Said Daniel Auderer, vice-president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, in an effort to explain his joking and laughing after a Seattle police officer, speeding through a crosswalk, struck and killed a 23-year-old woman.
Auderer is quoted in "Police union leader said woman killed by Seattle officer ‘had limited value’/Daniel Auderer denies wrongdoing, claiming he ‘intended the comment as a mockery of lawyers'" (The Guardian).
The speed limit was 25mph, and the car was going 74mph to get to the scene of a drug overdose. Auderer, at the scene of the crash, made a call to the union president. With his body camera on, he said, "She is dead," and, laughing, "No, it’s a regular person. Yeah. Just write a check. Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26 anyway. She had limited value.”
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53 comments:
Police Unions, the only union that conservatives love, doing their usual union thing.
She had limited value.
She sounds deplorable.
Horrible. As crass as it is at least they didn't try to invoke Tru...
The disclosure of the call has sparked widespread outrage and renewed scrutiny of the Seattle police department, which recently faced an investigation over reports that officers had a mock tombstone for a Black man killed by police in a break room that also had a Trump flag.
...aaaannnnnnd there it is!
So does the Police Union Leader perform sex acts on the internet for money? If so I should vote for him. He would then lift the quality of our elected officials.
"The speed limit was 25mph, and the car was going 74mph to get to the scene of a drug overdose."
This is actually more offensive to me. Yesterday I wrote and I always write "stop using narcan". Someone is dead because the cops are going 74mph to save someone else who already made a choice to die. That is cosmic irony. Our civilization is now killing random strangers - useful or not - in an effort to resuscitate other random strangers with notably less useful qualities.
Write a check indeed.
Manslaughter.
Violated the law and the agency rule book.
In todays world, this cop is the best we can expect to take the job of policing. Even dullards know better than to take the crap dished out by politicians.
Whats that saying?
'democracy is that system, of the the people getting what they vote for...good and hard'
If you've ever read The Camp of The Saints, you're very familiar with the common theme running throughout the book that among our great philosophical problems in the West right now is "pathological altruism". Pathological altruism is what is eating us from the inside regarding almost anything: immigration, drugs, Healthcare, constituent democrat politics...almost anything you could choose to discuss.
Our civilization is in the prisoner's dilemma trap. Pathological altruism is fatal in such system where the majority of a population has decided to hit the 'defect' button in any situation. You will give of yourself and your resources until you are exhausted waiting for some kind of cosmic redemption for your good behavior that never arrives.
A 26 year old was literally just killed by kindness. I'm surer the overdosing druggie appreciates that...well we can certainly hope anyway.
An Omaha doctor was just arrested for driving 100 mph on our main east-west street and killing a 22-year-old woman.
It will be more than $11k.
Sometimes brutal truths cannot/should not be spoken.
So sometimes "evidence" (video of vile statement) without context (he was mocking lawyers) may not be "proof"? Interesting. There are a lot of grand juries and congressional committees that need to be so informed.
Occupations involving exposure to human death and suffering have a high incidence of very dark humor. Seen in isolation, the laughter seems sociopathic.
Body cams promote seeing things in isolation.
Maybe he really was mocking lawyers when he said this. It was still a very stupid thing to say. I suspect it was actually very revealing and not misinterpreted at all.
Police do not need to rush to the scene of a drug overdose, unless they are trained paramedics too with the proper drugs to push to reverse the drugs. Even then, most emergency medical crews only drive about 10mph over speed limits, not 3 times.
Maybe the dash cam / body cam shows the woman jumping in front of the police car. Otherwise, I think the woman’s survivors will be getting a payday and the officer involved will be lucky to avoid jail.
The Democrats have a new candidate prospect!
Union guy: Write a check. Limited value. Just a little person.
He'll fit right in.
People unfamiliar with the grotesque positions that get taken in litigation don't understand that those inside the justice system can get *very* jaded about it, just like teachers and shitty students, or butchers and dead animals, or politicians and lying. A little gallows humor -- and it's not called gallows humor because it's bright and cheery -- is probably to be expected.
I do try to keep my inappropriate jokes out of the court reporter's transcripts, though.
This guy should not be fired or even really disciplined, but he should be made to teach a course to his fellow police officers about how you really have to remember when you're on camera.
We’d all like to think this is one bad actor but that level of crass exists in the most thoughtful of practitioners in LE, medicine, law…
Seattle’s finest?
Yes, people use black humor to deal with tragedy. But if you're being recorded, don't say it out loud! Everyone gets told, "Don't write anything in a company email that you don't want the world to read."
He means earning value. And yes, A disabled or dying person is not worth as much as a surgeon who can't operate, or dies, say, after being hit by a car.
Cops have to develop a thick skin and dark humor to continue pulling mangled bodies out of car wrecks.
