Washington police employment records

Washington’s certification file covers 25,665 officers who appear in its records between 1901-01-01 and 2025-01-01, across 636 agencies, in 35,326 employment records.

2025-01-01: coverage through
1901-01-01: earliest record
25,665: officers
636: agencies
35,326: employment records
latest separation date: coverage basis

The coverage date is computed from the file itself — the basis is the latest separation date. The publisher states November 2022. The file holds records newer than the date its publisher states. Source: NPI published bucket. Retrieved 2026-08-29.

Reporting

The reporting on Washington’s police records

InvestigateWest · August 2026

A 2021 law expanded Washington’s power to decertify police officers. Records show cops still avoid consequences

A backlog of more than 1,500 cases at the state training commission. Tribal police hire officers fired elsewhere at four times their share of the state workforce; one department hired seven previously fired officers, and one officer worked at nine departments across three states in eight years.

Washington State Standard · June 2025

WA looks to tighten compliance under police accountability law

The commission asked the state auditor to check whether departments report misconduct as the 2021 law requires. One department failed to report three of four sustained allegations and filed four separation notices past the 15-day deadline; another did not report two officers in a 2022 use-of-force case until the audit began.

What this data does not say

It never asserts that anyone is currently employed. The supported statement is that a person is listed as employed at an agency as of 2025-01-01, with no separation recorded.
Records are state-scoped. Washington certification numbers are issued by its own board, so someone certified in two states appears in two files and is never merged into one history.
Measured across the 26 published files as of 2026-08-29, 69,683 officer records are open at two or more agencies at once — a genuine dual appointment, or a separation the board never recorded. Counted per file, never across states. The data cannot tell the two apart, so neither is asserted.

Where this comes from, and how to correct it

This page presents what NPI published bucket made available, as it was released. Some files reach us directly from the reporting agency and some through intermediaries that obtained them under public-records law; either way the content is the agency’s, not ours. CaseParity does not investigate, verify, correct or vouch for any individual record, and takes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of what a reporting agency published.

A correction to the record itself is made by the certifying agency that issued it — that is the only route that changes it at the source, and therefore everywhere it appears, here included. If what this page shows does not match that agency’s file, write to hello@caseparity.com and say which record and which field. No response time is promised, and nothing here substitutes for going to the agency.

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