AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
When a police officer does something seriously wrong, one option is decertification, taking away their badge and gun for good. More than 20 states in the past few years have created or strengthened paths to decertification. But as reporter Jared Brown finds, there are hurdles.
JARED BROWN, BYLINE: In Washington state, like many others, police reform passed in the wake of George Floyd's murder made it easier to hold officers accountable for serious misconduct, even if it didn't rise to the level of a crime. In 2021, Washington lawmakers granted the state's Criminal Justice Training Commission broader power to strip officers of their badges for any offense that could harm public trust. Trishandra Pickup is a commissioner with the CJTC. Before then, she was one of the advocates who pushed to expand the pathways to revoke an officer's state certification.
TRISHANDRA PICKUP: Criminal misconduct is a high bar. Lots of other misconduct is notable and can result in revocation.
BROWN: Panels have voted to decertify officers for things like misusing department resources, failing to respond to 911 calls and lying about excessive force. Serious allegations, like civil rights violations and discrimination, go to the top of the state commission's pile for review. Investigators can subpoena the officers involved and depose policymakers. Some cases progress to full-blown trials with witnesses, experts and exhibits.
PICKUP: The public having a voice now can bring light to those things that we have seen, over and over again, agencies sweeping under the rug.
BROWN: The changes appear to be having an impact. Of the cases closed in Washington state in the last three years, nearly half have ended in decertification, around 125 officers. That's about as many as the previous decade combined, and the numbers are still going up. Many local law enforcement leaders were skeptical of the reforms to decertification. Derek Sanders is the sheriff in Thurston County, about an hour and a half south of Seattle.
DEREK SANDERS: There was a lot of hysteria from the law enforcement community about, like, oh, the state's just going to decertify, you know, every cop who posts a picture with Trump.
BROWN: He says he supports the measure, but the process has its limitations. Sanders says he's read the decisions in many cases, and, sometimes, he thinks the officers get off too easily, including some of his own deputies. But he says the biggest problem is that many cases take years to resolve. His department is already understaffed and could be in trouble if he has to put a deputy on leave indefinitely. Carlton Mayers is an attorney and police reform expert who has helped write decertification laws across the Midwest. He says with more attention on policing, caseloads for these commissions investigating misconduct have risen around the country.
CARLTON MAYERS: All of that is in line with what the 2020 protests, what the demands were, which was not only accountability but to also have more transparency.
BROWN: Some states now allow residents to file a complaint about misconduct directly with the commission. And there's been more outreach to explain the process to community members. But Mayers says states also need to closely track the outcomes of the decertification process.
MAYERS: And if we're not doing that, then at the end of the day, all it is is a dog and pony show.
BROWN: Better tracking could also prevent so-called wandering officers from getting rehired despite prior misconduct. Mayers points to the recent case of a former sheriff's deputy in Illinois facing murder charges for fatally shooting Sonya Massey, who had called police for help at her home. Before killing Massey, ex-Deputy Sean Grayson cycled through six police agencies in four years, racking up a series of complaints. Mayers says stronger decertification laws could keep fewer officers with red flags in their backgrounds from patrolling the streets. For NPR News, I'm Jared Brown in Seattle. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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