Low police complaints mask discontent with Dallas department
DALLAS (AP) — At a time of high tensions between police and the public, the Dallas Police Department would seem to be a success story: While some other bigcity departments draw thousands of citizen complaints every year, the nation’s eighth-largest gets only a fraction of that number.
In fact, the department received a mere 221 complaints in 2016 and 183 for the first 11 months of 2017 — stunningly low numbers for a metropolis of 1.3 million people patrolled by about 3,300 officers.
But a closer look suggests that the apparent success may stem from the complaint system itself, which makes it so hard for people to complain that many do not try or give up. Those who persist confront a host of built-in obstacles, including vague or nonexistent instructions, confusion about complaint forms, incorrect phone numbers and a mysterious investigation process where decisions often go unannounced and are difficult to appeal.
“The process doesn’t seem to be clear or open,” said Sam Walker, a professor emeritus in criminal justice at the University of Nebraska who has written several books on police accountability. He concluded that Dallas’ suspiciously low complaint rate is “unacceptable” but not surprising.
Providing “open and accessible” police complaint systems has been standard since the early 1980s, Walker said.
“To me, being able to file a complaint is a First Amendment right, to tell someone their perception of what happened,” he said.
Many of the complaints happened before Police Chief U. Renee Hall took over in September, but Hall’s chief of staff says she has developed a strategic plan that will be released in the next few weeks that will address some of the accountability concerns.
Frustration with the complaint system intensified in recent months, and the police chief met publicly with citizens who described being blocked from filing complaints and having their grievances dismissed without being notified. Some reported that they did not bother to file complaints because the system seemed so stacked against them.
In 2014, Maria De Jesus Garza tried to file a complaint against an officer who ticketed her for having trash cans that obstructed traffic. The officer came back weekly for three months, she said, and knocked her cans over with his car to make a point.
“I realized this wasn’t extreme,” she said. “But I decided that I needed to report it.”
Other officers attempted to dissuade her. One said the allegations were not enough to pursue a complaint. “He told me, ‘I don’t think you understand what you are doing.’”
Over the span of three hours, three officers tried to talk her out of the complaint before telling her the office was out of complaint forms, Garza said.
The Dallas department has no complaint forms. The department’s internal affairs division confirmed to The Associated Press in January that it instead asks people to write their account on a blank sheet of paper and sign it.
Neither the department’s website nor a pamphlet that is supposed to be available to the public offer instructions on the complaint process.