move forward for a full vote from Council. 

Also at the meeting, Rahr gave a presentation about her first two months as interim police Chief, focusing on staffing, technology, accountability, and criminal justice partners. She mentioned SPD would need additional funds for their new proposed Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) software. She spoke of the need to differentiate between minor and major misconduct in the service of changing SPD’s culture because of how slow the OPA is to process cases. She also wants to make the officer entrance exam “much more low barrier and faster” and spoke about the department still being 400 officers down. 

I wrote more about Rahr’s decision to fire Dave and her remarks at the public safety committee meeting in an article for The Urbanist, coming out soon, so keep an eye open for that!

Following this presentation was a discussion led by City Attorney Ann Davison, Rahr, and Smith about the criminal justice ecosystem. As Publicola reported, “members of the Seattle City Council outdid each other calling for more police, more jail, and harsher punishments for people, like those who sell drugs, who “need to be contained,” as Councilmember Bob Kettle put it.”

There were also a few fact checks necessary for statements made by Rahr during her brief tenure. Axios reported that Rahr issued a directive this month explaining that a 2021 state law doesn’t prevent police from questioning juvenile witnesses after saying the law was impeding SPD’s investigation of the June 6 shooting at Garfield High School. PubliCola clarified that in spite of a statement by Rahr on Tuesday that “it takes multiple convictions of firearms laws before juveniles are held in detention and held accountable,” juveniles are in fact held in detention for firearms offenses, even without a conviction. Whether they are held in detention is at the discretion of the judges.

Mayor Bruce Harrell announced some new public safety investments in his proposed mid-year supplemental budget, including an additional $800,000 for police recruitment marketing.

Harrell also announced the new SCORE jail pilot program that will allow Seattle to send a limited number of misdemeanor offenders to the Des Moines jail, which has an unusually high inmate death rate. The agreement would authorize Seattle’s use of at least 20 beds at the facility at a cost of between $1.5 million to $3 million. The legislation will need to be approved by the Council before being enacted.

Less than a week before this announcement, Department of Public Defense Director Anita Khandelwal withdrew from the stakeholdering process around this new pilot, saying it didn’t feel like anything she said in those meetings would have any impact on the decision-making process. Khandelwal raised several concerns about the city contracting with SCORE in this way.

A day after the SCORE pilot was announced, the news broke that the King County Jail is lifting some of its booking restrictions for people arrested in a specific geographical zone called the Downtown Activation Zone, which includes parts of downtown, the CID, and Belltown. It will accept bookings for some simple misdemeanors such as public drug use and possession. Thus far it doesn’t appear this change will impact Harrell’s decision to contract with SCORE, which could be used to book people who are arrested for misdemeanors outside of the designated zone. 

Tensions between the city of Seattle and King County continue to grow, with Executive Dow Constantine pushing back against Davison’s claim that the King County Jail booking restrictions are compromising public safety in Seattle, reported by The Seattle Times:

“In a message to Metropolitan King County Council members, sent on behalf of Constantine Wednesday, Penny Lipsou, director of council relations, said Davison’s claims are misguided. The jail makes exceptions to booking restrictions when there is a compelling reason, the message said, and Davison’s office has been ineffective at making those arguments in court.

“Rather than attacking the jail (and in past months, the judges), she should first get her own shop in order,” the message said.

The message goes on to invite Seattle to cancel its contract with the county for jail space.”

The invitation for Seattle to cancel the jail contract is particularly spicy, perhaps reflecting the growing frustration between the two municipalities. The message also mentions that the County is currently subsidizing misdemeanor bookings, meaning Seattle is already not paying their full cost.

Following up on last week’s news, Pierce County will not be charging SPD Deputy Police Chief Eric Barden in a domestic violence criminal case. Barden is still at least temporarily on Pierce County’s Brady list and currently being investigated by the OPA for allegedly asking a Pierce County deputy to lie on a police report.

