Death of Jaahnavi Kandula, 23, from India, ignited outrage after fellow officer was recorded making ‘appalling’ remarks about case
Prosecutors in Washington state said on Wednesday they will not file felony charges against a Seattle police officer who struck and killed a graduate student from India while responding to an overdose call – a case that attracted widespread attention after another officer was recorded making callous remarks about it.
Officer Kevin Dave was driving 74mph (119km/h) on a street with a 25mph (40km/h) speed limit in a police SUV before he hit 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk on 23 January 2023.
In a memo to the Seattle police department on Wednesday, the King county prosecutor’s office noted that Dave had on his emergency lights, that other pedestrians reported hearing his siren, and that Kandula appeared to try to run across the intersection after seeing his vehicle approaching. She might also have been wearing wireless earbuds that could have diminished her hearing, they noted.
For those reasons, a felony charge of vehicular homicide was not warranted. “There is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Dave was consciously disregarding safety,” the memo said.
Sorry, but this is nonsensical. The wide road did not make that cop drive 75 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone. That officer was responsible for his own actions, and would have found a way to drive at an unsafe speed regardless of how the road was designed.
Hypothetically he would have been forced to go too slow to easily murder anyone with his car. He is a murderer, but traffic engineering works.
The officer is responsible for his own actions, but responsibility isn’t divied out into neat percentages.
The officer is 100% responsible for their actions and their gross excess speed. They are a highly trained driver, and they should know better. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other factors of responsibility: eg, the road being poorly designed for 25mph, while allowing 75mph as a practicable speed; the girl crossing the road without paying attention; the general attitude of police as a profession chasing drug calls as a source of point scoring, rather than serving the public good.
In particular, it is not illegal to be high on drugs. The crimes are possession and intent to supply. Having drugs in your system is not a crime, and having drugs in your system does not legally imply a crime has been committed. It might be somewhat likely that you’ll find drugs with someone who has taken them, but that’s just probable cause for a search, and not something an officer should be racing towards.
However, you should not be able to drive down a 25mph road at 75mph. It should feel wrong and sketchy well below that speed, and be completely impossible at that speed.
A 25mph road should not be a wide open straight road. It should force drivers to slow down to manoeuvre around traffic calming measures.