A Seattle police officer has fired for make callous comments about the death of a graduate student from India after he was struck last year by another officer’s vehicle in a crosswalk.
Seattle’s interim police chief, Sue Rahr, fired Officer Daniel Auderer on Wednesday over comments he made hours after Jaahnavi Kandula died in January 2023, CBS affiliate KIRO-TV reported.
Rahr wrote in a department email sent Wednesday that his job is to maintain the high standards necessary to maintain public trust, and said Auderer’s actions “bring shame to the Seattle Police Department and our entire profession, making every police officer’s job even more difficult.”
The decision came after Gino Betts Jr., civilian director of the Office of Police Accountability, recommended that Auderer be terminated for unprofessional conduct and showing bias in a recorded statement.
The office previously found Auderer’s behavior biased and unprofessional, KIRO-TV reported. Betts described the officer’s words as “degrading, disturbing and inhumane.”
KIRO-TV
Mayor Bruce Harrell, in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, said he supports Rahr’s decision. He and the chief admitted it is likely to appeal and lead to arbitration, and potentially affect the department’s efforts to end more than a decade of federal oversight of responsible officials.
“This incident undermines the public trust that has been built on since the first day of my administration,” Harrell said.
Auderer is the vice president-elect of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which represents approximately 900 rank and file officers. An email sent to the guild from The Associated Press seeking comment was not immediately returned.
“Cruel and rude”
In the disciplinary action report laying out the reasons for her decision, Rahr said in Auderer’s presentation at the disciplinary hearing he admitted that the words are painful, “horrible” to know what they mean to the family of young women, and he wants to work. suffer from pain. He closed with “I’m sorry,” the principal wrote.
However, when he thought about it, he told him “your cruel and unkind laugh” and the pain he caused Kandula’s family was immeasurable. Auderer has been in office since 2009 and Rahr also said he has received several letters of support for Auderer from his colleagues.
Auderer insisted that the conversation he had with Union President Mike Solan after Kandula’s death was private and not meant to be eavesdropped. Rahr wrote that his intent to maintain his comments was not sufficiently mitigated by the damage to his actions.
Betts and the command staff of the department, in the recommendation made to the then-Chief Adrian Diaz in January, found Auderer should either be fired or suspended for 30 days without pay, the most severe punishment of the department short of termination.
Auderer met with Diaz in May before the chief would impose discipline but Harrell’s demotion of Diaz and Rahr’s appointment as interim chief a month later delayed action.
Auderer, 49, has been assigned to the traffic division when he became involved in the investigation into Kandula’s 23. January 2023, death. They responded to the South Lake Union scene to determine whether Kevin Dave, the officer driving the car that hit Kandula, was impaired.
Dave was driving 74 mph in a 25 mph zone on the way to the overdose call and started braking less than a second before hitting Kandula, according to a report by detectives from the department’s traffic collision investigation team. It determined that Dave would have been 63 mph when he hit Kandula and that speed would not have allowed either of them the time to “detect, deal with and avoid emerging hazards.”
Prosecutors with King County in Seattle said in February they will not file criminal charges against Dave, citing insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dave was consciously disregarding safety. Dave was cited and fined $5,000 by the Seattle City Attorney’s Office for reckless driving.
Dave received a delinquent notice in May for failing to pay fines and is now contesting the citation with a hearing set for mid-August, according to a Seattle Municipal Court spokeswoman.
“limited value”
An investigation into the collision is underway. After Kandula’s death, Dave was transferred to an administrative role in the department.
Auderer examined Dave and determined he was not impaired. Auderer then called Solan, the union president. The end of Auderer’s two-minute conversation was captured on a body camera, which he did not know how to walk.
Auderer was heard laughing after declaring Kandula dead, mistakenly saying he was “only 26,” and thought his youth had “limited value” and the city should just write a check for $11,000.
The conversation was not discovered until last August, when police officers heard audio from a body camera.
Backlash to Auderer’s comments was swift, including condemnation from the government of India, Kandula’s home country. Public outrage also prompted the police department to assign him to the work desk pending the outcome of an internal investigation into the comments.
Auderer and Solan have insisted on a conversation that involves union business and has been taken out of context – he said they show disdain for the legal process in which civil lawyers will argue and try to place a dollar value on Kandula’s life. Solan also said the OPA investigation was union bashing.
Betts concluded that it was “immaterial” that the recording was unintentional and that the topic, union business, did not justify its content.
“For many, this confirmed, whether fair or not, the belief that some officials are condescending and harboring misguided views of community members — exacerbated by the fact that the highest elected representatives in the rank and file are involved in these calls,” Betts wrote in his opinion. , who was also very critical of Solan’s refusal to cooperate with the OPA investigation.
Members of the Community Policing Commission and the African American Advisory Council said hearing Auderer laugh about Kandula’s death reinforced the message to the people of Seattle that the department as a whole condones such behavior, KIRO-TV reported.
“This is just devastating. Not just for Seattle officers but for every officer in our country. That shows your culture. That some of us are valued and some are not. Some lives are valued and some are not and it’s not. looks good,” said Victoria Beach, chairman of the Council African-American Community Advisor for the Seattle Police Department.
