A Washington state agency charged with policing the police is struggling under a mountain of unresolved cases, according to a FOX 13 investigation. The Criminal Justice Training Commission, the body responsible for approving, denying and revoking the certifications that allow officers to work in law enforcement, is carrying a backlog of more than 1,500 cases. That figure points to a system that, by its own numbers, is falling well behind on the very complaints it is supposed to resolve.
The cases piling up are not minor paperwork. According to the reporting, they are complaints that have been submitted against officers, or involve officers who have been fired, in situations where the employing agency reports that misconduct occurred. In other words, these are exactly the kinds of allegations the certification system exists to examine, the ones that can determine whether an officer should be allowed to keep wearing a badge anywhere in the state.
The problem is not only the size of the backlog but how long these cases sit unresolved. The investigation found that complaints and misconduct cases have been languishing in the queue sometimes for years at a time. Rather than being reviewed and closed in a timely way, they remain on a back burner, leaving serious questions about individual officers unanswered for extended periods while the commission works through its overwhelmed caseload.
That delay has real consequences for who ends up policing communities. While an investigation is stalled or has not yet been conducted, the officers involved can move around to different departments and find new employment. Because their cases have not been fully investigated and misconduct has not been formally found, the allegations do not necessarily show up on their record, allowing them to continue working in law enforcement even as questions about their past conduct remain open.
The reasons behind the pileup, according to the report, are twofold. Part of it is a matter of capacity, with the commission simply not having the resources to keep pace with the volume of cases. But the other part lies with law enforcement agencies themselves, which are described as not adequately reporting misconduct when it occurs. Audits cited in the reporting found that agencies are also not swiftly reporting officer firings, even though the law requires them to do so.
Layered on top of the capacity and reporting problems is a jurisdictional complication involving tribal law enforcement. Because tribes are a separate jurisdiction, the state is not able to simply tell them what to do when it comes to reporting and handling officer misconduct. That gap between state authority and tribal sovereignty adds another dimension to an already tangled system, making consistent oversight of every officer across Washington more difficult to achieve.
The investigation also looked at whether anything is being done to fix the problem. Lawmakers who work on the issue told FOX 13 that they believe it is something they need to look into, describing the situation as alarming. They acknowledged the difficulty posed by the separate tribal jurisdiction, but said they are examining the backlog and the reporting failures behind it, signaling that the state's system for holding officers accountable could face closer scrutiny in the months ahead.