After the video of Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer was released, revealing a callous attitude to the death of 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula, Divest SPD, a Seattle-based police watchdog group, has alleged that the officer had a history of racial violence while on duty. According to information shared on social media by Divest SPD, Auderer has been the subject of eighteen investigations by the Office of Public Accountability (OPA) in Seattle since 2014 including for having illegally stopped, harassed and violently arrested two Mexican immigrants in 2010.
Divest SPD said that, in 2010, Auderer and other officers beat a mentally ill man to the point he sustained permanent brain damage. In 2016, Auderer was investigated by the OPA twice for using force on women during arrests. He was also suspended for four days for conducting an off-duty arrest which is illegal, the organisation said. In 2017 Auderer allegedly punched a homeless man in the emergency room of the Harborview Hospital in Seattle.
All these cases, Divest SPD said in their posts, have cost the city 1.7 million USD (over Rs 14.10 crore) in lawsuits. The inhuman response to the death of Jaahnavi, who was killed in January when a speeding police vehicle driven by Kevin Dave in Audurer’s team hit her, adds to the list of allegations of racial violence against him. Auderer serves as the Vice President of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG), a police union.
In a body camera video which was released on Monday, September 11, Auderer can be heard talking to the SPOG president Mike Solan about the accident which killed Jaahnavi. During the conversation, Auderer is heard saying, “she is dead,” before erupting into laughter seconds later. He goes on to refer to Jaahnavi as just “a regular person”, while adding, “Yeah, just write a cheque. Eleven thousand dollars.” He also says in the same video that, “She was 26 anyway, she had limited value”. Auderer had even got Jaahnavi’s age wrong. As mentioned earlier, she was 23 years old.
The officer now claims that the conversation is one-sided and that he had been mocking how a lawyer would arrive at a settlement, but it must be noted that this is not the first incident of racial discrimination by the Seattle Police Department (SPD), either.
At the height of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests after George Floyd was brutally killed by Minneapolis police in 2020, the SPD was accused of near-unprovoked violence against protestors, AP News reported . In April this year, a panel of police personnel, activists and citizens demanded a public apology from the SPD based on a report by city authorities which showed that “officers and commanders repeatedly failed to recognise the difference between the throngs of protesters exercising their First Amendment rights [freedom of speech, the press and assembly] and the few troublemakers,” another AP News report said.
Further, in July this year, the SPD came under an OPA investigation after it came to light that officers had placed in a station break room, a mock tombstone to a 19-year-old Black man killed by officers of the department, The Seattle Times reported. The mocking tombstone, which also bears the raised fist symbol of BLM, was kept in the break room along with a larger campaign flag for Donald Trump. As the Centre for American Progress Action Fund (CAP Action) points out, Trump’s handling of the BLM protests only worsened matters with his rhetoric and threats. The former US President’s racist views are well-known. Trump enjoyed the support of many in the American police force due to his comments like ‘don’t be too nice’, encouraging violence when handling potential offenders, CAP Action also points out. CAP Action is an independent policy institute based in the US. Also in 2020, Trump had sparked outrage by dismissing anti-Black violence by the police and claiming that “more white people are killed”. Responding to Trump’s claim, Reuters reported that though half the people killed by police were white, Black Americans who make up only 13% of the US population, are disproportionately shot at.
Divest SPD, who have been following the case related to Jaahnavi’s death had said in February this year: “Kevin Dave was one of six officers dispatched to an overdose call that SFD [Seattle Fire Department] had well in hand. He was three minutes from his destination when he hit Jaahnavi. He could've driven the speed limit and reached where he was going at half SPD's Priority 1 response target (6 minutes).” The organisation had at the time asked what was the necessity for Dave’s presence at the incident, while bringing to light the precise time and number of officers dispatched to handle the overdose incident. According to reports, Dave was driving at 119km/h, when he hit Jaahnavi while the speed limit was 40km/h.
Also read: US cop mocks Indian student's death, Indian Consulate demands action