News-Record.com

The Sunday stories by Taft Wireback and Sonja Elmquist raised some pertinent questions about openness in the Greensboro Police Department.

The bottom line for us: It's important for the department to be mindful of officers' legal rights and right to privacy and due process in internal investigations.

But too many of these inquiries take far too long and erode public faith in the process.

To this date, the department has not provided any update to the public about the involvement of Lt. James Hinson and another officer in establishing a home for teenage girls without consulting their superiors first (per department rules). As we have written before, how hard can that be to determine? Either the officers did or did not follow the rules.

An investigation of a shooting drags on while an man accused of attacking the officer who shot him waits in jail.

Further, it took the department two months to interview officers involved in a sexual assault alleged by a fellow, off-duty officer.

It is understandable that the department does not want to compromise investigations, so it proceeds carefully. The department also has to deal with officers' attorneys in these cases, which can stall investigations. But these delays raise questions among the public about the department's ability to police itself.

Some possible fixes:

1. If the department is short of internal investigators, it should make the case for more.
2. Training regimens should be fluid and address trends in problems such as communication with non-English speakers. Thus, complaints could be prevented before they happen.
3. The police Citizens Complaint Review Committee, operated by the Human Relations Commission, appears underpromoted and underused. "They don't have a clue about us," veteran board member James Wells says of the public's perception of the committee, in one of Sunday's stories.