On the morning of Friday, September 5, 2014, the City of Coeur d’Alene posted some of the documents from the police department’s report on the shooting of Arfee, a black Labrador mix, by a Coeur d’Alene police officer on July 9.  The online compilation was captioned Craig Jones Case Documents.  For simplicity, we’ll simply refer to that compilation as “the Arfee report.”

Starting on July 11, OpenCdA has put up several posts about the shooting death of Arfee by the Coeur d’Alene Police Department officer.   In general, the Arfee report had nothing to significantly change the opinions we expressed in those posts.

We do have a few observations now that we’ve been able to read the Arfee report. 

1.  Early news accounts reported the final report would be about 300 pages.  The Arfee report was nowhere near 300 pages, so we have to assume that the public is receiving only components of the entire final report.  We expect that the withheld pages would include many of the documents and exhibits we identified in our post on July 11 entitled Careless Composition or Intentional Deception?  We hope, but have little expectation, that either our local or regional skewspapers will formally request the entire report and then take the time to study and report it.

2.  Although the Arfee report doesn’t explicitly use the term “field training officer,” is strongly suggests that Officer David Kelley was one at the time of the incident.  That means he played a prominent role in correctly and consistently training officers who have completed basic pre-service police training at Meridian or Tinkertoy Tech.   He also has a prominent role in recommending whether trainee officers should be terminated or retained.

Being an FTO also means that Kelley was  responsible for evaluating the new trainees’ abilities to professionally apply their newly-acquired knowledge, skills, and abilities consistent with state law and departmental policies and procedures.  We presume all CdAPD’s FTOs train and evaluate to the same standards, and we presume that whoever at the CdAPD evaluates those FTOs’ performance and compliance is satisfied that was and is happening.  The CdAPD review found Officer Kelley to be deficient in some critical areas, so from that we can reasonably infer that either the FTO supervisor was unaware of Kelley’s deficiencies or he simply turned a blind eye to them.  Neither would be acceptable, because it suggests that FTOs have been making up the rules as they go along and doing so with the department’s blessing.   That should gravely concern the Idaho Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST), because it would suggest the CdAPD’s chiefs may have been certifying unprepared if not unqualified officers so they could receive their Idaho POST certification.

3.  Our July 11 post cited in 1. mentions the basic types of information that should have been sought during the initial investigation of this incident.   We do not believe that what was done at the incident scene while the CdAPD still had control over the incident scene comes even close to being a thorough and complete investigation. Once the incident scene has been released from police control, the evidentiary value of any subsequently-obtained information was diminished.   Witness statements, preferably sworn and signed, need to be obtained while whatever information the witness may have is still fresh in the witness’s mind and before it becomes contaminated by outside influences such as news and social media accounts or by self-serving police department press releases.

The Arfee report does not explain why a more thorough investigation was not initiated immediately following the shooting when the police had the authority to control the scene.

The officers were supposedly sent to investigate “reports of a suspicious van possibly watching young children in the Downtown Area parked in the parking lot behind 821 Sherman Avenue.”  Based on whatever information the two officers actually received sending him and trainee Officer Wiedebush to the call, Officer Kelley determined it was sufficiently serious for him to warrant unholstering his sidearm as he approached the vehicle.  

It seems to OpenCdA that saying the incident did not warrant activating a critical incident task force is a puzzling rationalization given what the Arfee report does contain.  But even if that is accurate, it amounts to an admission by the CdAPD that it does not have a systematic procedure for investigating lesser incidents of violence by its officers.   It also demonstrates to those willing to see that subordinate field supervisors haven’t learned one of the most fundamental unwritten principles of the politics of policing:  Keep the boss informed about things that may blow up in the department’s face!  That is a failure that didn’t originate with Officer Kelley but from the institutional leadership failures during the tenures of previous Coeur d’Alene police chiefs.

4.  We’ve heard members of the public strongly advocating that Officer David Kelley be fired.  If the City decides firing him is justified, we hope that Officer Kelley will engage an attorney to represent his interests.  The institutional problems in the CdAPD that resulted in an atmosphere in which Officer Kelley took the actions he did go much further up the Coeur d’Alene social and political food chain than the previous chiefs of police.   Newly hired Police Chief Lee White will not be able to even begin to correct the CdAPD’s staffing defects as long as the Mayor and members of the City Council believe their elections somehow make them competent 21st century chief law enforcement executive officers.

We hope that Chief White will be an institutional house-cleaner, not a house-sitter.  He has an uphill battle, because the social, cultural, political, and economic issues he faces locally extend through Kootenai County and through Idaho.

Welcome to Idaho, Chief White.  Set your wristwatch back fifty years.