Countywide

Calls received over the past two years on a countywide hot line for police abuse or harassment showed minorities, especially blacks, made a disproportionate number of complaints and that general harassment was the most common complaint, the American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday.

The study, based on 152 calls, also showed that San Diego police registered the highest number of complaints with 69, and the Sheriff’s Department received 35. The California Highway Patrol, National City police and Oceanside police followed with eight each.

The report is not being viewed as a definitive study of all alleged law enforcement misconduct, ACLU officials for San Diego and Imperial counties said. ACLU official Michael Crowley maintained that the study is a fair sampling of what he called a chronic problem of police misconduct in San Diego County.

San Diego Police Cmdr. Larry Gore commended the hot line as an additional avenue for citizens to lodge complaints, but he said he was concerned about the way the raw data was presented. “What can you really tell from statistics? They can be grossly misleading. The study is just an over-generalization and, unless you get behind the statistics, you don’t really know what’s being discussed,” said Gore, spokesman for Police Chief Bob Burgreen.

Gore said, for example, that San Diego police received 456 complaints in 1989 alone, saying that number is a far cry from the 69 the ACLU received in the past two years.