ࡱ > t v s @ 9 bjbj .T u u 1 4 4 4 4 D x $ Y R R R R @ R V Y $ [ R ^ b ?Y ?Y TY y y y . R y R y y j K 5P `T 4 # ^ M 2 R , jY 0 Y 3M l^ l^ d 5P 5P l^ P y J ?Y ?Y D c Metropolitan King County Council Law, Justice and Human Services Committee STAFF REPORT AGENDA ITEM: 5 DATE: July 6, 2006 PROPOSED ORDINANCE 2006-0037 PREPARED BY: Clifton Curry SUBJECT: AN ORDINANCE relating to oversight of the sheriff's office; amending Ordinance 473, Section 8, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.52.080, Ordinance 473, Section 11, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.52.110, Ordinance 473, Section 12, and K.C.C. 2.52.120, Ordinance 473, Section 13, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.52.130, Ordinance 11687, Section 2, and K.C.C. 3.42.020, Ordinance 11687, Section 4, and K.C.C. 3.42.030 and Ordinance 11687, Section 6, and K.C.C. 3.42.050, adding a new section to K.C.C. chapter 2.20 and adding a new section to K.C.C. chapter 2.52. SUMMARY: This is the eighth committee meeting regarding proposed legislation for adding processes and mechanisms for civilian oversight of the King County Sheriffs Office. This staff report will provide a summary of the work, to date, of the Sheriffs Blue Ribbon Panel. Background. The sheriff in King County provides a variety of law enforcement services and has the largest county criminal justice budget ($128.8 million and over 1,000 employees, many of these employees are subject to collective bargaining labor agreements). The sheriff is responsible for certain mandated regional and local law enforcement services. The sheriffs office if the first response police department for all of King Countys unincorporated areas. In addition, the sheriffs office has several regional responsibilities, including the operation of the countys Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), E-911 call and dispatch, King County Search and Rescue, and various other regional programs. In addition, the sheriffs office also provides services to cities and other governmental agencies under contract. The sheriffs office, through full cost recovery contracts, is the police department for 12 King County cities, Metro Transit, King County Airport, and several other agencies (the Muckleshoot Tribe, King County Housing, and U.S. Forestry Department, for example). Almost half of the sheriffs office operating budget is supported by contract revenues. Consequently, the King County Sheriffs Office is one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the Pacific Northwest, and only the City of Seattle and the Washington State Patrol have more commissioned officers. To meet its responsibilities, the sheriffs office has is organized into four divisions: Field Operations, Criminal Investigations, Special Operations, and Technical Services. However, the sheriffs Internal Investigations Unit reports directly to the sheriff. King County, through a charter amendment in 1997, established that the office of the Sheriff would be a non-partisan elective office. While the elected sheriff is responsible for many aspects of the operation of the sheriffs office, the county charter requires that the collective bargaining agreements for sheriff employees be negotiated by the county executive, subject to labor policies defined by the county council. Sheriffs Blue Ribbon Panel. On June 26, 2006, the representatives of the Sheriffs Blue Ribbon Panel briefed the councils Committee of the Whole on the status of panel deliberations and schedule for reporting. The presentation described the work of the panel, summarized preliminary findings, discussed major areas of concern, and gave an overview of the proposed schedule for completion of the panels work and a final report to the council. Panel Background. As part of a complement of reforms for the Sheriffs Office, Sue Rahr, the King County Sheriff, established a Blue Ribbon Panel to review the internal management systems within the Sheriffs Office related to employee misconduct and discipline. The council, along with the executive and the prosecutor were asked to identify citizens to serve on blue ribbon panel. Ten citizens were selected to serve on this panel (list attached) and had their first meeting on March 8, 2006. This expert panel has been reviewing the Sheriff Office to evaluate and comment on which processes are working and identify areas of needed change. The panel has accepted as its working goals to: Review sheriffs office internal management systems for addressing employee misconduct and discipline. Gain an understanding of good management practices in other departments and their applicability to a department with characteristics like the sheriffs office; Make recommendations for improvements to the sheriffs office employee accountability system. Berk & Associates, a private consultant, has been retained to provide staffing, conduct research and manage all facilitation tasks for the panel. In addition, the consultant will prepare the final written report. The panel has been meeting once every two to three weeks since March and has received briefings on the Sheriffs Internal Investigations Unit, the countys Office of Citizen Complaints-Ombudsman, county labor negotiators, union and guild officials, and consultants on best practices and model agencies. The panel has also conducted three public meetings around the county to allow for public testimony. (A summary of the panel agendas is attached.) The panels consultant briefed members of the Law, Justice and Human Services committee on May 4, 2006. Panel Status. Panel members have begun the task of developing their findings and recommendations. To begin this task, the panel completed a list of major factors that they believe influence the employee misconduct and the sheriffs overall disciplinary process. The following is the list of these factors: Department leadership and culture: customs, values, informal standards of conduct, and professionalism expected and modeled by departmental leaders. Management and supervision: prevention of misconduct, intervention when it occurs, and correction/discipline when needed. Human resource systems: recruitment, hiring, training, promotions, and recognition Labor environment: collective bargaining agreements and relations with and influence of labor unions Complaint process: how it is structured and conducted, including intake, investigation, discipline, remedies, and appeals. Internal oversight: tracking, monitoring, and reporting procedures and systems to provide feedback, evaluate