Item 6: Report to City Council from Police Auditor

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people who receive traffic citations and appear or are scheduled for municipal court believe that the Auditor's office is an alternative to a judicial decision regarding their guilt or innocence of a violation. Even with explanation, often times the expectation remains that our role is considered court advocate, rather than a neutral evaluator of police conduct within the context of police policies and procedures. While I believe that our classifications are fair and neutral, some concerns are expressed about the classification of some cases. I will admit that we do hold officers to high standards and probably identify cases as allegations where in many jurisdictions they may not reach the level of an allegation (such as use of pepper spray, which is considered a rather benign use of force in most policing jurisdictions). However, I believe that these classification standards are in line with community expectations and efforts to build trust in the community. We recognize and appreciate the impact of our decisions on complainants and their families, community, officers, their families and the other interested parties. We make these decisions with careful consideration based on our experience, training and policy evaluations, with recognition that our decisions are not always going to please others. Intake accomplishments include: fast turnover rate /referral for ADR or investigations; patient and compassionate concern for individuals who are experiencing mental illness and social interaction difficulties; comprehensive explanations of our role and the roles of other agencies. Investigations: The quality of internal investigations has been excellent. In addition, most allegations of criminal conduct are turned over to an outside agency, to avoid any perceptions of bias or favoritism. Many have returned for adjudication in the administrative process. I have found no evidence of interference with Internal Affairs investigators by command staff in fulfilling their duties of conducting a fair and objective investigation. Blue Team: Blue Team gets its own paragraph because of the impact it will have toward a philosophy of constitutional policing. Blue Team is a data tracking system with the EPD and Auditor shared database system that tracks uses of force, pursuits, vehicle accidents, bias complaints and other allegations and major issues. It has been online only a few months in 2013 but the changes are remarkable. With EPD command staff agreeing that full access for my office is important for the success of Blue Team, we are now able to look at all uses of force. We look forward to conducting analysis as the raw data grows. With our current system we have identified those officers with the highest number of complaint involvement. The best measure in these circumstances is a sustained rate; however, a higher complaint rate does generate supervisory review as discussed at the weekly Internal Affairs /Command staff meeting. Several past and current investigations are identifying sworn and non -sworn employees who have exhibited policy violations. Performance and Policy Impact: For EPD, approximately 31% of allegations were sustained based on 35 cases with 77 allegations, resulting in some form of discipline. With regard to allegations, my office makes an adjudication recommendation to the Chief, who then makes a final decision. The Chief agreed with all of our office's sustained findings. This matches up favorably or better with similarly structured oversight organizations. (For comparison purposes, Boise had 37 allegations with 6 sustained by the Ombudsman, of which the Chief agreed with 3.) We (Auditor and CRB) have advocated, with varying degrees of success for some policy improvements in search and seizure, canine use, vehicle pursuit, Brady issues, use of force and response to unusual Office of the Police Auditor 2012 Annual Report 13