USA Today finds 85,000 former cops, some local, investigated for misconduct

A handful of former local law enforcement officers are among the 30,000-plus who have lost their law enforcement certification due to some kind of misconduct, according to a national USA Today investigation made public Thursday.

The local officers named – three Longview officers, one Kelso officer, two Clatskanie officers, and one deputy each from the Lewis, Pacific and Columbia County sheriff’s offices – were investigated, stripped of their law enforcement certification and fired, according to the database, which is available to the public. The records do not give a specific range of time, but in Washington State they span a period from 2002 to 2017.

USA Today said it gathered records from thousands of state agencies, prosecutors and police departments to compile the database, and it worked with more than 100 news outlets to compile the records.

All but six states have some kind of decertification process intended to keep officers fired for misconduct from shuffling into other agencies. But there is no centralized federal tracking system, and some states only require that cops are convicted of crimes before they are considered ineligible for law enforcement work.

Among the six states that do not have decertification processes are New York and California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Hawaii. They comprise 26 percent of the country’s law enforcement officers, according to Bureau of Justice statistics.

Some of the most serious misconduct in the national study involves alleged rape, evidence falsification and drug dealing, but locally, officers were mostly decertified for making “false/misleading statements.” At least 85,000 officers have been investigated for misconduct nationally over the past decade, the investigation found, but it is initially releasing only those who have actually been decertified.

Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha said that while he hadn’t read the USA Today article personally, he thought reporting like it is mostly beneficial.

“In general, I think it’s valuable because the public sees that we do take misconduct seriously, and I’m talking nationwide,” Duscha said. “I think it should, for most of the public, reassure them that we do look into these cases seriously. … The amount of discipline necessary is what we look at for each of these cases.”

“Now the downside is,” Duscha said, “I do hate seeing guys’ names drug through the mud. … We’re held to a higher standard obviously, but … at some point, they’re human beings, (and we can) just let them get on with their lives.”

Duschca said Longview PD requires an investigation from an outside agency if there’s any hint of a criminal violation by an officer.

Longview officer Jeremiah Porter was decertified in 2006 for “failure of duty/false/misleading statements/false swearing.” Jason Winker was decertified in 2007 for “false/misleading statements,” and Nicholas Wells was decertified in 2015 for “false/misleading statements.”

A 2014 letter shared with TDN by Wells on Friday from Duscha indicates that he was terminated from the police department because his performance during the 18-month probationary period for new officers was not up to departmental standards, and the letter does not mention any misconduct or improper behavior on Wells’ part. It wishes him the best of luck in future professional endeavors.

Duscha said that as a matter of policy, he couldn’t comment on any of the decertifications.

Kelso officer Derek Arnett was decertified in 2005 for possessing a firearm against state/federal law. The City of Kelso fired Arnett in 2004. He pleaded guilty later that year to fourth-degree assault (domestic violence) and driving while intoxicated, and the story was well-documented in The Daily News.

Lewis County sheriff’s deputy Terry Conrad was decertified in 2006 for “false/misleading statements,” and Pacific County sheriff’s deputy Vance Johnson was decertified in 2016 for “official misconduct,” according to the database.

In Oregon, former Columbia County sheriff’s deputy David Fuller was under investigation when he chose to retire, resulting in the county revoking his certification. (The dates of revocation are not available in the Oregon database.) The Columbia County Spotlight wrote at the time that Fuller was under investigation for allegedly failing to properly report a single-vehicle crash where he was the driver.

Dustin Stone resigned or retired from the Clatskanie Police Department, although no further disciplinary information was available. Clatskanie Police Chief Marvin Hoover resigned during investigations at the Clatskanie Police Department, according to the USA Today investigation. The Daily News reported in 2015 that Hoover was accused of imitating a howling monkey and singing Dixie during a discussion about a complaint of racism by other Clatskanie police officers.