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No, Complaints Do Not Typically Get Officers Fired

No, Complaints Do Not Typically Get Officers Fired

Last updated on: July 20, 2017 at 12:39 pm by Libby Anne

No, Complaints Do Not Typically Get Officers Fired 2017-07-20T12:39:58-04:00 Libby Anne

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Earlier this week, a Minnesota police officer shot and killed Justine Damond, a 40-year-old white woman who was about to be married. Damond had met the police in the alley outside of her home after placing a 911 call to report a personal assault. While she was standing at the driver’s side door, the officer in the passenger seat shot her. Black Lives Matter activists quickly identified this case as an example of police brutality and the troubling policing tactics that have turned the police into an occupying force.

Some right-wing media sources, however, have been more interested in the name of the officer who shot Damond: Mohamed Noor. Jihad Watch reports the story as follows:

We don’t have any indication at this point of why Mohamed Noor killed Justine Damond. There is no evidence now that he is a jihadi or that this was a jihad attack. But with three complaints against him in two years, he seems at very least to be dangerously reckless and/or incompetent. His presence on the force appears to be a manifestation of the general anxiety to avoid charges of “Islamophobia”: Minneapolis officials were so anxious to have a Somali Muslim police officer that they put Mohamed Noor on the force and kept him there when his obvious shortcomings would have had a non-Muslim officer fired or not hired in the first place.

Jihad Watch asserts that the problem was not with police tactics or training. Instead, Jihad Watch asserts that Noor was kept on the force despite having three complaints filed against him because he was Muslim and the force wanted a Muslim officer. This assumes that citizen complaints typically result in an officer being fired. They do not, and that is part of the problem.

Earlier this summer, three Chicago police officers were indicted for filing false police reports meant to justify their fellow officer’s fatal shooting of teen Laquan McDonald. This is one of the things I find most concerning in discussion of police brutality—the tendency of fellow officers and entire departments to cover for their own. When officers are willing to file false police reports—and plant drugs—is it any surprise that citizen complaints typically go nowhere?

As the New York Times notes in a story about Chicago cops:

In 18 years with the Chicago Police Department, the nation’s second-largest, Jerome Finnigan had never been disciplined — although 68 citizen complaints had been lodged against him, including accusations that he used excessive force and regularly conducted illegal searches.

…

…the data for 2015 shows that in more than 99 percent of the thousands of misconduct complaints against Chicago police officers, there has been no discipline. From 2011 to 2015, 97 percent of more than 28,500 citizen complaints resulted in no officer being punished, according to the files.

And note that even discipline generally does not mean being fired.

Interestingly, the New York Times story indicates that in Chicago, at least, being a minority cop does not mean kid glove treatment for the sake of maintaining diversity:

Although very few officers were disciplined in the years covered by the data, African-American officers were punished at twice the rate of their white colleagues for the same offenses, the data shows.

But maybe this is just Chicago. What about elsewhere?

As Ryan J. Reilly notes in the Huffington Post:

Even basic statistics on the number of complaints against police are hard to come by. A federal survey found that just 8 percent of the use-of-force complaints received by large state and local law enforcement agencies in 2002 were deemed credible — they were “sustained,” in cop lingo. Most experts who have studied internal affairs think that rate is much lower than it would be if the process weren’t in many ways designed to protect officers.

Here is how the problem shakes out in various municipalities:

The Ferguson Police Department … lacked “any meaningful system for holding officers accountable when they violate law or policy,” actively discouraged citizens from filing complaints, and assumed officers were telling the truth and complainants were not “even where objective evidence indicates that the reverse is true,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

In Cleveland, where just 51 officers from a force of 1,500 were disciplined “in any fashion in connection with a use of force incident” over 3.5 years, those investigating the use of force admitted to DOJ that they conducted their inquiries with the “goal of casting the accused officer in the most positive light possible.”

The Albuquerque Police Department failed to “implement an objective and rigorous internal accountability system,” according to a DOJ report.

In New Orleans, just 5.5 percent of civilian complaints were sustained by a team that had no special training in internal affairs, another federal investigation found.

