A police officer in Seattle was fired after making “cruel comments” and “dehumanizing laughter” he displayed following the death of an Indian graduate student who was struck by a police vehicle in 2023.
Sue Rahr, the interim police chief of the city, officially terminated Daniel Auderer on Wednesday, justifying her decision by sending an internal email to the department, and attaching a disciplinary action report with it.
As she wrote in that memo:
“There is no doubt that the named officer’s cruel comments and callous laughter about the tragic death caused deep pain to Ms. Kandula’s family, but also immeasurable damage to the public trust of police in the Seattle community, across the nation and around the world.”
Rahr further noted that many people in the community told her that the “dehumanizing laughter” from Auderer that could be heard on video was “more outrageous and disturbing” than the death itself.
The interim chief continued:
“It is my duty as the leader of this organization to uphold the high standards necessary to maintain public trust. For me to allow the officer to remain on our force would only bring further dishonor to the entire department.”
Jaahnavi Kandula was killed on January 23 of 2023 when a police patrol vehicle driven by Officer Kevin Dave struck her as she was crossing the street in a crosswalk. She was a 23-year-old graduate student at the time and came from Andhra Pradesh, India.
Eight months after the incident happened, the police department released video footage from the body-worn camera, and it captured a phone conversation that Auderer had one day after he went to the scene.
Auderer was sent there to see if the officer who was driving the vehicle was impaired at the time. On that phone call, he can be clearly heard laughing and saying that Kandula’s life had “limited value.”
As he can be heard saying on the footage:
“But, she is dead. … No, it’s a regular person. … Yeah, just write a check.”
Then, Auderer is heard laughing and later says:
“Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway,” as he got her age wrong. “She had limited value.”
People across the country were outraged when the video was released. Many online petitions were started and rallies held afterward, and local officials held various meetings about the incident.
Last August, Auderer wrote a letter to the Office of Police Accountability, which the Seattle Police Officers Guild released to the public. Auderer was the vice president of that guild.
In the letter, he wrote that:
“[I] intended the comment as a mockery of lawyers. … 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.”
In the email she sent to the Seattle Police Department, Rahr wrote about the bigger impact that the comments had. She wrote:
“I believe the impact of his actions is so devastating that it cannot be mitigated by his intent to keep his conversation private. The hurt his words have inflicted on Ms. Kandula’s family cannot be erased.
“The actions (of) this individual police officer have brought shame on the Seattle Police Department and our entire profession, making the job of every police officer more difficult.”
