Seattle cop Daniel Auderer fired over ‘vile’ comments about grad student Jaahnavi Kandula killed in police cruiser collision

SEATTLE — A Seattle police officer has been fired for making insensitive comments about an Indian graduate student who was hit and killed by another officer’s car in a crosswalk last year.

Interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr fired Officer Daniel Oderer on Wednesday for comments he made hours after the January 2023 death of Janavi Kandura. The Seattle Times.

In a department-wide email sent Wednesday, Lahr said it was his duty to maintain the high standards necessary to maintain the public’s trust and that Oderer’s actions “brought shame on the Seattle Police Department and our entire profession and made the jobs of all officers more difficult.”

Her decision came after Gino Betts Jr., civilian director of the Office of Police Accountability, recommended Oderer’s firing, citing unprofessional conduct and bias in recorded statements.

Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that he supports Rahl’s decision. The mayor and chief acknowledged that the decision will likely be appealed and sent to arbitration, potentially impacting the police department’s efforts to end more than a decade of federal oversight of officer accountability.

“This incident has undermined the public trust that this Administration has worked to strengthen since day one,” Harrell said.

Oderer is the elected vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Union, which represents about 900 rank-and-file officers. The union did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.

in Disciplinary Action Report Chief Lahr explained his decision by saying that in Oderer’s statement at the disciplinary hearing, he acknowledged his words were hurtful, was “horrified” to know what his words would mean to the young woman’s family and wished he could endure that pain. He ended by offering a “sincere apology,” Lahr wrote.

But as she reflected on this, she told Oderer “your callous, insensitive laugh” and the pain it has caused Kandura’s family is immeasurable. Oderer has been a police officer since 2009, and Lahr said she has also received several letters of support for Oderer from colleagues.

Oderer maintained that conversations he had with union president Mike Solan after Kandura’s death were private and never intended to be overheard. Lahr wrote that Oderer’s intention to keep his comments private was not sufficiently mitigated by the devastation his actions had caused.

In a recommendation to then-Chief Adrian Diaz in January, Betts and the police department’s leadership concluded that Oderer should be fired or suspended without pay for 30 days, the department’s most severe punishment after firing.

Oderer met with Diaz in May before he took disciplinary action, but that was delayed when Harrell demoted Diaz later that month and appointed Lahr as interim chief.

Oderer, 49, was assigned to the traffic division when he became involved in the investigation into Kandura’s death on Jan. 23, 2023. He responded to the scene in South Lake Union to determine whether Officer Kevin Dave, who was driving the vehicle that struck Kandura, was intoxicated.

A report from detectives from the police’s Road Accident Investigation Team said Dave was driving at 74mph in a 25mph speed limit zone on his way to a drug overdose report and began braking less than a second before hitting Kandura.

Dave was travelling at 63mph when he hit Kandura, a speed at which neither vehicle had time to “detect, react to or avoid the presented danger”.

In February, Seattle’s King County prosecutors announced they would not be filing felony charges against Dave, citing insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had willfully disregarded safety. Dave was charged with negligent driving by the Seattle City Attorney’s Office and fined $5,000.

A Seattle Municipal Court spokesman said Dave received a delinquent notice in May for failing to pay his fines and is now contesting the charges at a hearing scheduled for mid-August.

The crash remains under investigation. Following Kandura’s death, Dave was transferred to a management position within the police department.

Oderer examined Dave and found him to be healthy. He called Solan, the union president. Oderer’s two-minute conversation ended with this: Filmed on a body camerahe didn’t know it was being done.

After saying Kandura had died, Oderer can be heard laughing as he incorrectly states she was “only 26 years old” and claims her young life had “limited value” and the city should write her a check for $11,000.

The conversation went undiscovered until last August, when officers listened to audio from his body camera.

Backlash against Oderer’s comments was swift, with Kandula’s native Indian government also condemning them. Following a public outcry, police transferred him to a desk job pending the outcome of an internal investigation into his comments.

Oderer and Solan argued their conversations, which were about union business, were taken out of context and said they were in contempt for the legal process in which civil lawyers argue and try to put a monetary value on Kandura’s life. Solan also argued that the OPA investigation amounts to union bashing.

Betts concluded that whether the recording was unintentional was “irrelevant” and that the topic of union business did not justify its content.

“For many, the findings confirmed their belief that, whether impartially or not, some police officers were downplaying and concealing a distorted view of local residents — a belief strengthened by the fact that the public’s highest elected representatives participated in the conference call,” Betts wrote in his findings, also harshly criticizing Solan for his unwillingness to cooperate with the OPA investigation.