Crime & Safety

Connecticut Police Departments Discourage Civilian Complaints

A report from the ACLU shows many departments in the state have barriers that make it difficult for civilians to file complaints against officers. In North Branford, the police department will accept anonymous complaints.

 

Update, Dec. 5, 2012, 7:40 p.m.

Lieutenant David D'Ancicco contacted Patch in regard to the North Branford Police Department's Policy for Handling Civilian Complaints. He said that the policy, which has been in effect for the past 20 years, states that any complaint can be filed anonymously. They can be filed in writing, in person, over the phone or anonymously. 

Find out what's happening in North Branfordwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Civilian complaint forms are available in the lobby of the NBPD 24 hours a day. You can view the entire policy in the attached PDF.

Original Story: Dec. 5, 2012, 2 p.m.

Find out what's happening in North Branfordwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Police departments across Connecticut routinely make it difficult for civilians to file complaints against their officers in a number of ways, including failing to make complaint forms available, refusing to accept anonymous complaints, imposing time limits on receiving complaints and requiring sworn statements or threatening criminal prosecution or a civil lawsuit for false statements.

Those are the findings of a non-scientific survey conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut and released Tuesday. The barriers to filing complaints that the ACLU cites in the study fly in the face of “best practices that are widely accepted by law enforcement experts,” on the processes police departments should follow for accepting civilian complaints, the agency said.

The findings, the ACLU said in a press release, “reveal a need for statewide standards to ensure that civilians with complaints about police misconduct will not be turned away, intimidated or silenced.”

“We’ve been hearing from too many people who have had difficulty filing complaints with their local police departments,” said David McGuire, staff attorney for the ACLU of Connecticut, who supervised the study. “We rely on the police for our safety, and we’re grateful for their service. But we also entrust police officers with extraordinary authority, including the power to use deadly force, and this must be balanced by accountability, with a clear and reliable method for civilians to register their concerns about police conduct.”

You can view a PDF of the agency's findings above.

In North Branford, the ACLU found that the police department does not allow anonymous complaints and an official with the department told a survey caller that they were unsure if the department would call immigration officials if someone who is in the country illegally sought to file a complaint. Both practices run counter to how law enforcement experts say police departments should handle complaints against officers.

The ACLU report was based on a telephone survey of 104 Connecticut police departments and agencies, including 92 municipal departments and the state’s 12 police barracks. The survey found that:

Twenty-three percent of municipal police departments (excluding state police) reported having no complaint form for civilians to fill out.

Sixty-one percent of the municipal police agencies in Connecticut told callers they don’t accept anonymous complaints, although law-enforcement policy experts strongly agree that police should accept complaints made anonymously. Another 10 percent could not or would not answer the question about anonymous complaints.

Nearly two-thirds of the complaint forms posted online by municipal police departments in Connecticut contain warnings of criminal prosecution for those making false complaints, though such action is widely considered a deterrent to those with legitimate complaints.

Nearly half the complaint forms posted online by municipal police departments in Connecticut mention a requirement for complainants to file a sworn statement, though law enforcement policy experts recommend strongly against demanding such statements. Employees at several departments without online forms also mentioned the requirement to ACLU callers.

Just a third of the departments in the survey clearly stated that immigration authorities would not be called against a civilian complainant. More than half did not answer or expressed some degree of uncertainty and 15 percent said they would definitely report a complainant to immigration authorities.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.