Gun Violence Initiative:

King County recently kicked off their 100 Days of Action against gun violence, and Councilmember Girmay Zahilay introduced $1 million of funding in the county’s supplemental budget to assist in developing a comprehensive strategic plan for combating gun violence. I wrote about this over at The Urbanist, as well as giving an update on the $20 million allocated in Seattle’s budget process last year for student mental health. (Spoiler: Mayor Bruce Harrell only wants to invest half of it this year.)

Councilmember Tammy Morales pushed back on the plan to only spend half the allocated money on youth mental health, suggesting the council contract directly with schools and community organizations on programs that would help youth in the city thrive, including investing in free third spaces, skill building, jobs and apprenticeships. The council will have to decide whether to pursue this investment strategy when they vote on amendments to the supplemental budget in early August. 

King County News:

King County recently won a $450,000 federal grant to improve youth outcomes and expand alternatives for secure detention in King County. Next month, the King County Council will be considering legislation introduced by Councilmember Reagan Dunn that would declare their intention to keep the youth detention center open. Meanwhile, the youth jail is already understaffed, and the recent move to halt intakes at two of the major long-term state-run youth detention facilities is likely to add more pressure to the population of King County’s youth jail, which isn’t designed for longer-term stays.

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle City Council to decide whether to keep promise to students Read More »

Seattle City Council Pushed for Easier Police Officer Entrance Exam that the Company Doesn’t Even Want to Provide

/

Seattle News:

Seattle City Council voted to pass the expansion of license plate readers (ALPRs). Currently installed in 11 of SPD’s vehicles, the expansion will lead to 360 of SPD’s vehicles having ALPRs. This vote took place in spite of the fact that 3 of the 9 councilmembers were not present at the meeting. Councilmember Cathy Moore asked for a delay of the vote but received no support from her colleagues. It sounds like she intends to abandon her legislation limiting data retention to 48 hours due to the opposition for this data security  measure from the majority of the Council. 

In spite of a few amendments, and without a 48-hour retention limitation, privacy concerns with this expansion still abound, especially for those seeking reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare and undocumented immigrants. At the council meeting, Councilmember Bob Kettle apparently stated that folks are not coming to Washington State for abortions, a statement that is patently untrue.

The Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC) released their report on police officer entrance exams this week. The recommendation about the test remains the same, that Seattle should continue to use the NTN test as opposed to the PST test (that has a significantly higher pass rate). Of particular note, PST asked to not be considered as a testing vendor for Seattle. 

It is also clear that even if PST was willing to work with Seattle (which they are not), their standard test used by smaller agencies in the region would be inappropriate for SPD, and a new test would need to be developed. This would mean that law enforcement applicants would still have to take a separate test to be considered as an SPD officer, which defeats the stated purpose for switching tests. There are also significant legal difficulties involved with Seattle offering both the NTN and PST tests, which would prevent candidates from being ranked equitably and fairly based on their test results, especially given the large difference in pass rate between the tests (NTN has a 73% pass rate while PST has a 90% pass rate). 

Why the City Council spent so much time pushing for a test that the provider doesn’t even want to provide is an interesting question, particularly given the glaring problems with SPD’s backgrounding process that have come to light over the past several months due to the case of Officer Kevin Dave. PubliCola has now reported that Dave, who struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula last year, did not have a valid Washington State driver’s license at the time of the collision. 

Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison announced legislation that would bring Seattle into line with new state law around the definition of street racing. However, her legislation would also institute a $500 fine, which is not required by state law. This legislation will be discussed at the public safety committee meeting this coming Tuesday.

Deputy central staff director Aly Pennucci will be leaving the city after 11 years, to become one of two deputy county executives in Whatcom County. Following Julie Dingley’s departure as director of the city’s budget office, this feels like a painful brain drain before the city has to grapple with the 2025 budget deficit. Readers will remember that Esther Handy was also removed earlier this year from her position as head of Central Staff.

PubliCola reported on the hiring of a new head of the Council’s communications office, Brad Harwood, who has an interesting political past, including being quoted as a spokesperson for the state Republican party.

Former Senior Deputy Mayor (and niece to Mayor Bruce Harrell) Monisha Harrell was pulled over for a traffic stop on Sunday, June 16 that she called “frightening”, because of her car having a license plate cover:

“Harrell, who is Black, said the stop was a clear example of the kind of racial profiling the Seattle Police Department pledged to reduce in 2022, when the department adopted a new policy barring police stops for some minor violations, including missing registration stickers and obscured license tabs.

