Now more than ever, local communities want their law enforcement agencies to be transparent about operations and forthcoming with data, and the King County Sheriff’s Office is trying to comply.

“Transparency is an important building block to community trust and a high priority for King County Sheriff Mitzi G. Johanknecht,” the Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) announced on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020.

KCSO contracts with the City of Burien for its police services.

Below is a message from Sheriff Johanknecht about an important milestone for the Sheriff’s Office:

“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:

https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/sheriff/on-line-reporting/dash-boards-complaint-data-iiu.aspx

“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.”

Mitzi G. Johanknecht
Sheriff

 

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