In a conversation with Mike Solan, the head of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, Seattle Police Department officer and SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer minimized the killing of 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula by police officer Kevin Dave and joked that she had “limited value” as a “regular person” who was only 26 years old.

In fact, as we reported exclusively, Dave was driving 74 miles an hour in a 25 mile per hour zone and struck Kandula while she was attempting to cross the street in a marked and well-lighted crosswalk.

  • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    165
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Seattle PD is fucking garbage.

    • They threw a bitch fit when the citizens got pissed they were tear gassing random people (including children) who were walking on the sidewalk and had nothing to do with the George Floyd protests or CHOP.

    • They were under federal observation for over a decade because they were responsible for multiple questionable deaths.

    • A ton of the force quit because they didn’t want to get vaccinated during COVID.

    • Recently they had a Trump flag with a Nazi symbol on it in one of their breakrooms that nobody took down.

    The list goes on and on. They need to dissolve the police union in Seattle entirely, and set a precedent. I’m not anti-police, but I am over their whiney bullshit and completely unethical behavior. Seriously, fuck Seattle PD.

    • Tujio@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      63
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Seattle PD is and has always been terrible. For a city with as little violent crime as we are, you would think that we would have a semi-competant police force. We aren’t Baltimore or Chicago or Memphis. We don’t need a violent, antagonistic, adversarial police force. Yet decade after decade, Seattle PD shows themselves to be the worst of the worst of violent white nationalists.

      SPD’s training standards are embarrassingly low. SPD’s staffing numbers are embarrassing low. Rookie cops make over $100k and the right-wing pundits say it’s not enough, while first-year teachers make $55k and the right-wing pundits say it’s too much. They blame the BLM riots and say that the city betrayed them, but the average person here had absolutely zero faith in them well before the riots. Most SPD officers don’t actually live in Seattle.

      Sorry if the second paragraph got a bit into unhinged-rant territory, but shit like this is infuriating. SPD is so clearly shit and needs to be purged.

      • Drusas@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        30
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s partly because of how they’re trained, Killology, and partly because these are people policing us from outside of Seattle.

        If you live in the Seattle area, you surely know that a lot of people who don’t live in the metro area really resent Seattlites. They’re not really clear about why. I guess for being progressive.

        Not much of the police force lives in the city proper. So we’re being policed by outsiders who dislike us to begin with.

      • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        1 year ago

        State senators make $60k/yr.

        Over 50 SPD cops last year made over $250,000

        We aren’t getting what we’re paying for.

        Dissolve and restart the force using a different psych profile and ban the one currently used.

      • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Something that will always be my first thoughts when I think of Seattle cops…

        Walking down 4th ave and a guy on the corner offers to sell me drugs (I got crack, coke, and smack?) I walked across the intersection and at the next block is a cop in a car waiting for the light to turn. I point at the dealer and tell the cop that guy just offered to sell me cocaine and heroin.

        His reply was that I should call 911

        wowzers.

        Then another memory I have is walking near Pike Place and two beat cops are walking towards me. I say hell to them and they give me dirty looks. Don’t say anything to me and look me up and down and then move on.

        Like really? WTF

      • Orphie Baby@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        You keep saying SPD and I keep wondering how Space Patrol Delta sunk so low. It’s no wonder the top of the force turned evil and the B-team Power Rangers became the heroes we needed to stop them.

    • Drusas@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      50
      ·
      1 year ago

      You forgot about the part where they don’t respond to calls. Just a couple of days ago, a man was found dead at 10:00 a.m. The sound of shots fired had been reported at 3:00 a.m., but the police decided not to respond to that call.

      • frickineh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        37
        ·
        1 year ago

        A friend’s son was stabbed multiple times last year and they did nothing. He knew the guy’s name, or at least an alias, and had a picture because the guy had contacted him on social media to buy something, which is why they were meeting in the first place, and SPD was like, “wow that’s a bummer, I guess we could maybe arrest the guy if one of our officers happens to trip over him during their daily rounds of doing jack shit, but we’re not gonna actually look for him.” Apparently attempted murder with a side of robbery doesn’t warrant them removing their thumbs from their asses to do the bare minimum of investigation.

