Roger Rogoff, the first director of the state's Office of Independent Investigations, a unique agency created to look into the use of deadly force by police officers statewide, has resigned.
Rogoff, a former judge and prosecutor who was appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee to the post in June 2022, will join the Seattle law firm Osborn Machler & Neff. He called his departure as the inaugural director of OII bittersweet" but remains convinced the one-of-a-kind agency will succeed in replacing the long-held practice of police investigating their own when an officer takes a life.
"We got it started," Rogoff said Wednesday. "It's on the right track."
Rogoff will be replaced by Jane Nesbitt, who will be acting director beginning March 3 while the state Office of Financial Management looks for candidates to replace him. Nesbitt is currently the agency's chief of staff.
Under the statute that created OII, the Office of Financial Management will submit a list of names to the OII's advisory board — made up of law enforcement officials, defense attorneys, activists, prosecutors and relatives of people killed by police — which will review them and then submit three names to the governor.
“As OII’s first director, Roger has played an important role in getting this new agency off the ground,” said Gov. Bob Ferguson, in announcing Rogoff's resignation.
Of Nesbitt, the governor said, “Jane has extensive knowledge of the agency, its staff and operations, and I am confident in her ability to provide strong and steady leadership as acting director.”
Rogoff, quoted in a news release from Ferguson's office, said he was "deeply honored to have served as OII’s inaugural director.”
Nesbitt, he said, "will be a smart, thoughtful, caring leader who is uniquely qualified to move the agency into its next stage of growth."
OII investigators — a mix of trained civilians and former homicide detectives — are currently working in 12 less-populous counties in Southwest and Western Washington. The agency is getting ready to move its teams into Pierce County in May.
Eventually, OII — broken into eight regions — will investigate police uses of deadly force in every county in the state.
OII is the most radical component in a series of sweeping law enforcement reforms demanded by Washington residents or passed by the state Legislature since 2018, resulting in a cascade of changes aimed at transparency, accountability and reducing deadly interactions between police and the people — especially people of color — they’re sworn to protect and serve.
Inslee had tasked Rogoff with creating the agency from scratch and staffing it with citizen investigators. OII will eventually employ 80 people, including newly trained use-of-force and homicide investigators with no ties to the officers they investigate.
No timeline has been announced, and Rogoff acknowledges the rollout has been slowed by staffing shortages and budget constraints.
Still, Rogoff believes the concept is solid and will restore public trust in law enforcement.
“This agency is poised to empirically change how states investigate police use-of-force cases," he said. "Truly independent investigations must occur in order to instill trust and credibility both for the family of the person hurt or killed and for the law enforcement agents involved in these traumatic events."
Rogoff said he feels more strongly now "than I did when we started" that the agency will succeed in creating a paradigm shift in the way police use of force is investigated in Washington.
Fred Thomas, an OII advisory board member and father of Leonard Thomas, who was shot and killed by Lakewood police in 2013, leading to one of the largest wrongful-death and civil-rights verdicts in state history, said Rogoff's resignation "came as a shock."
"The board felt he was doing a good job," Thomas said. "But he wasn't this governor's pick. I'm guessing the governor wants to pick his own person.
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