Beginning Dec. 1, fatal police encounters in Clark County will no longer be investigated by regional law enforcement partners. Investigations will be in the hands of a state agency aiming to bring an independent view.
The Office of Independent Investigations, created by the Legislature in 2021, announced Tuesday it intends to launch operations in phases.
The first phase will put state investigators in the region encompassing Southwest Washington and the Olympic Peninsula, including Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania, Thurston, Lewis, Mason, Clallam, Grays Harbor, Pacific, Jefferson, Kitsap and Wahkiakum counties.
A team of investigators will respond to all fatal incidents of police use of force in the region, replacing the current system that uses teams of local law enforcement agencies, according to a news release from the office. In Clark County, the Southwest Washington Independent Investigative Team was tasked with investigating two fatal Vancouver police shootings last month.
Roger Rogoff, director of the state agency, said beginning with the western region made sense because it houses the office’s headquarters in Olympia. Rogoff said it’s taken some time to get the infrastructure in place, including evidence storage facilities and vehicles, but it has the bulk of the resources needed already in the capital city.
The agency will be notified any time someone is killed by police, Rogoff explained, and investigators will respond to the scene. They will take over the investigation, including collecting evidence, interviewing witnesses and writing reports.
From there, investigators will submit their reports to the local prosecutor’s office, just as the current law enforcement investigative teams do. But Rogoff said his office intends to release its reports to the public as soon as the investigation allows.
“We want those reports to be public and available so folks can read them,” Rogoff said. “Our hope is to write them in a way that’s understandable so that people can read and make sure that they’re clear about what happened.”
Clark County Sheriff John Horch said he’s met several times with the independent investigations office’s leadership working through questions he’s had about their ability to complete the complex investigations. He said he’s more confident about its approach now than he was when the office was first created years ago, but some unknowns remain. He said leadership has assured him they have the staffing to respond to scenes quickly.
“My main thing, at the end of the day, is that the citizens feel the investigation is fair and that it’s fair to the officers involved, as well,” Horch said.
In the meantime, Horch said deputies will continue to work in conjunction with the office’s investigators.
Vancouver Police Chief Jeff Mori said in an emailed statement to The Columbian, “The Vancouver Police Department will continue to comply with the OII (Office of Independent Investigations) and support the state’s Region 1 phase-in of the OII response, to ensure transparency to the community following a critical incident. We look forward to learning more about the details and operations plans of the OII as we move closer to their response plan implementation in December.”
Rogoff said his office intends to continue to meet with agencies prior to the Dec. 1 launch date. He said he feels the office’s leaders have answered a lot of concerns about their work, but they continue to learn from the conversations they have.
The team of state investigators will consist of people from a variety of backgrounds, Rogoff said. Senior investigators will have prior experience investigating homicides, which he said likely means they’ll come from a law enforcement background. But others working under them will not.
“Nobody else in the state is trained on how to do homicide investigations other than former law enforcement, so that is the choice that we have,” Rogoff said. “Some (investigators) have, just as an example, experience as a civil investigator with the state agency or some have been in communications with different government agencies. Some have been in the military.”
Still, Rogoff said his office is committed to ensuring full independence of the team, and investigators will complete a conflict-of-interest form for each incident to ensure they don’t have any ties to the agencies involved.
The director said the hiring process has taken longer than expected, in part, because ensuring the agency has enough conflict-free, knowledgeable and available investigators at all times means each area needs somewhere around 30 investigators on staff.
“You also have to take into account, some of them may be on vacation, some may be on leave and some of them may have conflicts with that agency that’s involved so they can’t participate in the investigation,” Rogoff said. “It’s necessary for us to have enough resources to get the investigations covered, and that takes people, and more people probably than was originally anticipated.”
The team will also consist of family liaisons, who can provide support resources for the families of the person who was killed. While the law enforcement investigation teams have worked with families of those killed, Rogoff noted the liaisons from this office won’t be affiliated with the agency that killed their loved one.
The office said it intends to expand into the other regions as it hires more investigators and secures more of the regional resources.
But Rogoff said it’s gratifying to get started, even if it’s on a smaller scale, initially.
“In 2022, we started with one employee — me — and we now have just about 50 employees,” Rogoff said. “We have built this agency really intentionally with a culture of independence and a desire to do this work in as unbiased way as possible.”
