The process: 3 investigations launched every time a Tacoma police officer kills someone
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Use of Force
Last summer, Tacoma raised its voice about police brutality and demanded to be heard. The death of Manuel Ellis started a conversation about how people of color are policed in the city. This series is the result of months of investigation trying to answer the questions at the foundation of that conversation: How often do Tacoma police use force? What type of force do officers use? Whom do they use it on? And what discipline do they face?
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When a police officer kills somebody in Tacoma, it initiates three separate investigations.
The Pierce County Force Investigation Team conducts a criminal investigation, the Prosecutor’s Office independently monitors the investigation to ensure it is open, accurate, and appropriate, and the Medical Examiner’s Office determines the details of what caused the death and what factors contributed to it.
The parallel investigations are independent of each other, though information and reports often are shared, and the three agencies meet once their investigations are complete. That briefing gives prosecutors an opportunity to ask questions and review all materials before deciding whether a law enforcement officer’s actions were justified.
Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett could not recall her office charging a law enforcement officer with a use-of-force death. Robnett surmised that’s because police often respond to life-threatening situations.
“In looking back at cases this office has reviewed, most involve persons who appear to be posing a significant threat to other people or to the officers who responded to the call,” she told The News Tribune. “Like anyone else, police are allowed to act in defense of themselves and in defense of others. Plus, officers have a duty to protect the general public and to protect fellow officers. Unlike the rest of us, law enforcement officers generally can’t avoid or retreat from dangerous situations like most of us can.”
Pierce County Force Investigation Team
When Tacoma police use deadly force, patrol officers are the first to arrive on scene to cordon off the area with yellow tape and preserve evidence. They keep watch over the scene until members of PCFIT arrive, which can take anywhere from a half hour to an hour.
There are roughly 60 members of the team from multiple agencies, and those members have been split into three units that rotate being on call. Even though there are Tacoma investigators on the county team, they would not participate in the investigation of a TPD officer.
Once PCFIT members are on scene, all Tacoma police personnel are expected to leave.
“One of the priorities is to relieve all personnel from the involved agency and replace them with people from uninvolved agencies,” said Lakewood Police Chief Mike Zaro, who helped form the Pierce County Force Investigation Team.
There’s often a bit of a delay in starting the investigation because PCFIT commanders go over a conflict of interest form with each investigator to ensure they can objectively investigate the incident.
Then they do the things normally associated with a criminal investigation: photograph and process evidence, interview witnesses, look for any video recordings of the incident, send evidence to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab to be analyzed and talk to the involved officers.
Most interviews with the involved officers do not happen for a few days, which gives PCFIT time to gather as much information as possible.
The involved officers usually have an attorney present, and they do not have to answer questions from investigators.
“These are criminal investigations, and as such the 5th Amendment protects subjects of a criminal investigation from making statements against themselves,” Zaro said. “So any statement they give must be voluntary in order for it to be used against them in a criminal prosecution.”
The interviews are recorded, and investigators from PCFIT and the Prosecutor’s Office are present and able to ask questions.
Medical Examiner’s Office
The Medical Examiner’s Office is notified of the death at the same time as the Pierce County Force Investigation Team.
Due to staffing constraints, it’s usually just one forensic investigator who responds. That person gathers information from police and fire personnel on scene, as well as any family members or other witnesses who can offer information about what happened. Then they take photographs of the body and its immediate surroundings.
“It’s mainly just to gather information on the person,” said deputy chief medical examiner Tim Williams. “Really what our purview is pertains to the body and anything that is immediately associated with the body.”
The forensic investigator does a quick field examination of the body before transporting the deceased to the Medical Examiner’s offices.
Autopsies are typically performed within a day or two, though weekends and holidays can cause minor delays.
Homicides and police-related deaths are given top priority, so those autopsies are bumped to the front of the list ahead of natural or accidental deaths.
When the autopsy is performed, PCFIT investigators and an investigator from the Prosecutor’s Office are allowed to observe from a separate room with a large glass window.
“Once things start, our communication (with investigators) is pretty limited,” Williams said. “But afterwards, they can ask questions.”
Although it takes weeks or months to finish an autopsy report, medical examiners can offer some immediate information to law enforcement officers to aid in an investigation, like how many bullets struck the deceased and what kind of bullets they were.
Toxicology samples are sent to the state crime lab, and waiting for results is the most common delay in completing autopsy findings.
The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office earned accreditation from the National Association of Medical Examiners 27 years ago, and to maintain that accreditation, it must complete 90 percent of autopsy reports within 90 days.
Only law enforcement officers and family members of the deceased are able to request copies of the autopsy findings. The public is not privy to that information because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
The office is also responsible for filling out death certificates, which means identifying the deceased and determining what killed them (cause of death) and how they were killed (manner of death).
The manner of death often leads to one of the biggest misunderstandings about death investigations, Williams said. There are only five options medical examiners can list: homicide, suicide, accidental, natural and undetermined.
For medical examiners’ purposes, a homicide just means one person killed another person. It does not involve intent.
“If we call something a homicide, it doesn’t legally mean it’s a murder,” Williams said.
All police shootings and police-involved deaths are deemed homicides by the Medical Examiner’s Office, but it’s up to the prosecutors to determine whether a law enforcement officer should be charged with a crime.
Williams also said it’s important for people to know that his office does an independent investigation.
“While we cooperate with law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, we come to our own conclusions about what we think happened,” he said.
Prosecutor’s Office
The Prosecutor’s Office decides whether an officer who killed somebody should face criminal charges, so it is involved in the investigation from the start.
One of three investigators from the office’s Investigative Services Unit responds to observe and examine the scene. The investigator also sits in on interviews with the involved officers and witnesses, attends the autopsy and reviews all copies of PCFIT’s reports.
Once the criminal investigation is done, PCFIT notifies prosecutors, and they schedule a briefing where investigators present the facts of the case and show scene photos, diagrams, video footage, ballistics reports, autopsy and toxicology findings, officer and witness statements and other relevant evidence.
Also present at the briefing are community representatives, Robnett, the chief criminal deputy prosecutor and several deputy prosecutors from the Criminal Division.
Anybody can ask questions, request more information or share concerns.
Afterward, prosecutors meet to do a legal analysis and decide whether the officer’s actions were legally justifiable.
“Under Washington law, anyone acting in self-defense must be acting reasonably,” said Adam Faber, spokesman for the Prosecutor’s Office. “The law enforcement-specific statute requires that an officer be acting in good faith, which includes both subjective and objective good faith.”
Subjective good faith is the officer’s belief that it was necessary to use deadly force. Objective good faith means that a similarly-situated, reasonable officer would believe it was necessary to use deadly force.
Prosecutors usually take four to six months to make a decision. Since Robnett took office in January 2019, she began writing lengthy analysis of the incident and her office’s decision, complete with legal standards for why the officer’s actions are or are not justified.
They then notify the Tacoma police chief, involved officers and the decedent’s family.
“If the case were to result in the filing of criminal charges, we would notify the decedent’s family as with any other prosecution,” Faber said. “We make every attempt to ensure that the decedent’s family is notified if we decline charges when the determination is final. These cases are heartbreaking for those who have lost loved ones, and we want to respect their grief and privacy.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2021 at 5:05 AM.
