Tag Archives: Office of Inspector General

News

City Silent About Ongoing, Potentially Flawed Investigation Into Former OPA Director

Charging Thousands of Dollars Per Month, Outside Firm Waited Almost a Year to Interview Former OPA Director

by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

Since the beginning of this year, the Emerald has been following and reporting on developments in the ongoing investigation into allegations of medical privacy violations against former Office of Police Accountability Dir. Andrew Myerberg and still-unnamed — and, possibly, still unknown — Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers.

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News

OIG Fired Auditor for Alleged Misconduct, but Court Disagreed

Auditor Fired Shortly After Attempt to Open Misconduct Investigation into OPA

by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

The Emerald has obtained a copy of a 2019 termination letter that the Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s Inspector General Lisa Judge sent to former OIG staffer Sarah Lippek. The letter shows that the OIG fired Lippek for alleged misconduct, including, among other things, allegedly fully certifying a single Office of Police Accountability (OPA) case without accessing information beyond the initial intake.

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News

It Has Been One Year Since Whistleblower Complaint Against OIG: A Retrospective

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by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

A year ago today, the Emerald published its first story on a whistleblower complaint filed against the Office of Inspector General (OIG). That complaint contained serious allegations — including warnings from OIG leadership to staff to avoid criticizing the OPA in writing  — not only against Inspector General Lisa Judge but also against now-former Deputy Inspector General Amy Tsai and now-former Office of Police Accountability (OPA) Dir. Andrew Myerberg. 

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News

OPA May Have Misclassified These Complaints, Effectively Sweeping Them Under the Rug

by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

Author’s Note: This article is one of two released today that discuss issues related to the Office of Police Accountability’s (OPA) contact log complaint classification. Complaints designated as “contact log” are not subject to investigation and are effectively “closed” according to the OPA manual.

This article addresses the OPA’s misclassifications of what appear to be serious, investigation-worthy allegations as contact log complaints. Documents obtained by the Emerald show that these allegations include retaliation and bias, as well as more than 40 complaints against Seattle Police Officer Guild (SPOG) President Mike Solan, grouped together as one complaint and classified as a contact log.

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News

Fed. Monitoring Team May Have Ignored Potential Source of SPD Sex Abuse Data

by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

Author’s Note: This article is one of two released today that both discuss issues related to the Office of Police Accountability’s (OPA) contact log complaint classification. Complaints designated as “contact log” are not subject to investigation and are effectively “closed” according to the OPA manual.

This article addresses some of the content of a March 2022 meeting among the federal monitor, members of the monitoring team, and a local lawyer and her colleague attempting to shine light on sexual abuse allegations against Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers. Based on the available evidence, it appears that allegations regarding officer sexual misconduct may exist as “contact log” complaints. However, the federal monitor appears to have dismissed this potential source of sexual abuse data without looking at any of the available contact log complaints.

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News

Fmr. OPA Dir. Subverted Agency’s Own Rules, City Ordinance by Withholding Information

City Refuses to Answer Essential Questions About Publicly Funded Investigation

by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

The Emerald has obtained multiple documents that show that former Office of Police Accountability (OPA) Dir. Andrew Myerberg appears to have withheld key information from the Office of Inspector General — the OPA’s accountability partner agency tasked with certifying OPA investigations — by submitting a case for certification and later adding information to the case report. In doing so, and in drawing conclusions from said information, Myerberg appears to have subverted not only the OPA’s own rules and procedures but also the City’s 2017 Accountability Ordinance. 

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News

City Hires Outside Agency to Investigate Former OPA Dir., SPD After OIG Bows Out

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by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

In February of last year, lawyer Sarah Lippek lodged a complaint against former Office of Police Accountability (OPA) Dir. Andrew Myerberg with the Office of Inspector General (OIG). The complaint regarded Myerberg publicly releasing a client’s medical information in a Case Closed Summary (CCS). Lippek’s client is the young woman whom an officer hit directly in the chest with a blast ball. The young woman subsequently went into cardiac arrest multiple times on her way to the hospital.

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News

Investigating OIG Complaint in City Council’s Court — but SCC Isn’t Acting

by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

In August, a former high-ranking staffer from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) resigned from their position as investigations supervisor. At the same time, the whistleblower and now former investigations supervisor filed what was then an ethics complaint against the office, alleging that Inspector General Lisa Judge and Deputy Inspector General Amy Tsai have actively tried to silence any pushback against the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) — the fellow police oversight entity the OIG is supposed to oversee and audit — creating, in effect, a squad of rubber stampers in the OIG itself. The complaint alleged that OIG’s efforts to avoid criticizing the OPA were in part engineered to “appease” OPA Dir. Andrew Myerberg, stating that OIG leadership didn’t want to “anger” Myerberg. The complaint also alleged that the OPA had committed malfeasance of its own.

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News

Auditor Under Investigation Continued to Certify Cases After OIG Became Aware of Problems

by Carolyn Bick

The Emerald’s Watchdragon reporting seeks to increase accountability within our city’s institutions through in-depth investigative journalism.

The Emerald has learned that Office of Inspector General (OIG) auditor Anthony Finnell, who appeared to have been found to have fully certified Office of Police Accountability (OPA) cases without fully reviewing evidence — including not opening any files at all, in some cases — had been allowed to continue certifying cases up to at least the end of October of this year, despite the fact that Inspector General Lisa Judge and Deputy Inspector General Amy Tsai were aware that he had not been properly reviewing cases prior to certification for at least several months, if not more than a year.

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Community

The Morning Update Show — 11/10

The Morning Update Show — hosted by Trae Holiday and The Big O (Omari Salisbury) — is the only weekday news and information livestream that delivers culturally relevant content to the Pacific Northwest’s urban audience. Omari and Trae analyze the day’s local and national headlines as well as melanin magic in our community. Watch live every weekday at 11 a.m. on any of the following channels, hosted by Converge Media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, and whereweconverge.com.

We also post the Morning Update Show here on the Emerald each day after it airs, so you can catch up any time of day while you peruse our latest posts.

Morning Update Show — Wednesday, Nov. 10

Councilmember Mosqueda Proposes a $10 Million Cut From SPD Budget | Carolyn Bick on OIG Investigation | Cartoonist Brett Hamil | LIVE — Eric Huffman , Actor (Mean Girls) | Asian Hall of Fame

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