A cop said a woman killed by a police crash had ‘limited value’. That’s appalling | Moustafa Bayoumi

The Seattle police officer's comments are a grim reminder that US policing is about endowing the criminal legal system with authority to determine how much each of us is worth

This January, Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old graduate student from India, was tragically killed when a Seattle police officer struck her with his police SUV while responding to an emergency call. A police investigation of the incident later determined that the officer, Kevin Dave, was driving at a top speed of 74mph and was not using his siren continuously, while barreling down Seattle's streets, but only chirping" his siren at intersections. At the moment when he hit Kandula, the investigation concluded, Dave was hurtling at a speed of 63mph; Kandula was thrown approximately 138ft" by the impact. His speed, the report established, was the main reason for the collision. Kandula was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

As terrible as the wrenching loss of this young woman is, the Seattle police department has made it worse. Officer Daniel Auderer, the vice-president of the Seattle police officers' guild (the police union), was dispatched as part of his regular duties to see if Officer Dave had been impaired at the time of the incident. After completing a routine assessment of Dave at a local precinct, Auderer drove off in his police cruiser and called Mike Sloan, the union president, on the phone. Two minutes of the call, from Auderer's side only (we don't hear Sloan), were accidentally recorded by Auderer's body camera before he turned it off. Just this week, that recording has come to light.