WA’s first-of-its-kind independent investigations office has a former judge as its leader
Gov. Jay Inslee announced the director for the state’s new Office of Independent Investigations, offered updates on homelessness outreach, and answered questions on other topics at a Wednesday afternoon news conference.
The governor said he was appointing Roger Rogoff to OII, an office that was created by the Legislature in 2021, the same year lawmakers passed other transformative police accountability legislation. Rogoff’s appointment begins on June 16.
Rogoff is a former King County Superior Court Judge and has spent 27 years working in the criminal justice system. He spent 13 years as a prosecuting attorney in King County, worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for six years, and spent two years as a criminal defense attorney.
“I’m really, really happy we have a person of his quality taking on this first-in-the-nation task,” Inslee said.
OII is responsible for providing “competent, unbiased, and thorough investigations of police use of deadly force, often affecting people of color, that will be independent of the involved law enforcement agency,” according to a statement from the Governor’s Office.
Washington is the first state to commission such an agency in the U.S.
Inslee said the office is about getting to the truth, providing justice to families, and getting “truly independent investigations so that all of us can have a highly credible factual basis upon which to make a decision.”
Homelessness
The governor said he is pleased that the state has a “new, much more aggressive approach to have rapid supportive housing to reduce the number of people living in squalor in our public spaces.”
COVID-19, housing shortages and a system that isn’t designed to act “quickly” are all “colliding forces” that communities in Washington have been grappling with, he said.
The Legislature approved a different approach to homelessness during its session earlier this year, and the governor said it allows the state to scale up outreach efforts. This year lawmakers made historic investments in homelessness of $800 million.
“The Rapid Capital Acquisition program is our state’s first program to help local entities quickly purchase properties such as hotels and apartment buildings, and turn them into shelter or housing,” Inslee said.
The state Department of Commerce will administer funds to local communities, and will work with local homeless advocates, Washington State Patrol and the Washington State Department of Transportation to remove individuals from roadways and connect those individuals with rapid housing and services.
Teams will be doing outreach, and the governor said they may be able to begin transitioning people by mid-June.
Initial grants already have been allocated to 12 counties and cities, and $50 million will go towards this rapid housing approach this year.
Inslee said he believes it is a “moral obligation” to remove people from unsafe areas and into supportive housing that is not only good for them but will “remove this blight along the right-of-ways in the state of Washington.”
The governor said those who refuse support will have to comply with the law and leave unsafe areas, but he believes there is no reason people shouldn’t take advantage of the outreach. He said he supports fines for those living in tents who refuse to move and said the state has to have a way to prevent “unsafe conditions” coupled with alternative solutions.
He also encouraged communities to take advantage of rapid capital funding starting this summer.
He also noted that eviction rent assistance is still available, as is free legal help for low-income tenants who have received eviction notices. Information can be found on the commerce department website.
Buffalo mass shooting
The governor addressed the mass shooting over the weekend in Buffalo, N.Y., where 10 Black people were killed by a self-proclaimed white supremacist.
Inslee said every single person in public office should stand against racism and the “ugliness.”
“We cannot allow racism to in any way become normalized in the U.S., and unfortunately we have people in public life talking about The Replacement Theory, which somehow fanned the flames of racism in the state of Washington,” Inslee said. “That talk has to stop.”
“The Great Replacement” theory is a white supremacist, anti-Semitic, racist ideology that has been espoused by many mass shooters, including the Buffalo murderer who believes non-white immigrants will destroy the white race.
COVID-19
Even as COVID-19 cases are rising in certain areas, the governor said there is no “immediate consideration” for new mask mandates.
Inslee said some changes may be made “in the near future” involving some contractors and the state worker mandate to be vaccinated, but he did not elaborate further on those plans.
“It’s not so much a metric, it’s the nature of the disease,” he said. “We don’t want our state employees going to the hospital or dying.”
He said he hopes the state will get to the point where he can begin considering dropping vaccine mandates, but that day is not today.
This story was originally published May 19, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