“Despite the gestures SPD has made toward ending racial profiling, Harrell said, it seems like nothing has changed. “We just went through this whole [process of asking], can we do things to minimize unnecessary stops … because it increases the rate of violence between people and law enforcement,” she said. “Sandra Bland,” the Texas woman who died in a jail cell in 2015 after police pulled her over for a minor traffic violation, “was not that long ago. … I get ‘two steps forward, one step back,’ but I cannot explain to you how far back this goes.””

Data collected by SPD themselves shows they continue to struggle with racial disparity in their stops and frisks, with Black and Indigenous community members five times to seven times more likely to get stopped and six times to seven times more likely to be frisked than White community members. 1 out of every 20 Terry stops conducted by SPD is unconstitutional.  

Former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz came out as gay this week in an interview with conservative talk show host Jason Rantz. He appears to be using this news as a defense against allegations against him of sexual harassment, discrimination, and creating a hostile work environment for Black and women officers. He is also now up for a job as Chief of Police in Austin, Texas.

But as PubliCola reported this week, “several current and former Seattle Police Department officers say Diaz established a “dictatorship” at the department in which officers who speak out against the chief and an inner circle of leadership have been demoted or subject to retaliatory investigations.” It is important to note that this behavior, in addition to the previously stated allegations, is not impossible just because a person is gay.

After the recent shooting and death of a student at Garfield High School, there are discussions about whether school resources officers (SROs) should be put back into Seattle schools. One parent wrote an op-ed in The Stranger about the poor experience her son had with Garfield’s SRO back before they were removed from schools in 2020.

Jail News:

Another person in custody at the SCORE jail in Des Moines died on May 9, PubliCola reported. This is the 6th death since March 2023 and the second death in the last two months. This is a very high rate of deaths for a jail, and particularly concerning given ongoing discussions in Seattle to contract with SCORE.

Crosscut reported on the “grim conditions” at the Patricia H. Clark Children & Family Justice Center–the King County youth jail. Staffing shortages there continue to impact youths’ access to programming, including educational programs and enrichment sessions. Youth go long periods without visitors (including attorneys) and are worried about the quality of their drinking water. As I reported in February, this youth jail was originally slated to be closed by 2025, but Executive Dow Constantine has since walked back this commitment, saying it will now be closed by 2028 at the earliest. 

Recent Headlines:

Seattle City Council Pushed for Easier Police Officer Entrance Exam that the Company Doesn’t Even Want to Provide Read More »

Advocates Oppose New Juvenile Solitary Confinement Legislation in King County

/

Seattle News:

Another lawsuit has been filed against SPD Chief Adrian Diaz, this time by SPD Captain Eric Greening, who is alleging Diaz discriminated against women and people of color. Greening is the sixth SPD employee to file a suit against Diaz in the last four and a half months. This count does not include the lawsuit filed by Officer “Cookie” Boudin against the department last November, also alleging racial and gender discrimination. 

SPD Officer Daniel Auderer, the SPOG VP who was caught on body cam footage mocking the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, finally had his Loudermill hearing last Thursday. This was the last necessary step before Chief Adrian Diaz announces his disciplinary decision, which he must do within three weeks of the hearing. It is unclear if the timing of this hearing will affect Auderer’s receipt of the backpay negotiated in the new SPOG contract should the Chief decide to fire him. 

Gennette Cordova wrote an op-ed in the South Seattle Emerald about the continued problem of violent and racist policing in the U.S. I suggest reading the whole thing, but here is a taste:

“Due to a massive hole in our budget, our entire city is plagued by a spending freeze and, in many departments, significant cuts — except for the police. Not only does their budget continue to grow but, this week, the council will vote on paying Seattle Police officers $96 million in back pay and raises, on top of their $400 million budget, while adding zero accountability measures.

