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The topic of Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer’s phone conversation was somber: the death of a pedestrian fatally struck by another Seattle officer in a patrol vehicle.

Auderer discussed details of the January collision on the phone in a conversation captured by body-camera footage. Auderer, who was driving his own vehicle during the conversation, confirmed that the victim was dead.

Then he burst into laughter.

Auderer, responding to a comment from the other person on the line, who is inaudible in the footage, replied, “No, it’s a regular person.”

“Yeah, just write a check,” he continued, before laughing again. “$11,000. She was 26 anyway. She had limited value.”

Auderer appeared to quickly turn off his body camera, which captured the exchange, immediately after making the comments. The Seattle Police Department released footage of the Jan. 24 conversation Monday, prompting outrage from police watchdog groups in the city.

Auderer, the vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, was on a phone call with Mike Solan, the union’s president, the Seattle Times reported. Their conversation appeared to disparage Jaahnavi Kandula, a college student who was struck and killed at a crosswalk in the city by another Seattle Police officer the previous day. (Kandula was 23, not 26 as Auderer misstated.)

In a statement, the Seattle Police Department said the video was identified “in the routine course of business by a department employee” and referred to the department’s Office of Police Accountability, which began an investigation. The police department released the video in “the interest of transparency,” it added.

The department declined to comment further. The Office of Police Accountability confirmed to The Washington Post that it received a complaint from a Seattle Police Department employee and began investigating Auderer’s comments Aug. 2.

“It is truly disturbing and saddening to hear insensible comments on the bodycam video from an SPD officer regarding Jaahnavi’s death,” Kandula’s family said in a statement to The Post. “Jaahnavi is a beloved daughter and beyond any dollar value for her mother and family. We firmly believe that every human life is invaluable and not be belittled, especially during a tragic loss.”