One in 5 Discouraged From Police Complaint

For the fourth time since San Diego police began conducting “customer satisfaction surveys” of those who complained to the department, one in five of people surveyed were either discouraged from griping or had an officer refuse to take a complaint.

“This raises some real concerns,” said Murray Galinson, a member of the Citizen’s Review Board on Police Practices who studied the findings this week.

“What we’re saying is that 19% of those who filed a complaint were discouraged from doing so,” he said. “That doesn’t even take into account people who are so discouraged that they don’t even file a complaint.”

The latest survey was asked of those who made a complaint to the department from June, 1990, to March, 1991. It is the fourth time police have monitored complaints, and the results mirror the three previous surveys, which had been taken six months apart, said Cmdr. Bob Thorburn, head of inspection services for the department, which conducted the survey.

During the latest 10-month period, 154 people complained about the conduct of a police officer. Police administrators contacted 111 willing to participate in the survey.

Although 81% of those questioned felt their complaints had been taken properly, and they had not been discouraged from filing a complaint, 19% had a problem with the process.

“One in five is way too high,” Thorburn said. “We’d like to see that number closer to zero.”

Eight percent of those surveyed said they had been discouraged from filing a complaint, and that nobody was willing to take their information the first time they contacted the department, although a complaint was later taken.

Six percent said they had been discouraged from complaining, even though a complaint was taken.

Five percent said they were not discouraged from complaining yet an officer failed to take the complaint. It is department policy that a complaint must be taken by anyone in the agency,whether it is given by telephone, in writing or in person.

The results of the survey were presented this week to the Citizens Review Board. For more than two years after the board was created through a citywide election, it had no means of taking public complaints, no telephone number and no mailing address. Those who did complain had a choice of filing their grievance with the department or not at all.

Critics of the complaint policy said few people are willing to file objections about police officers to the agency that employs them.

In May, the city manager set up an office and assigned an employee to take complaints so the police would not be involved.

But the latest survey suggests that the process has problems. Galinson of the review board wants the Police Department to do its job of collecting complaints better.

“In my opinion, we need to have one central part of the department that takes complaints,” Galinson said. “One that is trained to be service-oriented and user-friendly. One that encourages dialogue.”

Galinson said the review board has distributed brochures to community agencies and police storefront operations that describe how to make complaints.

All complaints are sent to the department’s internal affairs division and divided into allegations of criminal conduct against an officer and allegations of a department policy violation.

Criminal conduct complaints brought by the public are examined by the review board. Policy violations are not. Either way, the officer’s supervisor determines what discipline, if any, is in order, and the person who complained is informed if the allegation was found to be true, false or without merit. No other information, including what type of discipline was dispensed, is given.

Until the past year, the department was not permitted by law to even disclose the disposition of its cases to those who filed a complaint. The law has since been changed.

In the meantime, Thorburn, said the department has restated its policy that everyone in the agency must take complaints they receive.

“We take complaints by mail, by phone and even anonymous complaints,” he said. “We want to know all the bad news people want to give us.”