A Seattle police officer was caught on bodycam footage laughing and saying a young woman’s life had “limited value” after she was run over and killed by a police car.
Officer Daniel Auderer, the vice-president of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, responded to the scene of a January 23 crash where another officer, Kevin Dave, had struck and killed 23-year-old graduate student Jaahnavi Kandula on a crosswalk while responding to a call.
Auderer is a drug-recognition expert and was called to the scene to evaluate whether Dave was impaired when he killed Kandula. He kept his body camera on as he left the scene and called the president of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, Mike Solan, according to The Seattle Times.
The bodycam footage released by the Seattle Police Department on Monday shows Auderer’s end of their conversation as he explained how he thought the incident happened.
Auderer can be heard saying Dave was “not out of control” before adding “she is dead,” then he laughed.
Moments later, Auderer says, “Yeah, just write a check” and laughs again before adding, “Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway,” he says, misstating the age of the victim. “She had limited value.”
Seattle PD said in a statement that the bodycam footage “was identified in the routine course of business by a department employee, who, concerned about the nature of statements heard on that video, appropriately escalated their concerns through their chain of command to the Chief’s Office.”
The video was then referred to the Office for Police Accountability (OPA) “for investigation into the context in which those statements were made and any policy violation that might be implicated.”
The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office is also conducting a criminal review of the fatal crash.
Jason Rantz, the host of a local conservative radio talk show said his show obtained a copy of the report submitted to the OPA. In the report, Auderer wrote that his comments were meant to mock the way lawyers might try to minimize Kandula’s death.
“I was imitating what a lawyer tasked with negotiating the case would be saying and being sarcastic to express that they shouldn’t be coming up with crazy arguments to minimize the payment,” Auderer wrote, according to Rantz. “I laughed at the ridiculousness of how these incidents are litigated and the ridiculousness of how I watched these incidents play out as two parties bargain over a tragedy.”