individual performance, identify patterns of misconduct, and develop systemic improvements. External oversight: governmental and citizen oversight of police misconduct and discipline processes. Transparency: public access to relevant information and the publics perception of the openness of the investigation and discipline processes. External forces: events or factors that prompt changes, such as politics, media coverage, and community reactions. What the Panel sees as the influential factors are those elements that determine the success or failure of a discipline/misconduct system. The panel has also been evaluating how those influential factors combine to make KCSO functional or not. Using this set of influential factors the panel intends to develop a series of Problem Statement/Situation Assessments which will be statements of what the Panel thinks the problem is to be solved. The panel is discussing both sheriff offices Strengths/Opportunities and Challenges/Concerns as a structure for showing findings. The panel also intends to include a discussion of best practices, particularly those best practices that can be effectively used in King County. The panel chair informed the council during the briefing that he anticipates that the panel will recommend a system of civilian oversight for the Sheriffs Office along with its other recommendations. However, the panel has not yet decided what form the civilian oversight should take. The panel anticipates that it will develop its finding and recommendations throughout the month of July. The panels final report is scheduled to be completed by August 7th and the panel chair stated that he feels that the panel will meet these deadlines. The chair also stated that the panel intends to present the final report to the council and has already called on the council to require that the panel be re-convened in a year to evaluate the implementation of panel recommendations. Proposed Ordinance 2006-0037. This proposed Ordinance makes several changes to existing county systems for sheriffs office oversight. The primary changes proposed in this ordinance are the addition of a new division for law enforcement oversight within the Office of Citizen ComplaintsOmbudsman and the creation of a distinct law enforcement audit function within the Council Auditors Office. In addition, the legislation proposes several changes to clean up existing provisions in code. The first major provision of this ordinance proposes to add to the Office of Citizen ComplaintsOmbudsman and new Division of Law Enforcement Oversight. The office currently has authority to investigate citizen complaints against sheriffs office employees. However, the ordinance adds significant new resources and responsibilities. The new division would be responsible for receiving and recording all citizen complaints involving the sheriff's office and forward the complaints to the sheriff's internal investigations unit for investigation. In addition, the division of law enforcement oversight shall receive and record Whistleblower notifications made by employees in the sheriffs office. Staff would be expected to have law enforcement and investigation experience. Furthermore, the ordinance requires that the new division monitor all investigations. A significant new responsibility in the area of investigations is added by the ordinance where, at the discretion of the deputy director of law enforcement oversight (a new position created in the Office of Citizen Complaints reporting to the DirectorOmbudsman), division staff would participate in investigations performed by the sheriffs office internal investigations unit. These new investigatory responsibilities would include interviewing witnesses, including employees, and reviewing evidence and documents associated with complaints at any time during the course of the investigation. At the discretion of the deputy director of law enforcement oversight, the division of law enforcement oversight may also conduct independent investigations. As part of the divisions proposed review function, the division would also review all findings and recommendations of the sheriff's office internal investigations unit and report to the sheriff: whether the complaint should be sustained; whether the investigation was fair and thorough; whether the findings and recommendations were reached without bias; and whether the recommended disciplinary action was appropriate under sheriff's office protocol. Additionally, the deputy director may issue recommendations for policy changes and reforms directly to the sheriff to improve policies, procedures, and internal investigations. The ordinance also proposes that the deputy director issue tri-annual written reports on all investigatory activities and their resolutions and present these reports to the county council. The second major element of the proposed ordinance requires that the auditor establish a permanent and ongoing law enforcement audit process. The auditor currently performs audits, as directed by the council, of all county agencies including the sheriff. However, the proposed ordinance would add new, permanent requirements for reviewing the sheriffs office and require that those audits to be performed by individuals with law enforcement expertise. The ordinance proposes that the auditor acquire an outside law enforcement expert to conduct an initial audit of the sheriffs office internal investigation operations and practices. In addition, the auditor would use the services of this expert to provide periodic reviews of the sheriff's office and presents the results of the reviews to the council. Further, the ordinance would require that the auditor assess and review the reports and recommendations from a newly division of law enforcement oversight in the Office of Citizen Complaints. Based on these reviews, the ordinance requires that the auditor review the effectiveness of the division of law enforcement oversight. The proposed ordinance allows that the auditor can either hire qualified personnel with expertise in law enforcement oversight or contract for independent consulting services with appropriate expertise, or both. ATTACHMENTS: Proposed ORDINANCE 2006-0037.1 King County Sheriffs Blue Ribbon Panel, Progress Report to the King County Council # C L N [ g i j k r s x y K P 鵫ßϖvmi\hO hqp 5>*aJ h h P hw h P aJ h- h P aJ h P aJ hCc h P aJ h P @aJ hO hO aJ hO hhXb 5>*aJ hO hqp 5aJ h P 5aJ h 5aJ hO h 5>*aJ hO h aJ hO hO 5aJ h 5aJ hO h 5aJ h j h U $ # M N [ / 0 - gd P gd