Oklahoma sheriff's office had 'system-wide failure of leadership and supervision,' report says
An investigation of the sheriff’s office in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, launched after a close friend of the sheriff working as a reserve deputy said he mistakenly fired his handgun instead of a Taser when he killed a man, indicates that the department has a “system-wide failure of leadership and supervision,” the Associated Press reports.
Problems with the reserve deputy program were just the most visible signs of a “perceptible decline” running more than a decade, according to the report (PDF) by the Community Safety Institute, a consulting firm in Ovilla, Texas.
The sheriff’s department launched an initial internal investigation just two weeks after the shooting last April, prompted by a report in the Tulsa World that sheriff’s department supervisors had been ordered to give reserve deputy Robert Bates credit for training and firearms certifications he didn’t earn.
That led to the external review by the consultant CSI.
Bates has pleaded not guilty to a second-degree manslaughter charges. Weeks after the shooting of Eric Harris, a lawyer representing Harris’ family, Dan Smolen, obtained and released a sheriff’s department internal memo alleging that supervisors knew Bates didn’t have enough training to be patrolling the streets while armed, but were pressured to look the other way because of Bates’ relationship with the sheriff and the agency.
That resulted in thousands of signatures on a petition calling for a grand jury investigation. In September, a grand jury indicted now-former sheriff Stanley Granz on charges that include failure to release that 2009 internal report.
The CSI report released Thursday recommends a flow chart with more direct reports to the sheriff to ensure a broader feel for the department’s operations.
“The current organization chart of the TCSO has only one individual in the chain of command—the undersheriff—reporting directly to the sheriff. This creates the potential of the sheriff being isolated from other members of the chain of command and being unaware of issues that might arise,” the report said, recommending the addition of a chief of staff and a lawyer working independently.
The report also suggested reform of the 120-member reserve deputy program, which was suspended after Harris’ death: “Many reserves feel they are exempt from or do not have to follow various policies because of who they are or who they are friends with in the agency,” the report said. “This informal system violates all chain of command within the organization and undermines the supervisor’s authority, causing dissent within the organization.”
But it also found problems department-wide in areas such as the use of deadly force: “Currently the policies regarding the TCSO response to the use of deadly force are complicated and confusing and the TCSO use of deadly force training is ineffective. The process of investigating the use of deadly force is convoluted and hard to follow as it is currently written in policy.”
