No timeline for Office of Independent Investigations use of force cases to begin

After protests erupted around the nation following the death of George Floyd in 2020, one of the main demands here in Washington was that cops no longer investigate cops involved in deadly use of force cases.

The effort to require independent investigations began with I-940, an initiative to the legislature approved by voters in 2018, followed by the passage of HB 1064 [the Legislature’s amended compromise to I-940] in 2019. A key requirement of independent investigations into the use of deadly force incidents included in I-940 and HB 1064 that families of those killed by police wanted on the books was the mandatory involvement of non-law enforcement community representatives.

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But a 2021 review of investigations found that not all officer-involved shooting investigations complied with that. That same year, the legislature approved a sweeping police reform package of more than a dozen bills, including HB 1267 sponsored by Democratic State Rep. Debra Entenman, to create the new Office of Independent Investigations (OII). This further strengthened laws on the books for cops not investigating cops.

“The new Office of Independent Investigation will increase transparency and trust in investigations of deadly uses of force by law enforcement. I want to thank the families of victims of police violence who courageously showed up again and again to change a system that provided them with no accountability and no justice,” Entenman said at the time.

“Our premise is simple: police shouldn’t be investigating other police. This new office will help us build trust between the community and law enforcement by ensuring that there is accountability for unnecessary police violence,” she added.

Under HB 1267, the OII was expected to start taking cases involving the use of deadly force in July of 2022, but that has not happened yet. In an update to law enforcement, impacted families, and community members this week, the new director of the office gave no clear timeline for when that would be.

“We intend to have six investigation teams throughout the state located in the eastern part of the state, the central part of the state,” OII Director Roger Rogoff said during Wednesday’s meeting.

But they’re not ready yet. Rogoff says the office is the equivalent of a start-up with four priorities.

“The four priorities are hiring, protocols and procedures, training, and outreach,” said Rogoff.

The Office of Independent Investigations teams will not make law enforcement personnel’s existing independent investigation teams obsolete. They have slightly different authorizations, and when OII takes over a scene when a concurrent criminal investigation is underway, Rogoff’s team won’t have the authority to handle underlying criminal investigations.

Rogoff says the most important part of that protocol will be how they hire investigators.

“We are tasked with including non-law enforcement and folks who have not had law enforcement experience within our investigator teams,” Rogoff explained.

But Rogoff said since the only people currently trained on how to do death and complex criminal investigations are former law enforcement, they’ll hire some of them as senior investigators to hit the ground running and be ready to take over these investigations credibly.

“We’ll also be hiring entry-level investigators who may not have that law enforcement background, who will then be in the field training relationships with some of those senior investigators so they can learn and get experience on how to do these investigations,” said Rogoff.

The office is working on an internal manual detailing how they’ll do their work, including protocols on interacting with current independent investigations teams and with the agencies involved in the incident. All information will be publicly shared once approved.

“I want to be as clear and transparent as possible,” said Rogoff.

But it is a bit unclear when they might be ready to take on cases.

“We are working at maximum speed to try to get up and running,” said Rogoff.

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Rogoff noted that while the office was initially slated to start taking over cases this past July, he was only appointed his position at the new agency about two weeks earlier, adding that folks had been very graceful in understanding that there was no way they could make that original July start date.

“But I also understand the hope of community and the uncertainty from law enforcement during the time that we haven’t started, so we very much want to get started with cases as soon as possible, and that is what I am focused on,” explained Rogoff.

“We need to hire the right people. We need to train them. We need to get our protocols in place, and we need to be ready to start doing the things the state and the Legislature want us to do. We’re very well aware that at the five-year mark, we need to have a report out to the Legislature describing how we will accomplish that goal,” he added.

HB 1267 makes clear the ultimate goal is to have a civilian agency running these investigations. Some cops wonder how someone with zero investigative experience could run what potentially amounts to homicide investigations.

“We will not be having any investigators that have no experience and no training doing any kind of investigation with us,” Rogoff stressed. “We intend to hire, train, and get new investigators experience before they’re ever let loose on a crime scene by themselves. We are asked to follow the statute, but we are not naive to the idea that in order to do these investigations over time and to have credibility, both in the community and with police agencies, we’re going to need to start with experienced investigators. So I’m never going to put someone out on a crime scene who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”

HB 1267 also opens the door to the Office of Independent Investigations re-opening previously closed investigations involving the use of deadly force, should new evidence arise. Rogoff says his team is currently working on protocols and defining what constitutes new evidence.

He says the team is also in talks with those involved with Seattle Police Department’s more than decade-old consent decree to determine how the OII can best collaborate. As it stands now, the consent decree supersedes state law created in HB 1267, leaving SPD the only law enforcement agency in the state not subject to the OII investigators and able to have its own Force Investigation Team investigate the use of deadly force involving its officers.

While Rogoff could not offer a definite date on when OII would start taking cases, his team says they expect to have a public website available in the next few weeks where people can get more information on the process and where things stand. In the meantime, as reported by Axios this week, use of deadly force incidents continue to happen around the state, including a recent case in Olympia where officers shot and killed Timothy Green.

Green’s mother told Axios’ Melissa Santos if the new Office of Independent Investigations was up and running, her son might still be alive because it would cause police to think again before using deadly force.

While the new OII is not ready to take cases, the state auditor is.

This week State Auditor Pat McCarthy’s team released the first-of-its-kind audit of the use of deadly force investigations to ensure they’re conducted in compliance with new police accountability laws.

The Kitsap Critical Incident Response Unit volunteered to be the first audited, which found the unit fell short in two deadly force investigation cases.

The first case involved the death of David Pruitte, 36, an unarmed man who was shot and killed by a Kitsap County sheriff’s deputy after a confrontation in the middle of the road, according to the Kitsap Sun.

The second case involves the death of Kitsap County Jail inmate Sean Howell when corrections officers placed him in a restraint chair.

In both cases, auditors found no documentation showing supervisors had removed the involved officers from the scene, nor were they separated and directed not to speak to each other about the case.

Auditors also noted investigators failed to inform families before putting out a press release to the media.

As far as enforcement action goes, it won’t come from the auditor.

“It’ll be up to the legislature, the Criminal Justice Training Commission, the governor’s office, or law enforcement agencies to make changes based on our findings and recommendations,” said Michael Huynh, program manager for the use of deadly force investigation audits for the state auditor.

As part of the package of police reform legislation passed in 2021 by the Legislature, the State Auditor’s Office must audit every investigation into officers’ use of deadly force that resulted in death or bodily harm in the state since Jan. 6, 2020.

Two more audits are expected to be released next week.

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