If this upsets you, blame the driver, or the drug addict in this case, the insurance company policies, and whoever created the rules governing disparate human value under insurance law.
Police chases are great on YouTube. I recommend Arkansas and Georgia for spectacular violence. Florida is sometimes okay but they have to call for permission first, having no carte blanche law.
When people tell you who they are, believe them.
It looks bad from every conceivable angle, but it still doesn't inform us whether the officer is a good cop or not. The subject of the discussion is not the cop - it's the VP of the Police Officer's Union, who was sent to check out the cop after the accident. His job is to protect the department and the union, and it's easy to conclude that he's a scumbag bean counter, scrambling to cover his contemptible ass.
And of course the victim was a legal immigrant student working on a Master's and on her way to her American Dream, so there is irony that her prospects were exchanged for an overdosing addict's and a destroyed law enforcement officer's conscience.
I hope the deceased woman did not have a husband or boyfriend with anger management issues and access to firearms. Just sayin’
And, BTW, going through a crosswalk 49 mph over the speed limit? Someone needs to rethink proper police procedure.
How much was the Overdosing individual worth?
Would their family have sued the City if the cops driven to the scene cautiously and the OD subject had died?
Nutt was right to ask “Shouldn’t we be more careful?"
Variable viability and value.
Yes, people use black humor to deal with tragedy. But if you're being recorded, don't say it out loud! Everyone gets told, "Don't write anything in a company email that you don't want the world to read."
The problem is people forget over time that their thoughts/utterances are being recorded - they become numb to it. I have told clients repeatedly not to put things into email that you don't want read back to you in court; most do so anyhow (in fact, you would be surprised how many times I have instructed in an email "not to respond in writing but to call me" and had the receiver respond immediately in writing). If you wore a camera full-time, how long would it take to become inured to it? If you have an Alexa or Siri in your home, how quickly do you forget that it is always listening?
Officer Auderer showed himself to be a callous asshole, and now he's trying (feebly and unconvincingly) to cast a reasonable context on his disgusting dialogue. Gallows humor has to do with laughing at oneself in a desperate or hopeless situation, not denigrating the deaths of innocents wrought by a professional peer's recklessness. Too many police officers are not fit to be police officers.
This is what happens when you overestimate state capacity. Will all citizens be required to have Narcan available to save our benighted addicts from the consequences of their self-directed actions?
Perhaps so. Modern problems are difficult and complex, aren't they? Mistakes are made.
Innocent people die as a result. Gallows humor is one of many products of this. It doesn't make the people who have to do the dirty work look good.
Now, go find and hire the people who can do this work while rising above the temptation to deal with their daily reality by reflecting the horror and absurdity of life in the process. Good luck. We'll be healing from the 2000 summer riots for a lot longer than we anticipated. Thoughts and prayers for the many who are struck down in the aftermath. Hope I'm not one of those.
It's better to be lucky than innocent.
We don’t call ‘em Union Thugs for nothing!
In my city, police, ambulances, fire trucks, all go through intersections slowly no matter how bright their lights or loud their sirens. Because while you may get there a few seconds later, if somebody coming the other way hits you, you're not getting there at all.
What RSM said. Upside down priorities, starting at the top.
Why don't we get MSM articles about the callous behavior of Lawyers and Judges. Instead its always the police.
Funny no?
This conservative doesn’t believe ANY public employees should be represented by any union. Don’t know where Mark gets his knowledge about conservatives. Private unions should be allowed where the participation is of the “voluntary association” type which means they will be fine as long as they provide enough benefits to members to keep them members. This includes a reasonable contract that obligates people who get employment training repay the union that provides it, but not forced lifetime membership. Like every other service unions should earn their keep. The current threats by UAW to strike unless they get double pay and 20% shorter workweeks is typical of the things wrong with the current system.
My take yesterday when I heard this is:
#1 This was supposed to be a private conversation. I'm sure we'd look aghast at some of the conversations that doctors and nurses or others in high stress situations have.
#2 His first laugh had a nervous edge to it so the rest of the conversation I took to be nervous chatter.
#3 I only heard a small snippet and I heard nothing from the person on the other end of the conversation.
I love how human minds work, because when I read Ann's post today it was a like a revelation. It all made sense. I believe he really was being sarcastic.
The problem is people forget over time that their thoughts/utterances are being recorded - they become numb to it. I have told clients repeatedly not to put things into email that you don't want read back to you in court
The corporation I used to work for had annual training for senior techies, middle managers, and up on this and related legal issues. At one of these the head of our Legal Department read out one Email message where a manager was basically proposing to rig a bid on a government project. The Head of Legal read the Email to us, he explained why what was being proposed was illegal under various federal statutes, he paused for a moment, and then he told us that the individual was terminated for cause as soon as the message came to the attention of upper management. That "terminated for cause" bit got everyone's attention.
