When Procedure Was
Abandoned

• Professor Gregory Gilbertson (Ret.): thirty-eight years across policing, the Army, the classroom, and investigative casework. Independent consultants are retained case-by-case where the record calls for a second discipline.
• Retained in more than 220 civil rights and criminal cases across 42 states and the District of Columbia; expert practice since 2014.
• Professor Gilbertson’s testimony has not been excluded at trial in any state or federal court.
• Retained by plaintiff’s counsel and by the defense alike, in civil and criminal matters.
• Fees are published: a $9,000 flat fee covering discovery review and the written expert report; the full schedule is on For Retaining Counsel.
• Attorney and law-firm inquiries only; conflicts are checked before any substantive discussion. (239) 571-1840.

Where the pattern runs deeper than one officer, see the failure-to-train and supervision practice.

A force question has a governing case. A misconduct question does not. No single standard decides whether a report was written the way the profession requires, whether evidence was handled the way accepted practice requires, or whether a pursuit should have been terminated, which is why the yardstick here is assembled rather than cited.

The record supplies three measures, and none of them is a case. First, the agency's own directives on report writing, evidence handling, pursuit and complaint intake, and the general orders above them, in the version dated to the incident rather than the current manual. Second, the training actually delivered to the involved officer: report writing is graded in field training and carries its own agency policy, so the officer's training file usually settles whether the standard at issue reached him. Third, generally accepted police practices, defined at generally accepted police practices, which carry the weight wherever the manual is thin and separate a departure from local habit. How an agency's written policy, its delivered training and the practice it tolerated measure against one another is a separate question, worked at policy, practice and training.

What a documented departure is worth depends on the posture. In federal civil litigation the vehicle is most often 42 U.S.C. § 1983, explained at what a Section 1983 claim is. Where a reporting or evidence issue reaches a criminal prosecution, the frame is the disclosure obligation built on Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) and Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972), and how those files are assembled and fought over is covered at Brady and Giglio in police files.

A police misconduct expert witness addresses the practice: what policy required, what training taught, what the record shows was done. Whether that conduct violated a right is a legal conclusion, and legal conclusions remain counsel's, a boundary addressed directly at legal conclusions and the expert.

The five fact patterns below are not labels for the same work. They differ in what the question actually is: the accuracy of the written account, the handling or the existence of physical evidence, the decision to begin or continue a pursuit, the duty of an officer who was standing there, or whether written policy governed the conduct at all. Each question is answered from a different part of the file and measured against a different body of standards.

Pursuit matters carry their own body of policy, described at pursuit policy standards, and intervention questions turn on opportunity and ability rather than on the force itself, described at the duty to intervene.

A report reconciled item by item against the video, the dispatch record and the sworn statements shows where the paper and the record part ways, which is the work at falsified reports.

Fabrication, planting, suppression, concealment and loss each leave a trace in the evidence logs and custody documentation they had to pass through, traced at fabricated or suppressed evidence.

A pursuit is sequenced from dispatch to termination on the justification to initiate, the supervision en route, and the policy that governed both, at pursuits and vehicle operation.

Two duties run alongside every use of force, both trained and both written into policy, and both are timed against the video and the radio traffic at failure to intervene and render aid.

The agency's policy manual and general orders are laid next to the record of the incident, directive by directive, at policies and procedures.

The report stops where the discipline stops: what policy required, what training delivered, and what the record shows was done. Liability is the court's question, and the report is written so that the difference is visible on its face.

Admissibility is retaining counsel's responsibility, and it is worked before disclosure rather than after a motion is filed. What makes that possible is a method stated plainly enough to be examined: the complete record, national standards and the agency's own policy, with every opinion sourced to a document in the file. How it is tested is set out at Daubert and Rule 702.

The record on that question is public: the court's ruling in Alvarez v. King County resolved a motion to exclude Professor Gilbertson's testimony in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. His testimony has been admitted in the state courts of Washington, Oregon, Kansas, Connecticut, Florida and Illinois, and in the U.S. District Courts for the Western District of Washington, the District of Arizona and the Western District of Louisiana, and it has not been excluded at trial in any state or federal court. What that record does and does not establish is addressed at what never excluded means.

Case accounts as published by retaining counsel. Outcomes depend on their facts; no result is promised for any other matter.