After a careful examination over the death of an unarmed suspect, the Community Safety Institute (CSI) of Ovilla, Texas, said that the Tulsa sheriff's office suffered from a system-wide failure of leadership and supervision. The consultants hired to investigate the sheriff's office concluded that the agency suffered perceptible decline for more than a decade.
The Tulsa sheriff's office under Sheriff Stanley Glanz was under scrutiny after a close friend of the sheriff, who worked as a reserve deputy allegedly fired shots to a suspect. According to a CSI report, the sheriff office's protocols were mostly vague. The standards were incomplete and confusing. The consultants claimed that the agency has no set rules when reviewing incidents, Police One claims. The inadequacies in their reserve deputy program were a strong evidence of troubles within the organization.
"The reserve program with its disregard for proper policies, procedures, supervision, and administrative controls was simply the most visible manifestation of a system-wide failure of leadership and supervision," the report said.
The investigation in the Tulsa sheriff's office follows the time that Former reserve deputy Robert Bates, a close friend of Sheriff Glanz, pleaded not guilty for killing Eric Harris. Bates was charged of second-degree manslaughter after he reportedly pulled his handgun instead of a stun gun, according to CNS News. Harris' family then questioned the qualification of Bates in the office, who donated equipments, vehicles and thousands of dollars to the office.
"Years of policy violations at the sheriff's office (that) have had real and tragic consequences in the lives of ordinary citizens," Dan Smolen, an attorney for the Harris family said . "It continues to be our hope that the next sheriff will fill the leadership void and undo the significant damage that has been done." Smolen allegedly released a sheriff's department internal memo asserting the superiors at the agency were aware of Bates' disqualifications. They claimed that Bates managed to stay in the reserve program because he's a good friend of Glanz, ABA Journal reported.
"Many reserves feel they are exempt from or do not have to follow various policies because of who they are or who they are friends with in the agency," the report said. "This informal system violates all chain of command within the organization and undermines the supervisor's authority, causing dissent within the organization."
Glanz was indicted over his failure to release the 2009 internal report. He's facing two misdemeanor charges and had resigned the Tulsa Sheriff's office since Nov.1. The jurors have also suggested ways to improve the agency in which some have already been implemented.
