Intimidation in the Complaint Process
<a href="http://www.acluct.org/issues/studyfindsdeficientpolicec.htm" target="”_blank”">An
eye-opening report was published this week</a> 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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