Every life has value
What happens when we only have one side of a conversation? Who do we believe?
You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.
George Clooney
Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old woman from Adoni, a city in southern India, came to Seattle hoping she could one day support her mother back home. A student at the Northeastern University campus in the Emerald City’s South Lake Union neighborhood, Ms. Kandula eagerly anticipated receiving a master’s degree in information systems in December.
Unfortunately, Ms. Kandula didn’t live to realize that dream. On the night of January 23rd, 2023, while crossing the intersection of Thomas Street and Dexter Avenue North, she was struck by a Seattle Police Department cruiser attempting to respond to a nearby medical call.
Kevin Dave, the officer behind the wheel, had struck and killed Ms. Kandula while traveling 74 MPH in a 25 MPH zone.
She never had a chance.
Police officers, and then responders from the Seattle Fire Department, attempted CPR on her but she died later that night, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The Seattle Police Department said the officer was responding to a “priority one” call, which is the highest priority and involves a threat to life. A Fire Department spokesperson said the call was an aid response for a 28-year-old man, who was evaluated and then declined transport to a hospital.
SPD on Wednesday said Kandula was crossing from east to west in the crosswalk when she was hit[.]
In crash situations such as this, it's standard protocol for a drug-recognition officer to determine if the officer involved in a crash was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. This is where the story begins to go off the rails.
Daniel Auderer, vice-president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, responded to the scene[.]…. Kandula was thrown more than 100ft and died that night.
Auderer is a drug-recognition expert and was called to evaluate whether Dave was impaired. He left his body camera on as he drove away and called the union president, Mike Solan, the Seattle Times reported. The footage released by the police department on Monday only captures Auderer’s end of the call, where he said Dave was not “out of control” when he killed Kandula, but then said: “She is dead,” at which point he laughed.
Neither Auderer nor Solan immediately responded to a request for comment by the Guardian.
However, Jason Rantz, a conservative talk radio host on KTTH-AM, reported that he had obtained a written statement Auderer provided to the city’s office of police accountability. In it, Auderer said that Solan had lamented the death and that his own comments were intended to mimic how the city’s attorneys might try to minimize liability for it.
Since we don’t have Officer Solan’s side of the conversation, there is, of course, the possibility that what Officer Auderer is saying is true. He may have been speaking out of frustration at how the city’s attorneys would handle the liability aspect of Ms. Kandula’s death.
There’s no way to verify Officer Auderer’s claim. Therein lies the frustration felt by the community and Ms. Kandula’s family.
“I intended the comment as a mockery of lawyers,” Auderer wrote, according to KTTH. “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.”
The station reported that Auderer acknowledged in the statement that anyone listening to his side of the conversation alone “would rightfully believe I was being insensitive to the loss of human life”. The comment was “not made with malice or a hard heart”, he said.
The case before the office of police accountability was designated as classified.
The station said Auderer reported himself to the accountability office after realizing his comments had been recorded, because he realized their publicity could harm community trust in the department.
There’s also the reality that the Seattle PD doesn’t have a stellar PR record of late, and this could easily be seen as another brick in that wall. It's just another officer cynically laughing off the life of a non-White woman caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just another life that has little value to society, right?
Except that Ms. Kandula’s life, like any life, had value, and her story deserves to be told. We should never allow ourselves to get to the point where the untimely death of another human being isn’t a cause for mourning.
So which is it? Were Officer Auderer’s initial comments a reflection of an officer who simply didn’t give a damn about another needlessly sacrificed non-White life? Or was he reacting to what he heard from Officer Solan, whose side of the conversation we’ll never have?
If we go just by Officer Auderer’s side of the conversation, he has a significant problem. It doesn't sound good, which is why he says he reported himself to the department’s accountability office as soon as he realized his comments had been recorded.
So, since I know nothing of Officer Auderer or his record, my inclination- since I have nothing else to go on- is to give him the benefit of the doubt. Why else would he have reported himself to the department’s accountability office if he wasn’t concerned about how his comments might be misconstrued?
And then there’s this:
How does that information factor into this controversy? I have no way of knowing, but if past is prologue…. His history only makes things more complicated.
I hope that the Seattle PD will draw a lesson from this case. I hope they’ll understand that everything they do and/or say is under scrutiny. That being the case, there’s always the potential that anything they do and/or say may be misinterpreted or misrepresented. As public servants, it’s critical to recognize the scrutiny they’re under every time they hit the streets.
As if being a police officer wasn’t already difficult enough.
Not everyone in the community has been inclined to give Officer Auderer the benefit of the doubt. Still, one should consider that his is only one side of the conversation. It would take on a very different context if we also had Officer Solan’s side.
The controversy over Auderer’s remarks comes as a federal judge this month ended most federal oversight of the police department under a 2012 consent decree that was meant to address concerns about the use of force, community trust and other issues.
Another Seattle police oversight organization, the Community Police Commission, called the audio “heartbreaking and shockingly insensitive”.
“The people of Seattle deserve better from a police department that is charged with fostering trust with the community and ensuring public safety,” the commission’s members said in a joint statement.
Perhaps so. Again, however, we only have one-half of the conversation. It does no one any good to make assumptions when half of the conversation is unavailable, especially when that missing half would add much-needed context.
As for the intersection where Ms. Kandula died, I wish I could say that the city of Seattle leaped into action and made it safer. But….
This intersection, as well as several blocks on Thomas Street to the west, were at one point set to receive a full redesign by the city, but the project’s funding was cut by $2.2 million in Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2023 budget and not restored by the Seattle City Council. The intersection at Thomas and Dexter was to receive a new pedestrian crossing with additional trees planted nearby, as well as a new protected bike lane.
Just over $3 million still remains for the project, which Jamie Housen, spokesperson for Harrell, said would go toward City Light and landscaping projects along the corridor.
We’re from the government, and we’re here to…oh, never mind….
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