Homeland Security Watchdog Omitted Damaging Findings From Reports
Source: New York Times
Homeland Security Watchdog Omitted Damaging Findings From Reports
The findings were removed from inspector general investigations of domestic violence and sexual misconduct committed by officers in the department’s law enforcement agencies.
By Chris Cameron
April 7, 2022
WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general and his top aides directed staff members to remove damaging findings from investigative reports on domestic violence and sexual misconduct by officers in the department’s law enforcement agencies, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and two government officials familiar with the inquiries.
One investigation found that more than 10,000 employees of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration had experienced sexual harassment or sexual misconduct at work — more than one-third of those surveyed, according to an unpublished draft report dated December 2020.
The draft report also described a pattern of the agencies using cash payments, with payouts as high as $255,000, to settle sexual harassment complaints without investigating or disciplining the perpetrators. But senior officials in the inspector general’s office objected to that finding, suggesting in written comments that it be removed from the report, which has never been published.
The inspector general, Joseph V. Cuffari, also directed his staff to remove parts of another draft report showing internal investigations had found that dozens of officers working at the agencies had committed domestic violence, but that they had received “little to no discipline.” Mr. Cuffari also wanted a section removed that said the agencies had “put victims and the public at risk of further violence” by allowing the perpetrators to keep their firearms; including such findings, he wrote in an internal memo, would make his office look like it was “second-guessing D.H.S. disciplinary decisions without full facts.”
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/us/politics/homeland-security-inspector-general.html
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