Onboarding progresses slowly for new Office of Independent Investigations

In Washington state's Legislature, the killing of Manuel Ellis in March 2020 by Tacoma Police helped propel a police reform package of more than a dozen bills.

One of those bills created the Office of Independent Investigations, or OII, which was signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee in 2021.

This is the first office of its kind in the nation and it plans to train civilian investigators to watchdog the use of deadly force by police throughout the state.

Gov. Inslee named Roger Rogoff to be the director of the new office, and Rogoff is tasked with creating the office from scratch.

The OII is designed to increase trust and transparency in cases where police used deadly use of force, and to prevent situations where police involved in the response to those situations end up investigating the case themselves.

Rogoff told Soundside that in the case of a deadly force incident, the responding law enforcement agency would be required by statute to call the OII hotline. The office would then deploy investigators to gather information on the incident and from there, the office would have 120 days to present their findings to the relevant prosecutor's office.

"That report would be a robust description of the facts of the case," Rogoff explained. "What actually happened, as well as a very clear description of what our investigation looked like — what we did, who we interviewed, what evidence we considered, who we didn't interview and why."

Rogoff clarified that the "use of deadly force" doesn't have to be fatal, but includes any actions taken by officers that could result in death, like a "shoot and miss" encounter.

At full capacity, the office will include 80 employees, but so far, hiring is incremental as competition is high for law enforcement resources. Rogoff said the office has hired 14 employees so far.

"The hard part of this hiring work is we're in the middle of now, which is finding senior investigators, investigators with experience who can hit the ground running and do this work and start training our entry level investigators to do the work as well," Rogoff said.

The office was also given the authority to begin investigating cases of deadly use of force by police in July, but as staffing remains slow, Rogoff is hesitant to send newly trained investigators into the field.

The OII builds on I-940, a 2018 initiative that created 17 independent investigation teams (IITs) across the state. Both teams have the power to investigate uses of deadly force, but IIT teams are comprised of law enforcement officers, while OII teams are not.

"We have now met with members of all 17 of those teams, and continue to have our assistant director of investigations and our legal policy adviser engaged in the weeds on discussions with those groups about what that handoff of cases might look like," Rogoff said.

Rogoff did not provide a timeline for when the office will be at full operational capacity, and noted that hiring will need to be completed before sending investigators into the field. The OII does have the power to review older cases where new evidence has been introduced that was not considered in the original investigation. Rogoff noted that those cases are less time and resource intensive, and make for good training cases as the office continues to grow.

"I don't want to give timelines because I don't want to create disappointment, when I can't meet a timeline because of things that are out of my control," Rogoff said. "But I will tell you that we are making progress."

Correction 12/14/2022: An earlier version of this segment included incorrect information about the investigate powers of IITs and the OII. It has been updated to reflect the makeup of each team, and to clarify that the OII has investigative powers as designated by its statute and is not reviewing investigations to turn over to IITs for further investigation.

Listen to Soundside's full conversation with Roger Rogoff by clicking the audio above.