      • Ubermeisters@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I work on Aurora and I’ve had the police literally tell me to stop complaining to them about the prostitutes and meth heads because they don’t care…

      • Noxy@yiffit.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Marty Crane was just as much a bastard as the rest though. Regularly acted like he was above the law. Also constantly verbally and emotionally abused his kids.

  • Aloha_Alaska@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    106
    ·
    1 year ago

    “No, it’s a regular person.”

    I’m speechless. I know the training draws a line between the police and everyone else, but for it to be right there in print, from someone high up the hierarchy…I’m stunned that they could be so callous with a life.

    It really is “us versus them,” isn’t it?

    • CptOblivius@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      I am not aware of any place else where police refer to people as “civilians”. Usually that is reserved for military and not military. But in the US they think it’s borderline martial law.

      They really honestly believe there is a separation between them and “us.”. I believe this is the root of the problem.

  • admiralteal@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    78
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Why do cops have the power to just routinely turn off their body cams?

    That should be limited to using the bathroom. If it gets turned off during regular duty, it should be presumed to mean something is being covered up because that is exactly what it means. There should be paperwork triggered every time it is turned off.

    • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      76
      ·
      1 year ago

      They shouldn’t be able to turn it off ever, for any reason. If there is a privacy issue it needs to be dealt with administratively, and not at the discretion of individual officers. If they can turn it off then it defeats the entire purpose of wearing them in the first place in my opinion.

      • andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think it’s actually worse than just defeating the purpose. The good ones will leave their cams on all the time and be more likely to be pushed out by the bad ones over something petty, with evidence.

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      1 year ago

      they impose invasive drug tests on people [as an extremely minor, parallel example], they don’t deserve a fucking bit of privacy

    • constantokra@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      If you have to take a urine test they’re watching you pee, so they should just let the camera roll and deal.

  • TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    67
    ·
    1 year ago

    How is it police unions seemingly have more power than any other union? The writers are striking and that’s barely doing anything for them but the pigs? They just have to bat an eyelash and get what they want…

  • Drusas@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    49
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Seattle PD has been under a consent decree for the last decade for over-use of force and racist practices. The decree is about to end (and the PD is petitioning to end it early), and the problem has not improved. It’s gotten worse.

    There’s all this talk here (I’m a Seattleite) of how the police are trying to regain trust or are frustrated at the lack of trust, but they don’t take accountability for their actions.

    10% of all homicides in Seattle are committed by the police. They don’t show up when you report a shooting.

    I wonder why we don’t trust them.

    https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/09/08/op-ed-walking-away-from-the-empty-promise-of-seattles-consent-decree/

    https://komonews.com/news/local/north-seattle-suspicious-death-investigation-person-found-near-encampment-police-homicide-detectives-crime-murder-40th-street-4th-ave-motive-cause-of-death-shooting-stabbing-dead-victim-suspect#

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    44
    ·
    1 year ago

    How the fuck do you say that a human life has “Limited Value”, and then not immediately have a “Are we the baddies?” moment

    • As an exercise for the reader, look for the sentence that is something like this every single time an article comes out about bodycam or other video footage after a controversial police event.

      This suggests a different sequence of events than the one Rantz outlined in his piece attempting to exonerate Auderer before the video became public today.

      You’ll almost always find one. TL;DR: When cameras are on cops, turns out they are shown to lie. A lot.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    1 year ago

    In the video, taken in the early morning after Dave hit Kandula in a crosswalk while speeding to respond to a call from a man who believed he had taken too much cocaine, Auderer says he has talked to Dave and he is “good,” adding that ” it does not seem like there’s a criminal investigation going on” because Dave was “going 50 [mph]—that’s not out of control” and because Kandula may not have even been in a crosswalk. Auderer added that Dave had “lights and sirens” on, which video confirmed was not true.

    In fact, as we reported exclusively, Dave was driving 74 miles an hour in a 25 mile per hour zone and struck Kandula while she was attempting to cross the street in a marked and well-lighted crosswalk.

    • gimmelemmy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s almost as if that cop has lost some of his humanity. Auderer, I mean. While this may be something that people can write off as “part of the job” it is unacceptable. Auderer needs to be put on indefinite mental health leave, and the rest of us need to have a long conversation about how we got here and what we’re going to do about it

      • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        If I were to kill someone on the job while driving a company vehicle 3x the speed limit, ignoring protocol and several laws, I wouldn’t be put on indefinite paid leave, and I’m willing to bet that you wouldn’t either.

