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20-07-2024
WEST PRECINCT, VIRGINIA: A US police officer has been fired for saying that an Indian student’s life was of “limited value” after she died last year.
The Seattle Police Department said that officer Daniel Auderer’s comments about Jaahnavi Kandula’s death were “vile” and callous”, The Seattle Times reported.
Kandula, 23, was fatally struck down in January by another police vehicle while she was crossing a street near her university.
Daniel Auderer who was responding to the incident was recorded laughing and saying that she was a “regular person” and the city should “just write a cheque”.
The footage was captured on his body camera while he had made a call to a colleague but “she is dead,” the officer was heard saying before laughing. “No, it’s a regular person. Yeah, just write a cheque,” he said, before laughing again.
“Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26, anyway. She had limited value,” he added.
The video was widely circulated on social media and sparked outrage online.
On Wednesday, Seattle Police Department’s interim chief Sue Rahr announced the policeman’s termination through a department-wide email.
His actions had brought shame on the entire department and the police profession, she wrote. Interim chief Rahr added that his “cruel and callous laughter” and the pain it had inflicted on Kandula’s family could not outweigh Daniel Auderer’s good reputation among his colleagues and his years of service to the community.
“For me to allow the officer to remain on our force would only bring further dishonor to the entire department. For that reason, I am going to terminate his employment,” she said.
Daniel Audered had been placed under investigation after the incident.
The Office of Police Accountability, the agency that investigates police misconduct had recommended his termination for unprofessional conduct and showing bias in recorded statements, the Seattle Times reported.
Jaahnavi Kandula was a graduate student at Northeastern University in Seattle.
The officer who rammed her with his patrol vehicle was going at 74mph (119km/h) and she was thrown more than 100ft (30m), US media reports said.
An investigation was under way over a bodycam footage that appears to show a Seattle police officer laughing about a woman fatally struck by a patrol car.
Officer Daniel Auderer was responding to an incident where Jaahnavi Kandula, 23, was killed near her university.
In the video, the officer is heard suggesting the Indian student’s life had “limited value” and the city should “just write a cheque”.
The officer has said his comments were taken out of context.
Ms Kandula, a graduate student at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus, was hit and killed by a police car while crossing the street on 23 January.
According to The Seattle Times, citing a police investigation report, the officer driving the car was going 74mph (119km/h) and the graduate student’s body was thrown more than 100ft (30m).
Officer Auderer was called to the incident where his body camera recorded audio from a call he made to a colleague but “she is dead,” the officer is heard saying before laughing. “No, it’s a regular person. Yeah, just write a cheque,” he says, before laughing again.
“Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26, anyway. She had limited value.”
Auderer, a Seattle Police Department union leader, was on a call with Mike Solan, the guild’s president. Solan’s audio cannot be heard.
The Seattle Police Department released a statement on Monday saying it discovered the conversation from an employee who listened to it “in the routine course of business”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