In Newark, New Jersey, barely 5 percent of civilian complaints were sustained between 2010 and 2012, according to a DOJ report. Investigators in Newark “routinely failed to probe officers’ accounts or assess officer credibility.” They gave weight to the criminal history of complainants but discounted the disciplinary history of officers, including one officer with 40 use-of-force incidents over six years, the federal investigators found.

Reilly bookends his article by writing about the citizen complaint he filed against Michael McCann, the officer who slammed his head against a door while arresting him while he was events in Ferguson in 2014. Ten months after he filed his complaint, Reilly received a letter stating that McCann denied blaming his head into a door and that investigation into his complaint was being closed “based on the absence of conclusive facts.” Two months later, McCann was promoted to sergeant.

What about Minneapolis? According to a Human Rights Watch report from 1998:

In its 1995 annual report, published in March 1996, CRA reports receiving 146 signed complaints, with 49 percent citing excessive force as the primary characteristic, and in 1996 there were 129 signed complaints, with 44 percent alleging excessive force…. Probable cause of wrongdoing is found in about 10 percent of the cases; in two-thirds of the cases no probable cause is found…. This means that of 129 signed complaints in 1996, approximately fifty-six (or 44 percent) alleged excessive force, and approximately five or six of these would be found as having sufficient merit and would proceed to a hearing….

In fact, disciplinary action by the police chief following an allegation of excessive force submitted in a signed CRA complaint is rare. For example, between March 1995 and February 1997 … only eighteen cases were sustained—two involving excessive force. In one case, an officer was disciplined with a one-day suspension without pay, and in another involving excessive force, language and harassment, an officer received a five-day suspension without pay. No further information is provided about the incidents leading to the discipline. In the same two-year period, there were 127 complaints of excessive force….

What about more recent data? Have these statistics changed? Numbers included in a 2007 report made by the Civilian Police Review Authority indicate that from 2004 to 2007, 31.4% of complaints went to a hearing; 23% of complaints that received a hearing were sustained in full or in part; and 31.9% of sustained complaints resulted in disciplinary action. All told, 2.3% of complaints during those years resulted in disciplinary action.

A 2016 report by the Civilian Police Review Authority indicates that out of 56 excessive use of force complaints, only 4 were found by the review panel to have merit. It also indicates that two Minneapolis police officers were terminated in 2016 due to complaints. One of these, Rod Webber, was recorded threatening to break a teen’s leg. The other, Blayne Lehner, shoved a woman and called her the c-word. This was not the first complaint against Lehner.

Lehner has also been the subject of dozens of civilian and internal affairs complaints.

City records show that since 2000, more than 30 complaint investigations have been opened against Lehner. The vast majority of investigations were closed with no discipline. One case from 2014 with the Office of Police Conduct Review is still open. Records show Lehner was suspended twice in 2013. However, the reasons for the discipline were not listed. Lehner was also issued two letters of reprimand in 2012.

In 2015, Lehner was sued by a man who claimed the officer kicked him in the face, breaking a few of his teeth and causing him to briefly lose consciousness. In a rare move, the city decided not to defend Lehner. However, the city later settled the case for $360,000.

Note that the incident that led to Lehner being fired, the shoving and the c-word, happened in 2014. Even when complaint does lead to an officer being terminated, it can take years for the complaint to work its way through the process. But we are not actually done with the Lehner’s story. He was fired in January 2016 but was subsequently rehired in October 2016 through an arbitration process—and the city has been ordered to pay Lehner the wages he would have earned during the time he was fired.

And yet, Jihad Watch insists that a non-Muslim officer would have been fired if they had, like him, had three complaints lodged against them in two years. Um, no. That is not how this works. Officers are very rarely even disciplined over a complaint, much less fired—and that is the problem. Perhaps a more effective process for reviewing citizen complaints would have resulted in the force identifying Noor’s inappropriate behavior and addressing it—but then, we’re talking about a system that justifies excessive force and covers for and defends cops who use it.

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