PA DA criticizes state police investigation of officer involved shooting

The investigation by Pennsylvania State Police into an officer-involved shooting earlier this year was flawed on multiple accounts that could have led to questions about its integrity, a memorandum prepared by Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan and included in an unprecedented lawsuit filed by state trooper union officials suggests, reported the Daily Local News.

Those errors, states the 16-page memo, begin with the failure of the state police commander at the scene of the shooting in southern Chester County to notify Hogan immediately of the incident and open the door for investigators from his office to take over an independent review of the incident — a requirement of a policy Hogan put in place in 2016 in the county after it was endorsed by the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association.

Hogan noted that the policy has been opposed by the former state police commissioner at the time, but that he maintains that it is “a lawful order.”

“The District Attorney is the chief law enforcement officer in the county as a matter of law and the independent investigating agency, the Chester County Detectives, have primary jurisdiction over all of Chester County,” he wrote. “The disagreement of (the state police’s) former Commissioner with the … policy may have been the source of (the state police’s) failures to follow the protocol and resulting problems in the investigation.” 

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