Seattle Police Knew Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Had “Checkered History,” Including Two Collisions, But Hired Him Anyway

Kevin Dave was suspended, then fired, for failing to meet the Tucson Police Department's standards

Seattle police officer Kevin Dave (SPD body camera footage)

By Andrew Engelson

According to internal emails PubliCola obtained through a records request, the Seattle Police Department knew while he was still an officer in training that Kevin Dave–the officer who killed 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula last year while driving 74 miles an hour–had a “checkered history” at the Tucson Police Department, which fired him in 2013.

That history included investigations into a “preventable collision” and a conduct violation that earned him a 10-hour suspension right before he was fired. In addition, emails between the Tucson Police Department and SPD show that Tucson police believed Dave was intoxicated when he abandoned his truck in an alley after driving away from police “at a high rate of speed”; during that incident, which occurred about eight months after Dave’s firing, the two responding officers reported that Dave was belligerent and blamed TPD for his inability to get a job at other police departments.

As PubliCola previously reported, SPD knew before hiring Dave that he had been fired by the Tucson police in 2013 for failing to meet the standards required of new recruits during his 18-month probationary period.

The SPD emails, from 2020, include messages between an employee of the Tucson Police Department and SPD sergeant Christopher Young, who inquired about Dave after he was spotted “apparently filming the SPD facilities at Park 90/5” (an SPD training center on Airport Way) in August 2020. Young, who was investigating the incident at the training facility, asked the Tuscon police about Dave’s record there.

A TPD employee replied that while he was an officer in Tuscon, Dave was the subject of six investigations. These included two investigations involving the use of a firearm; two collisions (including one the department deemed “preventable”); one for filing an incomplete or inaccurate police report; and one for violating of the department’s “general standards of expected conduct.” 

That final charge was the one that led to Dave’s suspension in November 2013, the same month he was fired. The emails show that Dave received counseling for two of the other incidents—the preventable collision and the incomplete or inaccurate police report—and that the firearm incidents were ruled “justified” and unfounded, respectively.

In an email thread, Young alerted Sergeant Detective Eric Chartrand to his concerns about Dave, and Chartrand alerted Lieutenant Grant Ballingham. Ballingham, in turn, sent an email to Lt. Jonathan Lucas with SPD’s Employment Services Department, raising alarms about Dave’s “checkered past”—specifically, an incident after Dave was fired in which the former officer was “likely driving drunk and was able to park his vehicle and walk away before the police could catch him in the act.”

“I am not sure if Mr. Dave is still being considered as a prospective employee, but I thought it prudent to pass this information along in case you or the Background Unit were not already aware of this,” Ballingham wrote.

Lucas responded that the department had already hired Dave and that SPD’s “hiring process included a thorough background check to include all past employment history.”

PubliCola has filed public records requests with the Tucson Police Department to find out more about the incidents for which Dave got reprimands or other punishment.

In a police report about the alleged drunk-driving incident, a Tucson police officer described a 3am encounter with Dave, who came to a stop at a green light and began “staring at me as if he did not know what to do” before driving off at high speed, then stopping again in an alley and abandoning the truck. The officer checked Dave’s license plate and discovered the truck was under a mandatory insurance suspension, meaning it was not legal to drive.

Dave denied he had been driving the truck, which was still warm, saying, “I loan it out sometimes”; later, he claimed he had parked it in the alley temporarily so he could walk to a nearby coffee shop. According to the report, Dave complained to the officers that Tucson Police were “blackballing” him from getting jobs in other departments, “because he ‘has to disclose, what happened with the department.” The officer wrote that Dave “appeared to be on some type of narcotic.”

A second officer’s report on the same incident said Dave seemed nervous and fidgety, and that his “eye[s] were dilated and his speech was broken and unusual.” The officer said Dave “was not able to give me a straight answer” about why his truck was in the alley. Dave then became agitated, according to the report, and told the officers he had been “making poor choices” since he’d been fired. The officers removed the license plate from Dave’s truck and let him walk away.

Dave received a $15,000 signing bonus in exchange for agreeing to stay with the department for three years. He struck and killed Kandula less than two and a half years into that commitment.

In February, King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion said her office would not prosecute Dave in Kandula’s death. In March, city attorney Ann Davison said she would not file misdemeanor charges against officer Dave and issued him a traffic ticket for second-degree negligent driving. Dave remains employed by SPD.

SPD’s communications office did not respond to PubliCola’s request for comment on the emails or Dave’s employment history.