        It’s shameful that embarrassment is our path to any shred of accountability.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    1 year ago

    Mike Solan purposely put his address as the east precinct so that he could vote in that district. He does not live in Seattle. That is a felony.

    I fucking hate SPOG.

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        That was his voting address. That is not legal here. OPA (the committee that reviews complaints against the police and recommend disciplinary action) recommended it be criminally investigated since it is a class C felony. SPD of course ignored that recommendation completely.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          SPD of course ignored that recommendation completely

          “Now, son, I don’t make the law. I just have 100% latitude to decide whether to enforce the law, several laws are written such that you can be convicted of felonies with only my testimony, and there are no consequences when I lie under oath.”

      • PickTheStick@ttrpg.network
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Same here, but their true address is still held somewhere. It’s only the displayed address on a driver’s license that shows the police station/court. Listing it as their address for voting purposes probably is probably murky, and not explicitly allowed or explicitly illegal.

  • reagansrottencorpse@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    We don’t need cops. The owner class needs cops. That’s why nothing will ever be done about their behavior, they aren’t for us.

    • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      24
      ·
      1 year ago

      No.

      You do need police officers and don’t be so dumb to say that you don’t. Unless you’re 13 and trying to be edgy, in which case I’ll just ask you to limit yourself to TikTok or something.

      You need police against criminals, you need police to enforce the rules of our society. The problem is that US police officers are just a major shit show.

      Maybe that is why so many people shout these dumb slogans because they don’t even know or remember what a real actual police officer is and does.

      • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        If the laws supported the people there would be no need for cops to kill the people because there would be no conflict between the people and the laws.

        Nurses serve the same clientele as cops and we don’t murder our patients.

        • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Nurses don’t stop criminals either. You have different jobs. If you’re a nurse then I applaud you for what you do, but if somebody threatens to kill you or a loved one, I think you want police officers to help. Are you going to stop drug trade? Kidnappings? Murders? Those are actual problems which, I think we can all agree on, must be stopped. Who ya gonna call? The Ghostbusters? Or a well trained and well regulated police force?

          That last part is the issue in the US. The police there isn’t well regulated, is extremely poorly educated, if at all, and if at all, half the training they get is proven bullshit. Then they’re armed by the US army. It’s a miracle that it isn’t a bigger shit show.

          Train your police. A police officer, any police officer, should have at least have higher education and on top of that 4 years specific training. Good luck finding a single police officer with that in the US right now. Teach them de-escalation. Monitor their activities with bodycams, if they very obviously cross the line, hammer down. Stop police unions standing in the way of trials for police officers. Have a national database with police officer certificates, that also tracks their history. This way, if one fucks up badly, he can’t just go work somewhere else.

          All those things are actual solutions. Just saying “defund the police” is just a dumb slogans that doesn’t help your cause

          • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            8
            ·
            1 year ago

            Cops don’t stop criminals. The fact that you’re working from that ignorant assumption that they do shows that you’ve got no business talking on this subject.

            You stop crime by making people less desperate, and you don’t make people less desperate by threatening them with violence. You make them less desperate by making them healthier, happier, and improving their communities.

            • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Cops don’t stop criminals

              You stop crime by making people less desperate, and you don’t make people less desperate by threatening them with violence. You make them less desperate by making them healthier, happier, and improving their communities.

              Ohhh boy. You need a dose of reality.

              Yeah, there is something to the point where a lot of crime comes from poverty and desperation. I fully agree that those problems need MUCH more attention in places like the USA. Same goes for mental health care by the way, that is just a sad mess there.

              Having said that… With all due respect, get your head out of your ass. Even in a perfect society with perfect healthcare and no poverty, there will be those that do not wish to abide by the rules society has setup. Be it rules like “stop at a red light” or “do not walk in a bank with a gun to rob it”, or “do not rape my 9 year old daughter”.

              And you think its a great idea to just get rid of the police and that police can’t stop those elements or temporarily remove them from society until they are rehabilitated? Duuuuhuuude. Get in the real world, PLEASE. Yeah, police in the US is horribly trained (if at all), overstuffed with military equipment (… for what?! fun?) corrupt as hell and just needs an overhaul in general.

