In anticipation of the release of a $22,000 police department study, Haines Borough officials this week circulated a letter alluding to “shortfalls” identified in the document, which the municipality expects to publicly release Friday.

The letter, signed by manager David Sosa, Mayor Jan Hill and interim police chief Robert Griffiths, referred to long-standing departmental “issues” in many areas, including management, adherence to policy and procedure, documentation, training, evaluations and equipment maintenance.

In an interview Wednesday, Sosa said more detailed information will be provided in the study results from Russell Consulting LLC. The report will be more than 100 pages long, he said.

Sosa said he decided to pen the letter to give the public an advance summary of the report, which has taken since February to come together.

“I don’t like that it took such a long time for the initial report to come out, and I don’t like that once we requested a rewrite that it has taken awhile. I know Mr. Russell has a lot of other things going on, but he did make a commitment to us and we are paying him,” he said.

Sosa elaborated on some of the report’s findings, including problems with the cataloguing of evidence. When interim chief Griffiths arrived, he and Sosa went to the station and checked out the evidence room.

“I looked behind a cabinet and there were, I don’t know, 12 weapons there,” Sosa said. “They were just shoved in the back.”

Former officers lacked investigation skills, he said. “The officers we had (were) nice people, but because there had not been investment in follow-up training, ensuring policy and procedure was adhered to, appropriate standards, making sure we were staying up to date on how you do investigations, the department was seriously degraded.”

“They knew how to spot a crime and arrest people,” Sosa added. “I don’t see that anything went wrong there. But when you start talking about the follow-up and how do you structure time and how do you investigate and process evidence – all of the support activities that make sure things can be done properly – well, they weren’t done.”

Officers were also sometimes hired because they were available, not because they were the best candidates, Sosa said. “We want to make sure that we get people that will be good police officers, will be good members of the community, that are mature and can make clear decisions and can do the job we need to do,” he said.

Sosa said Griffiths is already taking corrective action on some of the issues, including improving the evidence room, organizing office space and improving the condition of jail cells.

“You have a standard to which you have to maintain a jail, and you want to make sure that it’s safe, not just for the employees but for the people being placed in the jail. (For example), making sure the cameras were covered with Plexiglas, making sure the toilets worked. All these other things that not enough attention had been paid to them in the past,” Sosa said.

Regarding last week’s executive session of the Personnel Committee, Sosa said he wanted to give committee members concrete examples of what has gone wrong at the department. “I wanted to let the Personnel Committee know these are examples. Here are people. This isn’t, ‘Yeah, we think this happened.’ No, this happened. And here are the names.”

Sosa said this week specific names hadn’t been initially included in the report, but at a recent assembly meeting he said the report contained “some items in there that talked to specific personnel actions.”

“So the chief and I sat down and we sent a request back to Mr. Russell. There is some information that needs to come out before we can release the report,” Sosa told the assembly previously.

Sosa said the names will not be included in the report. When asked why the officers, chiefs or managers shouldn’t be held publicly accountable, Sosa said: “They no longer work here. Again, elements that maybe should have gone in a personnel record or are in a personnel record, those are personnel matters. Those are protected matters. So we are not going to go into that.”

Resident Bill McCord, who has dogged the assembly and administration in recent months to establish a public process for hiring a new police chief, said failing to include these details has “violated the public’s right to know.”

“Due process is being summarily trashed, and our local government furthers the corrosive forces that threaten trust in responsive, responsible law enforcement,” McCord said.

In the letter, Sosa wrote that the department’s issues are long-standing and not the result of a single person. “The challenges facing the police department were the result of the failure of a succession of police chiefs, borough managers, public safety commissions and assemblies to administer effective management and oversight of the department for more than a decade,” he wrote.

At Tuesday’s assembly meeting, Sosa added members of the public to that list of culpable parties.

When asked if he could have done more to monitor and question former chief Bill Musser, Sosa said “yes and no.”

“Should I have looked more aggressively into things like serialized inventories? Sure, because that’s something I know a lot about,” Sosa said. “But I also knew that when I got here, one of the big concerns the assembly had was Lt. Col. Sosa showing up on day one and kicking over beds and trash cans. I probably would have been out on my butt after three months if that was my approach, but it would have highlighted some of the challenges we had there. I think there are things I possibly could have done to be more ‘in there.’”

Sosa emphasized it will take time to tackle the problems outlined in the study, but the document’s prioritized list and timeline for improvements will set the stage for moving forward. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s taken years to get to the point where we are now, and it’s going to take a while to fix it.”