Would-be contractor accuses AGO, WSU employees of using company’s propriety data

(The Center Square) – A potential bidder for a police use of force database project developed through the State Attorney General’s Office is accusing an AGO employee and a Washington State University professor managing the project of illegally using his company’s proprietary information and copyrighted materials.

State officials claim the bidder is waging an effort to hinder the project.

Police Strategies CEO Bob Scales was among potential bidders on a request for proposal put out in 2022 by the AGO via Senate Bill 5259; Scales also participated in the legislative process surrounding the bill. However, he ultimately did not bid on the project due to various stipulations, including a requirement that they hand over intellectual property.

Since the request for proposal was put out, Scales has accused AGO and WSU employees of colluding to ensure that the university’s bid would be selected. WSU ultimately was the only institution of higher education to bid.

He then later accused WSU President Kirk Schultz of interfering in an ethics complaint investigation filed against WSU Professor David Makin, who submitted the university’s bid and is also a co-recipient of Scales’ July 1 cease-and-desist letter.

All of Scales’ ethics complaints so far have either been dismissed or no longer under investigation.

In the letter addressed to Makin and AGO Senior Policy Analyst Kelly Richburg, Scales wrote that his company developed what is known as Police Force Analysis System℠, or PFAS, which has been used by more than 100 law enforcement agencies to analyze use of force incidents. The system contains copyrighted legal algorithms and other proprietary information.

“The copyrighted data elements and legal algorithms used in PFAS are unique and they are not found in any other use of force data collection system,” he wrote.

However, he claims that WSU and the AGO intends to use the proprietary and copyrighted data elements in the Washington State Data Exchange for Public Safety, or WADEPS, citing the project’s planned use of data elements and descriptions not found in SB 5259 nor in the Advisory Group’s recommendations, but contained in PFAS.

“WADEPS has taken this single data element from the Advisory Group and created five new data elements that were taken directly from the copyrighted PFAS system,” he wrote. “Not only have WSU and the AGO violated copyright laws, they have also violated state law by creating these new data elements that were not authorized by SB 5259 or approved by the AGO Advisory Group.”

When The Center Square reached out to WSU for comment, Marketing and Communications Vice President Phil Weiler wrote that “Washington State University has received this letter and we are reviewing it now.”

The AGO Deputy Communications Director Dan Jackson wrote in an email that “this individual sought to become a subcontractor on this project. When the sole bidding University did not select him, he launched this campaign full of allegations, public records requests, lawsuits, and threats in an effort to delay the project.”