As we approach the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, let this serve as a reminder that the pervasive problems with policing, and the issues that arise from the systemic defunding of social programs, that were all highlighted four years ago — are now worse. If making our communities, and our country as a whole, safer is a priority for you, we must renew the fight that so many left behind in 2020.”

The SPD recruitment bill passed Full Council this week with two amendments, one that requires more reporting on the 30×30 Initiative to recruit women officers and one that adds childcare provisions. The vote was unanimous, although Councilmembers Woo and Strauss were not present. The continued push to recruit women officers given the 30×30 report last year saying current women officers wouldn’t recommend working for SPD, as well as so many recent lawsuits alleging sexual discrimination, is concerning. 

Another women died at the SCORE jail this March, raising the total death tally for the jail to 5 individuals in a period of a little over a year, which is quite high. SCORE has still to file 2 of the 4 reports required for the previous deaths. Rumors continue that the Seattle City Council and Mayor are considering a contract with SCORE for booking low-level misdemeanors that the King County Jail currently won’t book. Another possibility on the table is a contract with the Issaquah City Jail. As PubliCola reported, at least 2 people died at that jail last year. 

There was a court ruling on May 10 regarding a group of protesters arrested in early 2021 for writing in chalk on the barrier around the SPD East Precinct, after which they were booked into the King County Jail counter to the currently standing booking restrictions. In the case of Tucson et al v. City of Seattle et al, the judge found that the decision to book the protestors was due to “City policy or practice to discriminate against anti-police protestors.” The judge further denied qualified immunity to the nine SPD officers named in the suit.

At next week’s Public Safety committee meeting, councilmembers are expected to receive an overview of the 30×30 Initiative and SPD’s latest 2024 Staffing and Performance Metrics report. Not on the agenda is further discussion of the Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) legislation. The Community Police Commission (CPC) said in its latest newsletter that Councilmember Bob Kettle is seeking feedback on the ALPR proposal. Here’s one quick way to send that feedback.

King County News:

At their Law and Justice committee meeting this week, King County councilmembers held a discussion on proposed legislation to modify the definition of solitary confinement for juveniles. This legislation was first discussed back in the fall with the stated purpose of of being able to provide one-on-one programming to juveniles in detention, but it was put on hold due to some legal questions. Now it’s back on the docket, and the ACLU Washington, the King County Department of Public Defense, Team Child, and Choose 180 all turned up to speak against the new legislation. 

Chief among their concerns are the many exemptions this legislation would put in place that could extend the current 4-hour limit on juvenile isolation, which is currently the main protection for youth. Other concerns are a lack of time restrictions for one-on-one programming, which has the potential for abuse, and the lack of language prohibiting solitary confinement for juveniles due to lack of staff, as the Judge Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center (CCFJC) has been struggling with staffing along with the King County Jail. King County Public Defender Anita Khandelwal commented that the ordinance banning juvenile solitary confinement has been “chronically violated over the last several years.” 

She continued, “Just this past week, one of our clients advised her attorney that she and the other girls only got out of their cells for a normal amount of time twice out of the eleven days she’d been in custody.”

Councilmember Claudia Balducci said she supports a ban on isolation in juvenile detention, but that the amount of violence in the facility has been increasing the last couple of years, the vast majority of which are youth assaulting other youth. She spoke of the need to protect the youth in the County’s care from being assaulted by others. She acknowledged that restrictive housing being used due to staffing issues is a problem.

The legislation would also allow a person alleging to have been injured by a violation of the county’s solitary confinement policies to recover reasonable litigation costs and make ongoing independent monitoring and reporting of the facility permanent. 

The Law and Justice committee normally meets once per month on the fourth Wednesday, so unless an extra meeting is added to the schedule, the earliest this legislation would be up for discussion and possible vote would be June 26. 

Washington State News:

We have news of how much was paid in the new Washington state capital gains tax for 2023: $433 million, down from $786 million paid last year, which was the first year of the new tax. As KUOW reported: “The top 10 payments accounted for $142 million this year compared to $394 million last year.” This volatility is particularly interesting as one of the most mentioned progressive revenue options for Seattle is a city-wide version of this tax. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Advocates Oppose New Juvenile Solitary Confinement Legislation in King County Read More »