To put complaints against the police into perspective, it is necessary to briefly outline why police exist or, rather, the functions of the police in society. According to the American Bar Association’s Standards Relating to the Urban Police Function (as in Peak 1997), the functions of the police in modern society are as follows:
1. To identify criminals and criminal activity and, where appropriate, apprehend offenders and participate in court proceedings
2. To reduce the opportunities for the commission of crime through preventive patrol and other measures
3. To aid individuals who are in danger of physical harm
4. To protect constitutional guarantees
5. To facilitate the movement of people and vehicles
6. To assist those who cannot care for themselves
7. To help resolve conflict
8. To identify problems that are potentially serious law enforcement or governmental problems
9. To create and maintain a feeling of security in the community
10. To promote and preserve civil order
11. To provide other services on an emergency basis.
To this list, the authors would like to add that the police are responsible for identifying and controlling situations that have the propensity of becoming problematic and to locate missing persons and help recover missing and/or stolen property.
According to Oliver (2001), the preceding functions can be summarized into two broad categories: enforcing the laws and maintaining order. Between these two broad functions, order maintenance constitutes the bulk of police officers’ daily activities (Senna and Siegel 1999) and therefore presents many opportunities for face-to-face contact with the public and complaints against the police.
Relative to their functions, it is obvious that the police are the most visible symbol of authority in society. Such visibility, coupled with the complexity and ambiguity of their role and the heterogeneity of the modern society in which they operate, not only makes law enforcement a dangerous profession but also increases the chance that similar conduct by police officers in varying communities would result in different responses in different parts of the community, thereby increasing complaints against the police. Also, police organizations are the only governmental agency authorized to use force— including lethal force—when necessary, to carry out their responsibilities. How wisely or judiciously police officers use their powers is the primary determinant of how free and open a society is (O’Connor 2005), and how open and free a society is determines the types and number of complaints citizens have and/or file against police officers. The number and types of complaints against the police reflect differences in behavior of police officers, the willingness of the department to receive and act on complaints, and a political climate that either discourages or encourages citizens to complain (Roberg and Kuykendall 1993).
According to Bennett and Hess (2001), citizen complaints against police officers can be classified as sustained, not sustained, unfounded, or the officer is exonerated. Sustained complaints, they say, are those that, as a result of an investigation, are determined to be justified. That is, it has been determined that the claim made by the citizen is true. Unsustained complaints are those that, in the opinion of those making the determination, cannot be substantiated as either true or false. Unfounded complaints, they continue, are those that the investigation has determined did not occur as alleged by the complainant, whereas exoneration means that investigation of a complaint showed that the allegation is essentially true but that the officer’s behavior was found to be justified, legal, or consistent with departmental policy.
Although research concerning police behavior and the number, types, and dispositions of citizens’ complaints against the police is scanty, studies (Bennett and Hess 2001; Bittner 1975; Bobb 2002; Christopher 1991; Dugan and Breda 1991; Fogel 1987; Human Rights Watch 1998a, 1998b, 1998c, 1998d, 1998e, 1998f, 1998g, 1998h, 1998i, 1998j, 1998k, 1998l, 1998m, 1998n; Lersch and Mieczkowski 1996; Petterson 1991; Rojek, Wagner, and Decker 2001; Terrill and McCluskey 2002; Walker 1992, 2001) provide some useful insights:
1. Whereas less than 1% of all citizens who come in contact with the police complain about police methods and behavior, as many as 10% to 15% may feel they have something to complain about. For the most part, citizens’ complaints against the police are in relation to what the officer did or failed to do.
2. Whereas there is little agreement among researchers regarding whether African Americans are overtly discriminated against by the police in their enforcement tactics, there is no doubt that they constitute the majority of complainants against the police. African Americans make up between 50% and 60% of complainants against the police.
3. The rate of complaints varies between six and eighty-one complaints per one hundred officers among police departments.
4. The number of complaints sustained by police departments varies between 0% and 25% mostly due to shoddy police internal affairs investigations, the blue wall of silence, powerless citizens’ review boards, lack of ”credible” witnesses, and police corruption.
