TACOMA, WA – The nascent Washington agency tasked with investigating incidents when police kill people will grow its footprint to cover Pierce County, starting in May.
After that, the Office of Independent Investigations aims to expand into central Washington.
The increased push for police accountability in cases where officers use deadly force, especially against Black people, drove the creation of the new state office.
The goal is to remove the bias that may come from local police detectives investigating killings in their areas, as is currently done in most of the state.
It took years to staff up the agency and get it off the ground.
Now, the office is ramping up slowly. Starting in December 2024, it began by investigating new cases in a more rural swath of western Washington, stretching from the northwestern edge of the Olympic Peninsula to Clark and Skamania counties on the border with Oregon. The agency calls this Region 1. There are six regions in total. Pierce County will be Region 2.
“OII is committed to serving all of Washington State by growing our operations,” the agency’s director, Roger Rogoff, said in a statement. “Being able to expand to Region 2 is a significant step forward.”
The central Washington area, covering 10 counties from Okanogan to Walla Walla, is Region 5. The regions were developed based on the average number of cases in each area.
The office’s biggest obstacle to expanding more rapidly is limited staffing. It has 66 employees, and nearly half of those are investigators spread throughout the state.
Detectives who live in other regions can respond to cases elsewhere. Some have come from as far as Spokane to investigate cases on the west side of the state.
Region 1 has nine investigators living there, while the Pierce County region has five. The central Washington region has eight.
When the office was created, it was believed that five or six investigators per region would be sufficient. But anywhere from 12 to 18 are needed to respond to each incident, agency officials believe.
This year, in the face of a budget shortfall that forced a range of cuts, lawmakers slashed the agency’s funding by 20%, spawning fears that it could be kneecapped.
It’s now requesting 20 new investigative positions in the supplemental budget legislators will pass next year. The office would’ve asked for even more if the budget situation were brighter, but even this plea is likely to be an uphill battle as lawmakers still face a shortfall.
Another obstacle to growing the office is not having an evidence storage facility on the east side of the Cascades.
The office has so far launched a half-dozen investigations into police use of deadly force, three in Clark County and one each in Clallam, Kitsap and Lewis counties.
Two have finished, and prosecutors have made a charging decision in one of them. In Lewis County, the prosecuting attorney declined to charge a Centralia police officer with a crime after he killed Alecandro Castaneda during a struggle.
“Deadly force was necessary in this matter,” Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer wrote in his charging decision. “The actions of Mr. Castaneda made it clear he had no interest in a peaceful resolution.”
The Office of Independent Investigations doesn’t weigh in on whether criminal charges should be filed.
Beyond the inquiries into new cases, the office is also tasked with looking at old instances where police used deadly force and new evidence has been discovered. Members of the public can submit review requests online.
To prepare for its expansion to Pierce County, agency officials will meet with local police leaders, community members, tribal governments and others.
Agency officials don’t have a timeline for growing the office to take on cases statewide.
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com.
