Next time you get a speeding ticket, just remember only the cops are allowed to break the speed limit, They do this for your protection! You aren’t highly trained int he art of driving really fast.
A college graduate student was reportedly struck and killed by a speeding Seattle police car responding to a “high-priority” call near the college where she studied.
Jaahnavi Kandula, 23 — the daughter of a single-mom school teacher in India — was in a crosswalk near Dexter Avenue North and Thomas Street around 8 p.m. Monday when she was mowed down by the squad car, KIRO-TV reported.
Kandula, who was working on a master’s degree at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus, was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
The police officer behind the wheel, who was not identified, remains on the job.
Being one of the protected King’s Men is good work if you can get it.
In a statement to KJR-FM radio, the young woman’s family said it was “heartbroken.”
January 29, 20236:02pm
Seattle grad student Jaahnavi Kandula, 23, was hit and killed by a city police car.
In its own statement following the incident, the Seattle Police Department expressed its “deepest condolences to Kandula’s family, and called it “a terrible tragedy for everyone involved.” For some more than others I’d argue…
“I feel bad for the officer,” one eyewitness told the station. “I can’t imagine how he feels. And I saw the emotion from him, and he seemed pretty bent out of shape about it.” Indeed. I’s just sure he feels worse than the dead girl even. Back The Blue. Doe she had a go fund me yet?
Scattered Shots 
Was he running lights and sirens? If so, this one is going in my “Diversity is Strength” bucket. In India, cars are supposed to watch out for pedestrians. It’s sort of a subcontinental game of chicken involving a billion+ people where the pedestrians sort of wander out into the street and the cars beep at them to try to get them to stop or keep out of the way.
I was in a taxi once in Asia and had an incredibly close call right on the side of the car where I was sitting. A little girl, maybe 3-4 years old almost went under the back wheel. I was just waiting for the thump and the crunch. It makes me sick to my stomach thinking about it right now. She was fine, but I doubt by more than a couple of inches.
Anyway, to me this looks like a tragic consequence of being out of your element. Periodically we’d lose Southerners in “frozen” rivers in New England because the ice on rivers is super-patchy due to the current, and the current makes falling in super-dangerous. (You get pushed downstream away from the hole you just made in the ice and drown.)
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she was raised here man
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From the NY Post article:
‘“In spite of earning less than [$200] per month, her mother educated Jaahnavi and encouraged her to [travel to] the United States hoping Jaahnavi would have a better future and a better life abroad,” it said. “Her mother’s hopes and dreams are cut short now.”’
It’s a sucky thing. If the cop screwed up, he should swing. But the lights and sirens are there for a reason. Keep outta the crosswalk when you hear them.
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Let me color and maybe counter my callous comments above: I think there should be NTSB-style review boards for people killed in police work.
Two judgments should be made: Did this person need to have deadly force used against him? And are there changes to office training that should come about as a result of this? Those questions could probably be framed better to account for officer deaths and accidents like this one.
But if we banned cops driving fast, that would put the public in a certain amount of danger. Allowing cops to drive fast leads to outcomes like we see here. So what are the circumstances under which we train cops to hit the flashers and put the hammer down? Probably fewer than we are today. I think there has been some statistical work on this that’s been done, but has it made it down to beat cops yet?
So many situations where the cops killed someone who didn’t need lethal force wind up coming down to “the officer followed training”. That’s a key part of qualified immunity.
But who was responsible for the training? Why did that training lead to the death of someone who didn’t need to die? That seems to be the missing piece that’s needed to close the loop.
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