              But you still need police. Saying that you don’t is just naive on the level of a 5 year old or just generally disingenuous.

              • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Cops show up afterwards to bust heads. They don’t diffuse situations. They don’t uplift the desperate. They just use state sanctioned violence to keep the suffering out of sight while they protect the property and interests of the rich. The laws punishing rapists and murderers don’t stop rape or murder. They enable it by addressing the problem on the symptom level so that it’s never addressed on the systemic level. As long as it’s quiet, people like you can pretend it’s not happening. The only one who needs a reality check here is you.

            • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              Cops arrest criminals. That’s their role. The rest of the justice system handles everything else. It prevents people from commiting additional crimes by locking them up/rehabilitating them. How in this magical society you’re envisioning do we stop rape? Do you think rapists are just desperate?

              • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Having said that, the US justice system could use quite some fixing / a complete overhaul. But yeah, you need police. Anyone saying you don’t is just living in a fantasy world.

                • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Agreed. There’s a ton of room for improvement there and I’m not against helping poor people or anything I just don’t think doing so will stop crime. I know of a lot of well off people that have done criminal shit.

              • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Cops show up after the crime. The law and the cops don’t prevent the rape. If you want less rapists, you have to address the problem at the systemic level, and that means changing the factors that lead up to rape. What would that entail? Dismantling toxic gender roles, increasing community, enabling access to therapy and mentor programs, giving people hope that they can determine their own futures, creating a safe space for sex workers in society, and other actions that stop the festering hatred and social rot that leads to rape.

                That will never happen as long as people like you are satisfied with state sponsored violence to hide the problems in the private-prison-slavery-industrial complex.

                • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  You’re an idiot. Rich people rape and commit other crimes all the time and they have access to anything they could ever need. Epstein had a goddamn island he flew girls out on his private plane for it. People in countries with better social services and sex workers still experience crime as well.

        • GayThrowaway@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          No matter what laws you make, someone somewhere sometime is going to decide to break them. In any given society, someone will eventually get mad and try to murder someone else, or steal something, or just be a general nuisance. These people need to be dealt with. Being black, or homeless, or poor should not be a crime and should definitely not be a death sentence, but those aren’t the only laws that police enforce. Try not to be loudly hyperbolic and people might actually take you seriously enough to consider your ideas.

          • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            You’re programmed with authoritarian ignorance. You don’t build a civilization by creating laws that oppress people into behaving. You build a civilization that works from the ground up so that people don’t feel the need to kill each other for food and shelter, or the drugs they numb themselves with.

        • gimmelemmy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Uhhh, speaking as someone who has physically put his body in the way of cops trying to rob people of their civil rights, many times, doing so while accepting that cops do fulfill a societal need (and thus being completely non violent towards said cops), the idea that there is a utopia where “the laws” will not be in conflict with “the people” is a very, very difficult thing to even start to imagine. Can you describe such a situation, even in one instance?

          • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            If we didn’t have the cops we’d have to fix the poverty that generated the crime, but since we have violent muscle to beat down on the impoverished we never will.

            • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              All violent crime isn’t caused by poverty. Plenty of people who aren’t impoverished do heinous things. We would need some sort of security enforcement no matter what.

              • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                The decay in our society that causes violent crime is always related to one kind of poverty or another. People raised in healthy communities with security and support don’t lash out violently. Affluent killers have a poverty of the spirit caused by having more at the expense of others.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    We all have to sit back and let cops do this because they have the power and the military-grade weaponry. What the fuck can we do to stop them?

  • Cheers@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    Give the guy that reported the conversation the raise of the guy(s) that were involved and didn’t report it. Also fire them. Reward the good behavior, punish the bad and we’ll stop saying ACAB.

    • PorkRollWobbly@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      Na, ACAB til we die. Policing should not exist as most crimes are a product of the existence those police uphold.

      • gimmelemmy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m sorry, but are you saying rape, murder of a spouse, child abuse, etc. are somehow due to the existence of policing? Is there any way you can possibly make me believe that? Please try, if you can, 'cause otherwise I’m just gonna think that I read some MORE total nonsense on the intent today