5. The most common complaint concerns excessive use of force.
6. Complaints of excessive use of force are usually sustained less often than other types of complaints.
7. ”Conduct unbecoming a police officer” is sustained more often than other forms of complaints.
8. In instances where complaints are sustained and the city or the police department pays out a huge sum of money to the complainant, police officers are not disciplined mostly due to political infighting within the police department, attitudes of city officials toward complaints against police officers, resistance by a strong police union, complainants’ criminal history, state immunity laws, and short-term statutes of limitation on complaints against the police.
9. A small number of police officers account for a disproportionate number of complaints. This is referred to as the ”bad apple” theory. (For a brief summary of the problem officer hypothesis, see Walker, Alpert, and Kennedy 2000.) Although the number varies from one department to another, it is estimated that between 5% and 10% of officers in most departments account for between 20% and 35% of complaints.
10. It seems that a disproportionate number of complaints against the police are filed against younger, less experienced officers. As many as two-thirds of all complaints in some departments involve officers who are thirty years of age or younger and who have five or fewer years of experience.
11. The blue wall of silence exists in all police departments and contributes immensely to incidents of abuse of citizens by the police. Police officers who are aware of misconduct by other officers do not come forward for fear of reprisal by fellow officers or the department. Those who report misconduct are ostracized and harassed, become targets of complaints and even physical threats, and are made to fear that they will be left alone on the streets in a time of crisis. This situation has given rise to what has been termed the ”subculture” theory of police misconduct.
12. There is a general flaw in the supervision and evaluation of police officers. Officers with long records of alleged misconduct, including some with histories of alleged physical abuse of citizens, are allowed to remain on the street largely unidentified and unsupervised and consistently receive perfect performance evaluations each year and are rewarded with promotion.
13. Although use of excessive force (especially, deadly force) by the police is a rare occurrence, there nonetheless is heightened concern among citizens about excessive force. The public has increasingly become aware that law enforcement agencies cannot police themselves. The public believes that the power to investigate police misconduct should be ceded by the police in whole or in part to qualified, independent investigative bodies.
14. Abusive police officers sometimes use excessive force just to show who was in charge. Some keep guns and drugs seized during raids. The guns are used as ”throw-away” guns to plant on a suspect in the event of a questionable arrest or police shooting, and the drugs can be used to frame suspects.
15. It is more difficult to prosecute and/ or fire police officers who are the subject of sustained citizen complaints or who have a pattern of alleged misconducts both on and off duty than other city employees due in part to lack of witnesses, a strong police union that is willing to defend even officers with a pattern of citizens’ complaints, skewed internal investigation techniques, and special immunity laws that protect police officers from prosecution.
16. Cities and sometimes police departments pay out huge sums of money each year to settle lawsuits and awards dealing with police use of excessive force, wrongful death, false arrests, and false imprisonment.
17. Many police departments are not in compliance with international human rights standards or with the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Tennessee v. Garner, which requires that police officers only shoot fleeing felony suspects when necessary to prevent escape and when there is probable cause to believe that they pose a significant danger to the officer or members of the public.
Although it is a small percentage of officers in any police department that engages in abuse of citizens, some researchers believe that the establishment of civilian review boards with real powers to ensure that investigations of complaints are full, fair, and thorough would further reduce the number of such complaints. The benefits of such boards are already being reaped by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD), which, since being subject to ongoing independent outside investigation and monitoring, has noticed a decrease in the number of officers killed or wounded in the line of duty from a high often in 1991 to three in 2001, while the number of arrests remained the same. Between 1991 and 2000, the number of suspects killed or wounded by LASD officers also decreased from a high of sixty-three people in 1991 to a low of eighteen in 2000 (Bobb 2002). Also during the ten years of outside independent monitoring and reporting, the total docket of excessive force cases on file against LASD officers dropped from a high of 381 cases in 1992 to a low of 93 in 2001, and the amounts paid out in settlements and judgments in excessive force cases during the same period dropped from a high of $17 million to a low of $2 million in 2001. In today’s economic climate and budget cuts, cutting this expense would save taxpayers money and improve community-police relations.