Why don't we get MSM articles about the callous behavior of Lawyers and Judges. Instead its always the police.
This time it was also about Union leaders...
Was the officer callous? Yup--but he was also a bit of a realist. I represented the family of a young woman killed in one of the 9-11 plane crashes. She was bright, had just graduated from college, and based on her background had a very good future ahead of her.
But in dealing with the 9-11 compensation fund all that didn't much matter. She had no dependents and she didn't have a several year earning history. So she "wasn't worth much".
The 9/11 victims fund calculated payments to families based upon the number of dependents, the age of the deceased, and the actual earning history of the deceased. Recent college graduates usually have no full time work earning history.
It took some good lawyering to increase the amount offered by the fund under the formula to about 150% of the original offer. Now a hard working lawyer in Seattle might get a big verdict based on sympathy or antagonism to the police. But that's a crap shoot.
Wouldn't a younger person like this have more monetary value in terms of damages?
Bad joke...I suppose you had to be there or had to hear the inflection in his voice.
"The speed limit was 25mph, and the car was going 74mph to get to the scene of a drug overdose."
Now that is disgusting. What's the fucking hurry?
It still shocks me, the degree to which we've normalized information promiscuity. I firmly believe police officers need a safe space to candidly and callously discuss the nature of their work. I also firmly believe only a fucking jackass would think that safe space is a recorded call about a police operation in progress.
"The speed limit was 25mph, and the car was going 74mph to get to the scene of a drug overdose."
I am playing devil’s advocate here . If the officers on the scene with George Floyd had had Narcan, he would probably have survived. Of course, he likely wouldn’t still be alive, because that was the second time he had swallowed his stash when facing cops. Eventually, one of his intentional ODs was going to be fatal.
The cops were responding to a Code 1 call, which probably means lights and sirens. With that going on, was the girl in the street? The lights and sirens mean get out of the street ASAP. Now!!! Even in a crosswalk. Did she have a headset on? Or did she just figure that lights and sirens only applied to cars?
This is Seattle. This is a Seattle PD cop.
You really expected different? I don't.
I've been a Northwesterner all my life; I know Seattle well enough that I'd never, ever live there. I know the kinds of guys who work on their police department, and while a lot of them are good, decent people, they've also long overlooked the assholes in their ranks, making excuses for them.
I saw race problems with the Seattle PD as far back as the 1980s. If you were a white soldier that blended in with the locals, so far as accent went? No problem; if you were Southern, or had a New England accent? LOL... Bubba, you gwanna get f*cked. Obvious non-white outsider? Doubly so.
We had to go bail out one of our guys who got caught up in an incident. He was literally walking by a U District bar when things went down, fight spilled out onto the street. Bunch of frat-boys from UW were the actual participants; he was literally just standing there in a state of bewilderment while things happened. Who got picked up? Him. Who got charged? Him. Who wound up indicted? Him. Most of the actual perpetrators, who were on video, didn't even get arrested or investigated. Seattle PD and the local prosecutor wanted their pound of flesh, and they got it. First and last time that young man visited Seattle, and I know he wasn't involved in any of the shenanigans because multiple fellow soldiers said so. Their testimony wasn't allowed in, BTW.
Seattle PD has these little sinkholes of corruption and racism within it. The majority of the cops deny, deny, deny, but when someone points out the evidence, like that infamous video clip of that one cop using ethnic slurs liberally? They all hang their heads and acknowledge it. I warned my friends on the force about that crap, and they were all like "We don't have a problem..."
Yeah, right up until you did. Most of them have left by now, either on early retirement or movement to other forces in the region. They didn't believe me when I said that they'd either fix the problem themselves, or someone else would fix it for them.
I completely get the dark humor aspect, here. But, this dumbf*ck opened his mouth over open coms and said things that can't be taken back. On top of which, a Seattle cop he was investigating just killed an innocent woman, in a crosswalk, driving 74 miles an hour on a city surface street. What, pray tell, did that dumbass driver think was going to happen to anyone on the street with a vehicle approaching at that speed? Magically leap aside?
They train arrogance and entitlement into these assholes, and then evince surprise when they behave as though they were God's gift to the huddled masses. That cop driving the vehicle? That ought to be a murder one charge, with add-ons for depraved indifference. There's no damn excuse for 74 miles an hour, not for a drug overdose or anything. "Oh, he was trying to save a life..." Bullshit. In so doing, you're not supposed to take another via easily foreseen stupidity. It's like "Oh, dude over there is drowning... Lemme drown this guy here, to save him..."
The logic doesn't follow.
Frankly? Seattle would be a lot better off if they just banned Narcan and let the druggies die naturally. One less contributor to the feces on the street. Instead, they killed a potentially amazing young woman who might have made a real contribution to society.
Utterly skewed value system, there.
