As the clock ticks down on the final term of the three current
members of the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board
(OPARB)—the city council–appointed panel that
oversees the police department’s internal investigations—the
board is engaged in a quiet battle with the city that could keep its
final report under wraps indefinitely.
The city has said it won’t offer legal protection to board members
Peter Holmes, Brad Moericke, and Sheley Secrest, who could be sued by
the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild if the panel releases its current
report. “No one’s going to release a report if you face losing your
home,” Secrest says.
On May 23, OPARB turned in its report to City Attorney Tom Carr’s
office. Two weeks later, the city’s legal department advised board
members that they could be held liable if the report was
released—because, the city’s attorneys said, the report reaches
outside the scope of OPARB’s investigative powers. OPARB’s Holmes asked
city council president Richard Conlin to indemnify board members from
potential lawsuits; Conlin turned him down.
This isn’t the first time OPARB has been at the center of
controversy. In 2007, a report by the panel that had not received final
approval from the city’s legal department was leaked to the media. The
report detailed how OPARB believed Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske
had interfered in an internal investigation of two officers who were
accused of beating and planting drugs on a wheelchair-bound man in
January 2007.
OPARB’s current report reportedly reopens those wounds, addressing
the controversy surrounding the January 2007 arrest and the accusations
lobbed at Chief Kerlikowske. And although neither OPARB nor the city
would share details on the report, any further discussion of alleged
misconduct by the police chief would undoubtedly reignite the
controversy that plagued Kerlikowske and the department for months
after OPARB’s last report came out. So there’s plenty of incentive for
the city to keep the report buried.
As the current OPARB struggles to get its report released, council
public safety chair Tim Burgess is assembling a new, seven-member
OPARB, which will take over next September. Burgess would not comment
on the current board’s legal situation, but did say upcoming
legislation should put any debate over OPARB’s powers to rest. “The
future board will be able to act knowing full well that the city will
protect them individually and as a board as they carry out their
responsibility as they do their work,” Burgess says.
OPARB’s Holmes does not believe the board did anything outside of
its duties and is frustrated that the city is holding its report in
limbo. “Not a single police officer is named [in the report], not a
single disciplinary measure is suggested, and no officer could be
disciplined after the release of this report,” Holmes says. “Under
those circumstances, why wouldn’t you allow the report to be released?
If we’ve got such a great department, what are we afraid of?” 
