Why investigative excellence matters – now and in the future
At every level of policing there exists an investigative component. Whether it is in the initial response to a call by patrol officers or deputies, the intense inquiry of a major crime investigation or the investigation of a citizen complaint or use of force. A thorough and comprehensive investigation is critical.
The quality of police investigations has tremendous importance for victims and their families, in addition to ensuring impartiality and transparency for communities, and the police themselves. While detectives get the lion’s share of attention from movies and tv programs, the first investigative personnel to begin most criminal investigations are patrol officers responding to the first report of a crime. The actions patrol officers take, or don’t take, to investigate their assigned calls can have huge ramifications relating to the public’s trust and confidence in the police. The Jeffrey Dahmer case tragically demonstrates this fact.
In May 1991, patrol officers did an amazingly poor job of investigating a call in which three women found a 14-year-old sitting naked on a Milwaukee street corner. Jeffrey Dahmer had been sexually abusing him in his apartment. The youth was able to escape when Dahmer fell asleep. The women called 9-1-1 and kept the boy from being taken back to the apartment by Dahmer who had been searching for him after discovering the boy’s escape. The women were able to keep Dahmer from taking the boy until the police arrived.
Dahmer told the responding police officers the youth was his 19-year-old boyfriend and was simply intoxicated. He said the youth’s “intoxicated” behavior was common when he was drinking. But he wasn’t drunk. Dahmer had injected hydrochloric acid into the youth’s frontal lobe to make him more compliant. Despite the women’s protests, the officers accompanied Dahmer and the youth back to Dahmer’s apartment where they conducted a cursory investigation. They completely missed another murder victim’s body lying on the floor of Dahmer’s bedroom. Shortly after their search, the officers left, leaving the boy with Dahmer. Sometime afterwards, Dahmer murdered the boy in the apartment.
There are so many issues to unpack in this incident that it would be a mistake to focus solely on the investigative facet of it. However, had the officers conducted an adequate investigation they could have saved the youth’s life and those of the four men Dahmer killed in the ensuing months.
Of course, there are many, many more examples of stellar investigative work by patrol officers that saved innocent lives and stopped sociopathic killers. But the damage to the community’s trust and confidence caused by just one “failure to investigate” in a high-profile case – like the Dahmer one – can be devastating. And that case was in the early 90’s long before the advent of the Internet and social media. Today, much less prominent examples of investigative failure by the police go viral with the push of a button. It takes but one shoddy investigation to undo much of the trust the public has placed in the police. And this sensitivity to police failure will become more acute in the future. Police leaders will need to increasingly focus on the importance of doing not just adequate, but excellent, police investigations at all levels of their organizations if they want to win the hearts and minds of the public they protect.
There are many instances of poor investigative work by detectives. Clearly, like those involving patrol officers, there are also countless examples of great investigative work accomplished every day by police detectives. But the investigations which frequently seem to gain the most media attention are those in which detectives conducted seriously flawed investigations that led to tragic outcomes. Killers never identified, rapists acquitted due to suppressed evidence, and serial burglaries unsolved are just a few of the more prominent examples. And the issue of “wrongful convictions” continues to plague our entire criminal justice system. As of the time of this article, the National Registry of Exonerations (a partnership between the University of California, Irvine, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University) has recorded almost 3,500 exonerations in the U.S. since 1989. And unfortunately, official misconduct continues to be a major contributing factor in wrongful convictions.
There are multiple types of bias that can have an enormous effect on police investigations. These can alter how evidence is interpreted, suspects are identified, and cases ultimately closed. A bias like “confirmation bias” – when investigators focus on evidence that confirms their beliefs or initial theories about a case, while disregarding or downplaying contradictory evidence – can produce faulty conclusions and wrongful arrests and convictions. And the phenomenon of “groupthink” – where investigators operating within group settings feel pressure to conform with the views and beliefs of their colleagues, leading them away from critical analysis and independent consideration of evidence – can also result in similarly devastating results.
Police leaders that understand the dynamics of the investigative process, and the role organizational culture can play in thwarting the effects of bias on investigations, create an ethical decision-making component to the agency culture. They also encourage team-based problem-solving, critical thinking and the use of designated “critical evaluators” (someone assigned the role of “devil’s advocate” to question key investigative assumptions) to counter groupthink.
Training and education are critical components of advancing excellence in criminal investigations. This requires regular updates in investigative techniques, advances in forensic science, evolving legal standards, ethical considerations, and interdisciplinary learning across different fields to expand knowledge about criminal investigations. In the very near future, technological advancements like AI and data analytics will play a significant role in improving accuracy and efficiency while changing organizational culture to support transparency and accountability.
Understanding critical investigative issues like eyewitness misidentification, misuse of forensic science, false/coerced confessions as well as investigative biases such as tunnel vision or confirmation bias requires not only improved procedures and continuous training but also an organizational culture which embraces objectivity, critical examination and demands excellence investigations at all levels. As the saying goes, “culture eats policy for lunch.” The most important facet of excellent investigations in a police agency is the foundational culture that demands excellence in departmental investigations at all levels. Building organizational pride around successful investigations is an important activity for leaders to engage in. But it must be balanced with the unwavering commitment to finding the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and ensuring the guilty party is identified, not a convenient one.
In the future, the increased scrutiny of policing practices police leaders support today will only become more acute. To enhance the public’s overall trust and confidence in policing, current and future leaders must create an organizational ethos of investigative excellence within their departments. This extends beyond simply reducing errors and clearing cases. It also encompasses both preventing wrongful convictions and maintaining public trust and confidence in policing’s ability to investigate crime effectively and ethically. Essential aspects of this include better training for investigators, advancing forensic practices and technology and a better understanding of potential causes of false convictions.
Creating a learning organization where errors are also viewed as opportunities for improvement is crucial to developing excellence in criminal investigations. Combining this approach with leadership styles that foster ethical decision-making, and encourage team-based problem-solving, help create investigative practices, and work units, which not only fulfill rightful policing commitments but helps develop trust and confidence in the police by the communities they serve and protect.
Generally, people believe that the police will effectively investigate crimes. They have an expectation that the police will identify and find the perpetrator of almost any significant crime. And they largely do. But when police investigations are flawed, and either no criminal is brought to justice, or worse, an innocent person is wrongfully accused and convicted, the public’s trust and confidence in the police is shaken and the relationship between the police and the communities they serve may be irreparably fractured. As such, it is incumbent on police leaders to instill an unwavering organizational ethos of excellence in investigations in their organizations. Anything less will eventually result in predictable, tragic outcomes.
About the author: Chief Rodney Monroe (ret.) has more than 40 years of policing experience. He retired as an Assistant Chief from the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department and has served as the Chief of Police in Charlotte, NC, Richmond, VA and Macon, GA. He currently serves as a policing consultant assisting police organizations in a variety of capacities. He has also served, and is currently playing vital roles, in several consent decrees, collaborative reform initiatives, critical incident reviews, and racial bias audits.