APD: Restructuring plans for IA OK'd

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Police Chief Art Acevedo asked the Austin City Council Tuesday to upgrade some positions in his Internal Affairs division, following accusations of bias in the unit that investigates other Austin police officers for misdoings.

Austin Police Corporal Scott Perry said Acevedo hopes that upgrading some positions from detectives to sergeants will garner more public trust in knowing supervisors are performing investigations.

The Austin City Council passed the plan to reorganize internal affairs on Thursday afternoon.

Acevedo fired Officer Chris Dunn, an IA officer who was charged with investigating the fatal shooting of Nathaniel Sanders.

The investigation continues regarding the Internal-Affairs investigation into the Sanders shooting. There are allegations that the investigation was biased in favor of the officers involved - saying that an independent review released last month should be used as "a tool" in their own review of the fatal May shooting.

"There is one disturbing fact that we have found in terms of potential bias, and we will conduct an investigation into that employee," Acevedo said in an October 2009 news conference. "Internal Affairs is the gatekeeper to this department and this organization. We expect Internal Affairs to remain above reproach." 

Acevedo also said that part of the criticism in the 133-page report, only some of which was released, may have stemmed from a misunderstanding about how internal investigations work.

The report by KeyPoint Government Solutions focused on APD officer Leonardo Quintana's shooting of Sanders in May 2009, and on the investigations that followed.

The report said parts of the APD investigation were biased towards officers and that there were "substantive deficiencies." The independent review also cited "significant deficiencies in the quality of documentation relating to training of APD officers."

Despite the bias the study found, the review said it felt the "facts developed by the IA investigation combined with those developed by the homicide investigation to be such that our independent investigation did not need to resort to a first-party reinvestigation of those facts."

Another officer, Chris Dunn, was fired following the investigation. APD said Dunn sent an e-mail that read, “"We can make [them] a causation of the entire event. I am so smart I scare myself. Thoughts?"

APD determined this e-mail violated a policy that prohibits officers from showing a partial attitude.

Dunn's lawyer announced Monday he plans to appeal the decision to fire him in an effort to get his job back.

The Travis County grand jury has declined to criminally indict Quintana.