Do victims of crime get to choose which detectives will investigate? No. Are alleged perpetrators given a say? Of course not. But what if they’re concerned about the qualifications of the detectives? Tough. It would taint the process to give them any sort of veto power.

So what happens when police officers are the subject of fatal-incident investigations? Under the protocols agreed to by Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick and Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich last spring, those officers will not be investigated by their own. But what if officers are concerned about the qualifications of assigned detectives? Tough. If those detectives are good enough to investigate civilians, they’re good enough to investigate officers.

Unsurprisingly, the Spokane Police Guild has a problem with that.

“We want the best investigators to do the job. We want the best outcome for both the officer and the public,” said Spokane Police Guild Vice President Jeff Harvey. And so the Guild has filed an unfair labor practices complaint against the city for not giving it a say before adopting the protocol.

If this concern about unqualified detectives also extends to civilian cases, the union hasn’t said so. But if it’s true that we have county detectives who are not up to investigating major crimes, that’s awfully disturbing. Of course, this could all be spin aimed at gutting whatever oversight process the city of Spokane will end up with. That’s awfully disturbing, too.

The Guild does not have a solid record on police oversight. Over the years, it has employed the familiar weapons of lawsuits and unfair labor practices complaints to undermine even the feeble oversight systems Spokane had in place. The previous oversight commission hadn’t reviewed a case in 10 years before being disbanded. A rare case that it did pursue, in 1997, was torpedoed by a Guild lawsuit. The commission before that was disbanded after the Guild and Lieutenants and Captains Association complained that its formation wasn’t the subject of labor negotiations.

In the past, the chiefs also fought oversight, but now the police union is on its own. Its leaders say they welcome an oversight system, but their squawking over the protocol looks more like history repeating itself. The good news is that Kirkpatrick and Knezovich aren’t likely to back down and that some officers don’t share Harvey’s concerns about the skills and qualifications of sheriff’s detectives.

Knezovich told Hard 7 columnist Frank Sennett, “I’d be concerned about the comments if I hadn’t had a stream of SPD folks saying that is just not the way they feel about it.”

If the Guild were to prevail and have a say in who would be conducting investigations of its officers, it would irreparably undermine the credibility of probes that upheld officers’ actions. Members ought to consider whether they really want to operate under that constant cloud of mistrust.