And, do note: This is a police department that has been overseen and run by a Democratic Party-majority city government for some sixty-odd years. Democrats. They're the ones who either made this department the way it is, or allowed it to "just happen". See any accountability for that? Mmmmm? No? Well, of course not. Nothing is ever the fault of the people in charge; they're all just trying their best. Except the prole down where the f*ck-up actually happens. They're the demonic ones...
He's an official in the police union. The pedestrian was killed by one of his officers. The body was still warm. He's laughing about it.
Please don't feed me any more bullshit about gallows humor.
Police Unions, the only union that conservatives love, doing their usual union thing.
Why do you make shit up?
All public sector unions suck. And personally, I'd go so far as to say all unions suck. I despise them and when given the opportunity, I deliberately cross their lines. With gusto.
Jim, you must have missed the Scott Walker years on this board, when conservatives went to the mat again and again and again defending Walker's decision to leave Police and Fire Unions fully intact as he dismantled all other public sector unions.
All the same old commenters were all for protecting them then.
I'm so glad you find this amusing, Mark.
Her name was Jaahnavi Kandula. I bet her mom and dad loved her.
Now they get to arrange her funeral.
When I was contracting into corporate, I knew damn well that anything I uttered could be heard and used and didn't just represent me but the company I worked for and the company I contracted into.
I expect no less from police officers. That joke may perhaps have been funny some time later but not ten fucking minutes after the young woman was killed.
Bob Boyd said...
"Would their family have sued the City if the cops driven to the scene cautiously and the OD subject had died?"
Anyone can sue. I don't think they could win. At least, not successfully. They would have to argue the officer was duty bound to endanger innocent people with lethal force.
Bruce Hayden said...
"With that going on, was the girl in the street? The lights and sirens mean get out of the street ASAP. Now!!! Even in a crosswalk. Did she have a headset on? Or did she just figure that lights and sirens only applied to cars?"
I believe that grossly overestimates the reflexes of most people. A car traveling 74mph is doing 71.35 feet per second. A standard city block is around 315 feet. A little over four seconds from one corner to another. What kind of traffic? Could inhibit both sound and visual recognition. Topography? Echoes. A generous two seconds to figure out what's going on and where and you now have two seconds to find a place to go and get there.
Zero blame falls to the young woman.
Bruce Hayden
I get your math, but the sound carries considerably further than a block. I have a relative in Brooklyn. Phone calls with him sound like the sound track of outdoor dialogue in Blue Bloods. But, he says, nothing in sight. We live on a more or less country road whose good pavement and lack of cross traffic frequently tempt drivers to overestimate the curve-holding capacity of their vehicles. On more than one occasion, the result has been delivered to our driveway apron, or we can hear the sirens for a mile at least. While it helps, having your nose buried in your phone, people can be disconnected from the real world without any mechanical help. Agree the cop was driving too fast, but the way to bet is that the woman heard the siren and made no connection to....something she ought to do. As in look around.
As to laughter. There are various possibilities, but I recall seeing a play; Zoo Story by Albee. Two loser characters sit on a bench taking about how hard things are. Gets kind of grim. At the end, suddenly, with no warning, Jerry stabs Peter. Or maybe it's the reverse, I don't recall. Audience breaks out in loud laughter. It's the release of tension, not because the thing was funny. So, recalling that, I'd give somebody a bit of slack until I get a sense of the situation. Recall a guy in our office who found out he should have been paying more attention. Trouble. Weird grin and high-pitched giggle.
I wonder how many people here would be able to cope with having to wear a camera all day and having all their communication recorded while a powerful cabal of people who hate your existence scour the tapes for any opportunity to destroy your life.
I deeply oppose public unions except police unions. Police need daily protection from the animals in the media, in City Hall, and on the streets who want them imprisoned or dead. And unlike teachers and all other public employees, police alone are forced to serve under superiors who literally win their leadership positions by despising the people they supervise and lead -- police.
Their situation is unique.
This case is a tragedy in a lot of ways. Let the people involved work it out on their own.
I've spent the majority of my adult life in a profession where dark humor and all the rest of that were coping mechanisms. I supervised medics who were first responders to some truly heinous events, among other things.
At no time was it appropriate or tolerated to be making macabre jokes in the immediate aftermath or around the victims and the public; those moments were reserved and allowed only when you were trying to process the sheer horror of what you'd witnessed or experienced.
It's OK, a little, if the victims are joking and you're trying to maintain the low-key state of their response.
I don't find that the jackass in question was demonstrating any of this restraint or couth. As such, he needs to be fired, period, and go into some job where he's not dealing with human beings. Mortuary services strikes me as being something appropriate to his skillset, and far away from any actual living and grieving human beings. Let him spend a few decades learning compassion by taking care of the dead. Maybe that will get through to him. Or, he could work running the CO2 chamber down at the animal shelter. Seems about his speed...
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