Recommended Best Practices
Recommendation 7.2 Create transparent, effective processes to receive and respond to internal misconduct complaints.
While facilitating complaints from community members is critical to accountability, departments also need processes that allow department employees, including officers, to easily report misconduct and file complaints.
Create a “duty to report” for officers. Officers should have an affirmative duty to report possible misconduct to supervisors or to a centralized internal affairs bureau or its equivalent. (Internal affairs units investigate allegations of officer misconduct and criminal conduct.) This duty should be emphasized in recruiting, academy training, and continuing education to make clear that the department does not condone officer silence, or broader codes of silence, and that failure to report may jeopardize employment. For example, the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) Policy Manual states:
The reporting of misconduct and prevention of the escalation of misconduct are areas that demand an employee to exercise courage, integrity, and decisiveness. ¼An employee’s obligation to report and prevent misconduct begins the moment the employee becomes a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. Police officers, because of their status as peace officers, have an even greater responsibility to report and prevent misconduct.[i]
Crucially, departments should not place artificial limitations on when officers can come forward with complaints. If laws and collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) impose time limitations on disciplinary action, department leaders should nonetheless accept and investigate complaints. While supervisors may not impose discipline, investigations may shed light on problematic behaviors that might be addressed outside of the disciplinary process; this also communicates to officers that department leaders care about their concerns and stand by them when they make the difficult decision to step forward and file a complaint against a supervisor or fellow officer.
Ensure supervisors’ have a “duty to respond.” Just as officers have a duty to report, supervisors and managers have a duty to respond. That response may include referring the complainant or witness members to EAPs to help them address stress or personal difficulties associated with the complaint or its investigation.
Develop anti-retaliation policies. Officers are sometimes the best source of information about misconduct by fellow officers because they bear witness to it. Policies should ensure that officers reporting misconduct face no retaliation, either in the short term (e.g., via harassment, ostracism, or adverse assignment) or long term (e.g., via denial of employment opportunities). Such retaliation may violate not only personnel policies and collective bargaining agreements[ii]but also state or federal law.[iii]
Encourage intervention. Efforts to engender a culture in which officers intervene in problematic behavior are already underway. In 2016, the New Orleans Police Department launched Ethical Policing Is Courageous (EPIC), a training initiative to support officers seeking to mitigate misconduct.[iv]The program trains officers to identify problematic behavior and to intervene safely and effectively.[v]Such programs build upon longstanding policies in other departments that require affirmative reporting of fellow officer misconduct, such as the LAPD’s aforementioned policy.
Create avenues to file misconduct complaints with external organizations. Because department members may have misconduct complaints against supervisors or others in positions of power within organizations, they should know how to file complaints with external organizations. All officers should know how to contact external agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or its state or local equivalent to report sexual harassment or other types of misconduct; local prosecutors’ offices to report potential criminal conduct; or labor representatives to report concerns about workplace safety or other adverse working conditions. (For more detail, see also Recommendation 7.11.)
[i]L.A. Police Dep’t, Employee’s Duty to Report Misconduct, 1 LAPD Policy Manual Section 210.46, http://www.lapdonline.org/lapd_manual/volume_1.htm#210._EMPLOYEE_CONDUCT (emphasis added).
[ii]For example, the Los Angeles Police Department prohibits retaliation against any employee that provides information or files a complaint with the Office of the Inspector General. L.A. Police Dep’t, Employee’s Duty to Report Misconduct, 1 LAPD Policy Manual Section 210.46, http://www.lapdonline.org/lapd_manual/volume_1.htm#210._EMPLOYEE_CONDUCT at §§ 272, 273.
[iii]See e.g., U.S. Dep’t of Justice ADDRESSING POLICE MISCONDUCT LAWS ENFORCED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the “OJP Program Statute”https://www.justice.gov/crt/addressing-police-misconduct-laws-enforced-department-justice; Office of Justice Programs, 34 U.S.C.A § 10101 (West 2018).
[iv]New Orleans Police Dep’t, EPIC: Ethical Policing is Courageous, http://epic.nola.gov/home/; Subject to Debate, A Newsletter of The Police Executive Research Forum, 30, No. 2, July-Sept. 2016, https://www.policeforum.org/assets/docs/Subject_to_Debate/Debate2016/debate_2016_julsep.pdf at 2.
[v]Subject to Debate, A Newsletter of The Police Executive Research Forum, 30, No. 2, July-Sept. 2016, https://www.policeforum.org/assets/docs/Subject_to_Debate/Debate2016/debate_2016_julsep.pdf at 2.