The King County Sheriff's Office Internal Investigations Unit Complaint Data Dashboard is now online.
The King County Sheriff's office has published data from their own Internal Investigations Unit (IIU) online with data from the past five years.
The trends have shown an uptick in complaints and allegations since 2017 when there were 415 to 2019 when they reached 729 per year. 2014 Of the 3,838 misconduct complaints and 4.567 allegations (complaints can contain multiple allegations) investigated by the IIU there were 586 made regarding courtesy (or presumably lack thereof) as the leading category. More concerning were the 555 Serious Misconduct allegations and the 442 Excessive/Unnecessary Use of Force allegations made. Other violations reached 518 with Misconduct at 480, Conduct Unbecoming at 252, Use of Authority at 248, Obedience to Laws/Orders at 228 and Investigation of Misconduct at 163, 21 were given training, and
The majority of complaints were regarding "performance standards" and were made against deputies and detectives with 25% made in the Adminstrative offices. Over the five year period 46 employees were suspended, 69 given a reprimand, and 57 corrective counseling.
Those accused of Serious Misconduct 21 resigned or were terminated, 30 were suspended, 15 given a reprimand, 14 given corrective counseling.
No employees were terminated for excessive use of force but 2 were suspended and 4 were given additional training.
Sheriff Mitzi G. Johanknecht said “I am pleased to announce that today we have placed interactive Internal Investigations Unit (IIU) complaint data on our website in the form of interactive dashboards. The King County Sheriff’s Office is the first in our state to offer these dashboards. A few law enforcement agencies around the country share IIU data, but none of them offer this data to the public in an interactive format.
Now our community members can query information on IIU complaints, findings and discipline from 2014 to 2019. All of the data comes directly from our complaint database, and includes the type of incident, origin of complaint (internal or community), type of employee (sworn or professional), rank, and status (whether currently employed). The data is also searchable by precinct, so community members can see information in their service area.
As with the Use of Force dashboards launched several months ago, I contracted with Police Strategies LLC to conduct an extensive analysis of KCSO Internal Investigations Complaints occurring in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Our intent is that the dashboards will be updated annually.
Here is a link:
"I hope this information will assure our community members we are investigating all complaints thoroughly and professionally. My continued desire is to work collaboratively, with both county elected officials and the people we serve, to answer our community’s call for transparency, accountability and action.” said Johanknecht.
