Review of Shooting Incidents in the Department of Justice

E & I Report I-2004-010
September 2004

APPENDIX IV: OIG ANALYSIS OF THE ODAG RESPONSE

On August 11, 2004, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) sent copies of the draft report to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) with a request for written comments. The ODAG responded to the OIG in a memorandum dated September 10, 2004. The ODAG concurred with the OIG's recommendation to establish a working group to consider whether the Department and the components would benefit from the adoption of uniform standards for the investigation and review of shooting incidents. The Department also concurred with the OIG recommendations for actions by the components and with the actions taken and planned by the components to implement the OIG's recommendations. Our analysis of the ODAG's response follows.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendation 1: Establish a working group to consider uniform Department standards for the components' shooting incident reviews, including:

  1. Content and timeliness of preliminary shooting incident reports and investigations.

  2. Delegation of investigative responsibility, involvement of local authorities in criminal investigations of shooting incidents, and requirements for declination of prosecution.

  3. Composition of the Review Boards, application of the standard for determining the reasonableness of deadly force, and documentation of Review Board decisions.

  4. Aggregation within the Department of shooting incident data and lessons learned, including the preparation and distribution of shooting incident summaries.

Summary of ODAG Response. The Department concurred with this recommendation, established the working group, and plans to continue discussions until a reasonable determination can be made with regard to each of the issues presented in this report.

Status of Recommendation. Recommendation 1 is Resolved - Open. The actions planned by the Department are responsive to the recommendation. We will close this recommendation when the Department provides us a record of the decisions made by the working group.