New Stanford research on how law enforcement agencies and district attorneys handle officer-involved shootings finds real and perceived conflicts of interest that the researchers say should be addressed through both short- and long-term changes to current practices.

A report by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center (SCJC), “At Arm’s Length: Improving Criminal Investigations of Police Shootings,” highlights the challenges of current practices across the country and offers recommendations to both minimize conflicts of interests and maximize accountability in these sensitive investigations.

“The way that these shootings normally are handled is that officers are investigated by their own employing agencies and the decision whether to file charges is made by local prosecutors who work day in and day out with the officers’ agency,” said David Sklansky, Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford and faculty co-director of SCJC. “That raises issues of bias that the public is finding less and less acceptable.”

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“Close to a thousand police shootings of civilians occur each year in the United States and the victims are disproportionately young men of color,” noted Debbie Mukamal, executive director of SCJC. But criminal charges rarely result from those fatalities. “Since 2005, only 77 officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter for killing civilians,” she said.

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“We were impressed that the DA reached out to us about this and excited by the service opportunity this provided our students,” Sklansky said.

“We had the advantage of the full cooperation of her office and of law enforcement agencies working with her, and that was incredibly valuable,” Mukamal added.

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“Both short-term and long-term recommendations were guided by a philosophy of trying to minimize conflict of interest, both real and apparent, while not compromising the competency of the investigation or the political accountability of the people who make the ultimate decision to charge and prosecute,” Sklansky said.

The report’s short-term recommendations focus on law enforcement. “The agency employing the officer under criminal investigation should not be the lead in the investigation, and their role should be minimized,” said Sklansky, noting that the report acknowledges that because of the timely nature of some aspects of evidence gathering there would likely be some involvement, but another law enforcement agency should lead the investigation.

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“Whatever steps San Joaquin County takes to help minimize real and apparent conflicts of interest in the way that these investigations are carried out are going to be something that other DAs look to,” Sklansky said. “This is a problem that lots of district attorneys are trying to figure out. I think San Joaquin County could offer a role model.”

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