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Intimidation in the Complaint Process
Thursday, December 6th, 2012
Robert Wechsler
An
eye-opening report was published this week by the American
Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut. The report was based on a
survey of all the state's police departments regarding the filing of
complaints. Although complaints filed by the public against police
officers rarely involve conflicts of interest, some of the findings
are relevant to government ethics.
Most important was the element of intimidation involved in the complaint process. 58% of the departments said that complainants had to appear in person at the police department. Only 29% of the departments said that anonymous complaints would be accepted. And nearly 66% of online complaint forms threaten criminal prosecution for a false complaint, often citing state law above the signature line on the complaint form. One can only imagine what is said to anyone who has the courage to go to a police department to make a complaint in person.
The report concludes that, "Filing a complaint against a police officer can be daunting and many Connecticut police departments make it even more intimidating with policies that require sworn statements, threaten prosecution for false statements, warn of civil liabilities or expose complainants to the possibility of deportation. All these practices are widely discouraged by law enforcement policy experts."
It's these "experts" and their "best practices" that especially caught my attention. We're not talking City Ethics here. We're talking the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the United States Department of Justice.
The ACLU can condemn complaint practices in Connecticut police departments based on highly-respected associations, commissions, and offices. When in 2004 I did a survey for Common Cause Connecticut of municipal ethics programs, and found that only 44% of the towns expressly permitted citizen ethics complaints of any kind, I had no experts, best practices, or statistics to point to in order to show how wrong this was. And although there has been limited improvement, the state of ethics programs in Connecticut is still dismal.
It is rare for cities and counties to allow anonymous ethics complaints, to provide ethics complaints online and, when they do, not to require complainants to swear to the truth of every statement they make, with the threat of prosecution. There is rarely reason to believe that officials won't see complaints and there is far too little protection against retaliation. Thank goodness that, at least, citizens don't have to appear in person to file their complaints, and that the people they send their complaints to are not the very people who might investigate and file charges against them.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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Most important was the element of intimidation involved in the complaint process. 58% of the departments said that complainants had to appear in person at the police department. Only 29% of the departments said that anonymous complaints would be accepted. And nearly 66% of online complaint forms threaten criminal prosecution for a false complaint, often citing state law above the signature line on the complaint form. One can only imagine what is said to anyone who has the courage to go to a police department to make a complaint in person.
The report concludes that, "Filing a complaint against a police officer can be daunting and many Connecticut police departments make it even more intimidating with policies that require sworn statements, threaten prosecution for false statements, warn of civil liabilities or expose complainants to the possibility of deportation. All these practices are widely discouraged by law enforcement policy experts."
It's these "experts" and their "best practices" that especially caught my attention. We're not talking City Ethics here. We're talking the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the United States Department of Justice.
The ACLU can condemn complaint practices in Connecticut police departments based on highly-respected associations, commissions, and offices. When in 2004 I did a survey for Common Cause Connecticut of municipal ethics programs, and found that only 44% of the towns expressly permitted citizen ethics complaints of any kind, I had no experts, best practices, or statistics to point to in order to show how wrong this was. And although there has been limited improvement, the state of ethics programs in Connecticut is still dismal.
It is rare for cities and counties to allow anonymous ethics complaints, to provide ethics complaints online and, when they do, not to require complainants to swear to the truth of every statement they make, with the threat of prosecution. There is rarely reason to believe that officials won't see complaints and there is far too little protection against retaliation. Thank goodness that, at least, citizens don't have to appear in person to file their complaints, and that the people they send their complaints to are not the very people who might investigate and file charges against them.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
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