Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Internal Affairs topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Union pushes for clearer IA notices, evidence disclosure and re-interview rights
Summary
Association negotiators proposed changing investigatory notice language to require specific allegations, timely disclosure of evidence used in discipline, and reinterviews when new evidence emerges. City representatives raised practical limits and sought balanced language to avoid procedural over-formality.
During bargaining, the association proposed multiple changes to internal affairs (IA) procedures, seeking more specificity in notices, limits on after-the-fact evidence, and a right to reinterview an officer if new evidence emerged after an initial interview.
Association representatives argued current notices can be overly broad — listing dozens of potential policy violations — and leave officers and their representatives little time to prepare. "If you give them specific allegations … they can at least try to remember and think about what happened," one association presenter said.
The association proposed that notices change from "general factual" descriptions to specific subchapter citations and that any evidence intended to be used in determining a violation be provided at the time of the interview; if investigators discover additional evidence later, the association asked that officers be reinterviewed with that evidence disclosed.
City negotiators supported efforts to increase transparency but cautioned against language so restrictive it would hamper investigations. They discussed operational constraints, the possibility of labeling some items as exigent or investigative exceptions, and the need to avoid turning routine administrative interviews into protracted discovery processes. Both sides agreed to rework language to balance fairness and investigatory flexibility; no final contract language was adopted at the session.
