Disturbing facts about FDLE shooting investigations for Broward Chiefs Association

MasterSergeant · 04-08-2018, 01:52 PM

Here are some concerning facts about FDLE's Officer Involved Shooting investigators and its process. These facts were obtained from a friendly retired FDLE Investigator , a member of a South Florida law enforcement agency participating with FDLE, and a discussion with an FDLE Reserve Investigator.

This information is not being shared to be derogatory to the FDLE Investigators, but to bring attention to facts that should be disturbing to the agencies that have an MOU with FDLE for officer shooting investigations.

FDLE only has approximately 27 Investigators in the Miami District (not including supervisors). Two investigators are assigned (full time) to dignitary protection. Two are assigned to economic crimes and have major case loads. One investigator is assigned as to a tech unit (and does not handle investigations). Four are assigned to the internal affairs / corruption squad and have full case loads. Eight are assigned to domestic security (which is Walker's new primary focus as he's gotten the police agencies to sign the police shooting MOU's). Six investigators are assigned to a full time ATF Task Force and have full case loads. Only four investigators are assigned to the shooting investigation squad. FOUR INVESTIGATORS? How can this be possible you ask? The supervisor of the officer involved shooting squad has never been a police officer and never been the lead in a deputy shooting or homicide investigation.

FDLE has only three investigators (and one supervisor) assigned to the Broward district office. One is a retired homicide investigator from a municipal agency. They rely of the four man shooting investigation team in Miami to respond and the Broward district office assists.

FDLE has five investigators assigned to a computer crimes task force in Broward. These investigators have a heavy workload in computer crime cases. None of these investigators have officer shooting investigation experience.
FDLE has five investigators assigned to the Palm Beach District Office. They rely of the four man shooting investigation team in Miami to respond and the WPB district office assists. Recently the district office had two of its investigators handle their first officer shootings although they don't have the experience or training.

Members of the Chiefs Association were concerned that FDLE did not have the investigators with experience to investigate critical officer involved shooting investigations. FDLE was aggressively begging agencies to sign MOU's allowing FDLE to investigate their officer shootings. As more and more agencies signed MOU's with FDLE, FDLE soon had all three South Florida Sheriffs Offices which alone totals over 6000 deputies. This doesn't even include the large municipal police departments in the three counties which probably adds another 3000 officers. Thats a total of 9000 officers that FDLE is responsible for investigating police shootings. Broward Chiefs addressed Walker about the number of investigators that were assigned to the shooting investigation squad. For two years, there were only three to five investigators on one squad as investigators quit because of the low pay, constant on call and heavy caseload. Walker swore to the Chiefs that he had two full squads of 14 investigators that were dedicated to handle officer shootings. This was not truthful. The truth was that Walker bold faced lied to all of the Broward Chiefs (and probably to the Dade Chiefs also). The one officer shooting squad was depleted to fill other focus areas and was down to four investigators. The second officer shooting squad was a lie. It doesn't exist. On paper and to the face of the Broward Chiefs, Walker says that there is a second officer shooting squad. That squad is really a full time ATF gun crime task force squad with their own heavy case load. The majority of the members of this squad are apparently also on the SRT team or have other agency functions and are only shown on the squad on paper to make it look like they have more members. Look, even if FDLE Director Walker was not lying and did actually have fourteen investigators assigned to officer shootings, it is way insufficient to handle the average yearly shootings and in custody deaths of the 3 counties with over 9000 officers. The fact is he is lying and there are only FOUR FDLE Investigators assigned full time to handle the three counties officer involved shootings and in custody deaths.

Only one member of the four man (and woman) shooting investigation squad gets paid to be on call on a rotating 2 week basis. As FDLE only works Monday through Friday 7am to 3pm, if there is a officer shooting at 3am, they call out that one investigator. At 3am, they have to wake up that one investigator on call and try to wake up and convince a handful of investigators to come out even though they only have one person on call. By time the handful of investigators wake up, put on a uniform and drive to the scene, it's hours later and we've been holding the scene dealing with hostile crowds. A dead tired and still half asleep FDLE investigator arrives from economic crimes and we have to wait for hours more till another investigator arrives. Sometimes there is only the one FDLE officer shooting investigator and everyone else has zero experience investigating officer shootings.

The concern for the Broward Chiefs was that FDLE did not have enough trained and experienced homicide investigators to handle the yearly average numbers of officer shootings and in custody deaths that the agencies experienced. Secondarily and no less important was the question; does FDLE have enough trained and experienced homicide investigators to effectively handle multiple shootings at one time or a single shooting involving multiple scenes? Director Walker swore he had the two squads of 14 experienced shooting investigators and could muster up to fifty investigators within an hour if he needed to. In a recent homicide investigators meeting, it was discussed that in cases where we had multiple scenes, our agencies had to hold scenes for many hours till FDLE investigators arrived, sometimes holding officers / deputies into overtime because of the wait for FDLE. In most cases, an FDLE investigator arrived from another (non officer shooting squad) squad and had to wait for one of the four experienced investigators to arrive (sometimes hours later) to complete the tasks. Some of the recent WPB officer involved shooting investigations were botched with scenes tainted by non experienced FDLE investigators doing horrible interviews of witnesses and handling homicide scene evidence without gloves.

Many don't know but apparently FDLE took over Florida State Prison death investigations also. Due to there only being four investigators in the squad that handles officer shootings and in custody deaths, FDLE now sends a skeleton crew of two investigators from other squads to handle an inmate on inmate homicide or attempt murder. Yes, you read that right. FDLE sends two investigators who have no experience in death investigations to handle a prison homicide. How thorough can these investigations be with two sleep deprived agents with heavy case loads in economic crimes, being forced to handle a homicide or death investigation?

The Dade and Broward Chiefs Association needs to do a review of FDLE's officer involved shooting investigation process

Unregistered · 04-09-2018, 06:52 PM

Your comments seem to be reasonably correct........it's called "smoke and mirrors."

Unregistered · 04-10-2018, 01:50 AM

So FDLE gets local agencies to sign MOUs to do their investigations.... then when FDLE doesn't have enough personnel to handle the new investigations, they'll ask for more $$$$$/positions based on the "demand" from locals for their services.

Way to play the locals.

Unregistered · 04-12-2018, 12:53 AM

Even the FDLE guys that were hired from outside Agencies (because they couldn't make it there) and became FDLE Executives hate the long term FDLE employees! They all feel superior because they view their experience as valid while the FDLE experience (which is most employees) as invalid. Look at their walls of plaques from the previous agencies they came from while having ZERO from FDLE time.

The joke and smoke and mirrors continues at FDLE, starting with the Commish who started his career as a data entry boy and kissed ass all the way to the top after kissing the Governors ass!