Ruling expands review board's access to Seattle police files

A civilian review board has the right to see complete files of Seattle police internal investigations, including the names of officers and witnesses, a state labor panel ruled this week.

Previously, the review board had access only to redacted files. Blacking out names makes them unintelligible and difficult to understand for a board reviewing cases and identifying trends in policing.

The labor panel overturned a previous ruling allowing the names to be withheld from the city's Office of Professional Accountability Review Board (OPARB).

The Seattle Police Officers' Guild (SPOG) hasn't yet decided whether to appeal the labor board's ruling in King County Superior Court, said the union president, Sgt. Rich O'Neill.

O'Neill last year called the hearing examiner's ruling a huge victory for the union, which represents the city's 1,180 officers, sergeants and detectives. He said Thursday that the question of redacted files "is almost an old issue," given that the board's composition has changed and the guild's most recent labor contract includes a provision that clearly defines what review-board members can and can't do.

But Peter Holmes, the review board's former chairman and a current candidate for city attorney, said access to unredacted files goes "to the heart and soul of civilian oversight."

The police department's internal-affairs office, called the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA), is headed by a civilian director and investigates allegations of police misconduct and makes disciplinary recommendations to the chief of police. The citizen review board is responsible for reviewing a sampling of closed cases and issuing reports to the City Council.

In May 2006, the City Council unanimously passed an ordinance allowing members of the review board access to unredacted police-discipline files. The updated city ordinance went into effect the following year, and the review board received unredacted files until the police union filed an unfair-labor-practice complaint against the city.

Last year, the state hearing examiner ruled in the guild's favor, saying the issue of unredacted files should have been negotiated with the union. The review board was ordered to return all unredacted files to the OPA and to purge any records based on those files.

But this week's ruling by the three-member Public Employment Relations Commission says the city ordinance, allowing the review board to see full investigative files, is a "management prerogative" that doesn't impact the working conditions of police officers and so is not subject to mandatory bargaining.

"I hope to hear that SPOG accepts the decision so that we all, police officers, city officials and citizen watchdogs, can together put this chapter behind us," Councilmember Nick Licata, who spearheaded the 2006 ordinance, said in a written statement. "In doing so we can better concentrate on the important dialogue on the issues that police officers and citizens share: how to ensure the OPA is effective, fair, and responsive to all parties in resolving citizen complaints."

The state labor commission also found that blacking out the names of people involved in police-misconduct investigations was a cumbersome, time-consuming process that "caused considerable delay" — of up to a year in some cases — in getting those files to the review board.

This week's ruling points out that the review-board members are still bound by confidentiality agreements that bar them in any of their reports from releasing officers' names, badge numbers or other identifying information.

The issue became hugely political when an OPARB report critical of then-Chief Gil Kerlikowske was leaked to the media in 2007. That report accused Kerlikowske of interfering in an investigation that ultimately cleared two officers involved in the arrest of a disabled drug dealer.

The police union accused the review board of overreaching its authority by trying to intervene in an investigation, something Holmes denied. The conflict prompted Mayor Greg Nickels to convene a blue-ribbon panel, which ultimately recommended 29 changes to the city's police-accountability system. Those changes, which included increasing the number of review-board members from three to seven, were negotiated into the guild's new labor contract.

Also as a result of the drug dealer's arrest, the guild and the city signed an agreement last fall stipulating that the review board "will not initiate a complaint, investigate, intervene or inquire into a specific investigation, comment publicly on individual cases, issue reports on individual cases or identify individual officers."

City Attorney Tom Carr, the incumbent running against Holmes, said Thursday the city has now resolved most issues over police accountability through negotiations with the guild. Carr's office successfully argued the city's case against redacting names from the investigative files.

"We're talking about a different animal," Carr said of the new review board. "They still have to keep things confidential, and the ruling stresses that."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com