The answer is simple…government doesn’t want you to know… and what you don’t know won’t hurt them. The truth is they often times, even via surrogates some government officials will go to almost any lengths to hide things.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/jan/09/father-of-spokane-valley-councilwoman-loses-spokan/
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/jun/15/internal-police-investigations-body-camera-video-c/
https://examplepro.me/2018/06/12/why-do-public-officials-hate-public-records-requests/
As a way of demonstrating exactly what I am writing about and given the current Media attention to issues involving how women are treated I want my readers to be aware of this case.
Washington State Law allows for IA Case C17-048 to be released to the public in its entirety including the name of the Officer involved and all of the facts surrounding the case because the allegation was “Sustained”. The problem is unless someone tips the Media regarding the circumstances surrounding the complaint the public will never know if there are problems with SPD’s handling of Rape Investigations, nor in all likelihood will the City Council and their Public Safety Committee know, unless some Investigative Journalist gets involved in investigating it and makes it public.
To be perfectly clear SPD, as well as the Spokane County Sheriffs Office are under no legal obligation to post anything online for the Public to see, and the only reason SPD started posting IA cases on there website was because of the Use of Force Commission and the COPS/DOJ Review both of which called for more transparency.
Previously SPD posted IA Cases in their entirety on their website for all to read, they quit doing that when there was considerable embarrassment to the Department (I have written several stories regarding this). As it stands now SPD is only posting a “Closed Case Summary” on their website which tells the Public and Reporters, absolutely nothing and requires that Reporters or the Public go to great lengths to get the facts, something many reporters aren’t willing to do.
Needless to say, my Weird IA Case File is full of interesting and sometimes funny IA Cases.
https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/ab9faed3-cf0d-4fdf-b96b-d6982effac15
https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/537a441d-3bfe-48bb-b4df-39cd537bab41
People that know me well know some of the lengths I’ve gone to in the interest of Crime Victims, and in several cases the BS I had to put up with in protecting their interests. You can probably imagine how some SPD Cops reacted when this report I was tasked with doing was made public, there were three similar internal reports I made after this one that were also very critical of the way SPD handled Rape Investigations and documented the fact that nothing much had changed since “The Coe Report”, those lengthy and critical reports were never made public, but that didn’t mean they didn’t result in some heat.
I am very hopeful that things have changed however based on some recent information I have received things might not have changed so I feel obligated to take a serious look at this IA Case whether SPD likes it or not. This is not the only recent IA Case that has come to my attention that has caused me concern.
Buffalo Brian Breen 