After Jaahnavi Kandula’s death, City Council asks Seattle Police Department to review response policy

The Seattle Police Department says it will review a policy that allows a police union official to be involved in an investigation of a rank-and-file officer they represent and defend, a potential conflict of interest that has emerged in the death of Jaahnavi Kandula.

Kandula, 23, was struck and killed by Officer Kevin Dave the night of Jan. 23. As part of the investigation, Officer Daniel Auderer, a certified drug-recognition expert, and the elected vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, was called from home to perform field sobriety tests on Dave at the West Precinct.

“It was very obvious to me that Dave was not impaired and safe to operate a motor vehicle,” Auderer concluded after conducting a series of observations and tests recorded in his report.

However, SPOG that night also provided Dave with an attorney from the law firm of Frey Buck, who also appeared at the West Precinct. After Dave was given his Miranda warning by the case detective, he refused to give a statement to investigators, according to reports.

Last week, video surfaced of Auderer laughing and joking in a telephone call to SPOG President Mike Solan about the “value” of Kandula’s life, calling her a “regular person” and suggesting that the department “write a check” while on the phone with Solan.

“Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26 anyway,” Auderer says, laughing while misstating the dead woman’s age. “She had limited value.”

The audio was captured on Auderer’s body camera, which he had inadvertently left running. Solan’s side of the conversation can’t be heard. The short snippet of audio has led to international outrage and news coverage. The union asserts Auderer’s comments are out of context and that he was joking to Solan about how lawyers would attempt to settle the case.

SPOG has long been seen by city officials as an obstacle to the city’s decadelong attempts to adopt reforms and get out from beneath the constraints of a federal consent decree after the U.S. Department of Justice concluded SPD officers routinely used excessive force and showed disturbing evidence of biased policing.

SPOG has fought implementation of body and dash cameras, and its last contract — it’s been more than two years without a new one — undermined a City Council-passed officer accountability ordinance and prolonged federal oversight.

While Solan cannot be heard in the inadvertently recorded bodycam footage, Auderer’s remarks and laughter have garnered outrage from local officials who have begun questioning the involvement of union leaders in the investigation of this incident and others.

During a regular council briefing on Monday, Councilmember Tammy Morales reissued a call for police Chief Adrian Diaz to publicly address the incident and departmental culture.

Morales also questioned why union leadership would be called to make a determination in an incident that could yield major disciplinary action.

“I’m particularly interested in hearing why Daniel Auderer, the VP of SPOG, was tasked with giving the officer who hit Jaahnavi, Kevin Dave, sobriety tests rather than having an unbiased third party do that, and why the department ran blood tests on Jaahnavi to try and detect drugs in the first place,” Morales said.

Councilmember Lisa Herbold, who oversees public safety issues on the council, told Morales that she raised the issue of Auderer responding to test Dave to the department last week, noting her concern about a conflict of interest.

“We heard a number of things that Officer Auderer said that suggested a bias towards an argument that there was no misconduct,” Herbold said.

Herbold is referring to remarks made by Auderer in the video that appear to try to absolve Dave.

At one point in the recording, Auderer says Dave, who was driving 74 mph, was “going 50 and that’s not out of control. That’s not reckless for a trained driver.” Auderer also questions that Kandula was “thrown 40 feet” by the impact.

“I also have concerns that if a person who leads an organization, whose job it is to defend an officer against complaints, is doing the drug testing — whether or not that has any bearing on the decision-making for the prosecutor,” Herbold added, also raising concerns that if there is a conflict, the test might not be admissible.

Kandula’s death and the accident are currently under review by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Officer, where a spokesperson said Monday that prosecutors are aware of the issues, “and all aspects of this investigation are being taken into account.”

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office, which would defend the city against any civil action arising from Kandula’s death, declined to comment.

Reading from an email exchange with SPD, Herbold said the department had added this subject to its “policy roadmap” to address these concerns.

A spokesperson for Mayor Bruce Harrell said his office had also asked SPD to “review whether or not restrictions can be placed on SPOG leadership in investigations of possible officer misconduct” in response to the video.

“Separate from the drug recognition assessment, traffic collision investigators completed an investigation of the incident,” Communications Director Jamie Housen said late Monday. “Based on that analysis, they referred the case file to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.”

SPD Chief Operations Officer Brian Maxey confirmed late Monday that the department is reviewing the policy.

“We are not aware of any actual conflict of interest in this specific case,” Maxey said in an email. “However, we do understand the concerns around the optics and are exploring options in policy.”

Herbold noted during the meeting that there are 11 officers in the department with Drug Recognition Expert, or DRE, certification who could respond to an incident like this collision. Maxey was unable to clarify whether Auderer was the only qualified officer available to respond to Kandula’s death.

“Due to staffing constraints, we don’t always have options for DRE assessments on any given day/night. I do not know whether another certified officer was working that night,” Maxey wrote.

A spokesperson for SPOG did not immediately return a request for comment Monday. In a statement released Friday, the union said the guild “understands the attention and outrage” spurred by Auderer’s “highly insensitive comments,” but that the video had been taken out of context.

“I think we have all commented that there needs to be a rebuilding of trust between the community and the police department,” Morales said. “It is not the community’s job to rebuild that trust. It is the department’s.”