Item B: Police Auditor Ordinance Review Report

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investigation, if that allegation is true. The reporting party and the community then rely on the civilian oversight and police internal affairs systems to ensure employees are held accountable for their actions through the established employment processes of progressive discipline. DISCUSSION: PAORC RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Concurrent Criminal and Administrative Investigations At times an administrative investigation will interfere with a criminal investigation and prosecution. Ensuring that our employees are held accountable to policy is important and highly valued, but at times this action should be secondary to the fair and impartial administration of justice. Having an immediate administrative review that may satisfy the initial interest of the public and will at the most extreme result in employee termination, could jeopardize a criminal case where the sanctions are much greater and more serious. In most internal affairs cases, the criminal and administrative investigations can occur at the same time. Portland’s Independent Police Review system has learned that allowing the criminal case to run its course before completing the administrative investigation often results in a better administrative case. In most circumstances, the criminal justice processes gather information that can be useful to the administrative case, and can in some ways do so more effectively. Members of the PAORC learned from Interim Police Auditor Reynolds that other well established oversight systems are silent on the issue of concurrent investigations. Generally, the chief of police should choose to run administrative and criminal investigations concurrently. In rare cases, the chief will need to find a balance between the State’s effective prosecution of an important case and a timely internal process that holds employees accountable to policy. A dilemma of this kind will typically involve the prosecution of violent offenders and other high profile cases. The “Broadway Plaza/Anti-Pesticide Rally” case nearing trial is an example of an incident that has attracted considerable community interest. In this case the chief weighed the importance of effectively prosecuting several defendants who were subject to potential penalties which included protracted incarceration and multi-thousand dollar fines, against immediately investigating an employee performance complaint that could result in discipline for a violation of policy. EPD and the community are equally invested in seeing justice served and, as Portland Assistant Auditor Pete Sandrock said during our PAORC meetings, the criminal justice process is uniquely suited to getting at the truth in such matters. The criminal justice process will effectively and formally gather information critical to the administrative investigation. This is not a choice where we have to ask if we want a good criminal investigation rather than a good administrative investigation. In this case we can run consecutive, thorough and objective investigations, while maintaining the integrity of each. The decision as to when to conduct investigations concurrently or consecutively should reside with the chief of police because both criminal and administrative investigations are the chief’s responsibility, and because criminal investigations are exclusively within the responsibility of the chief of police. The police auditor’s responsibility is to monitor internal affairs functions, not to make decisions for the chief that may change the outcome of one of the Police Department’s core functions: the investigation, enforcement and prosecution of criminal conduct. The rare incident of unnecessarily postponing an administrative investigation is preferable to undermining the prosecution of a case that is carried out under rules established by the constitutions of the United States of America and the State of Oregon. The system established by the City Manager in October, 2008 works. In it, the police auditor may notify the City Manager that he or she objects to the chief’s decision to temporarily postpone the completion of an administrative investigation. The city manager would hear both positions and make the final Page 2 of 3