US cop fired over ‘limited value’ jibe at Indian’s death

New York/Seattle, July 18

A US police officer, whose insensitive comments and laughter following the horrific death of a 23-year-old Indian student had caused outrage, has been fired from the Seattle police department.

Jaahnavi Kandula was struck by a speeding police vehicle driven by Seattle police officer Kevin Dave as she was crossing a street on January 23 last year.

Dave was driving at more than 119 kmph on the way to report for a drug overdose call. Kandula was flung 100 ft away when she was struck by the speeding police patrol vehicle.

In bodycam footage released by the Seattle police department, officer Daniel Auderer was heard laughing after the deadly crash and had remarked: “Uh, I think she went up on the hood, hit the windshield, and then when he hit the brakes, flew off the car…But she is dead.”

After making these comments, Auderer “laughed hard for four seconds,” the department’s disciplinary action report said.

Auderer’s body-worn camera also captured him saying, “Yeah, just write a cheque. Just, yeah (laughter). USD 11,000. She was 26, anyway. She had limited value.”

Asked at an Office of Police Accountability interview about his comments that Kandula had “limited value”, Auderer claimed he was “ridiculing the city attorneys who would be tasked with litigating a potential wrongful death lawsuit.”

Interim chief sue Rahr at the Seattle police department said in an internal email that the hurt Auderer’s words had inflicted on 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.”

Rahr said as the leader of the organisation, it was her duty 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 dishonour to the entire department. For that reason, I am going to terminate his employment,” she said in the internal email.

Rahr noted that at the root of this case lied an extremely difficult judgment call of how to fairly balance “intent versus impact”.