7 - Police Complaints

7a) What are Police Complaints?

Police complaints are formal complaints that can be made by any member of the public against officers that are being accused of performing misconduct and representing the PLPD in a negative light. These complaints are investigated by the Internal Affairs division and outcomes of police complaints are decided by the Complaint Committee.

7b) Submitting a Police Complaint

Police complaints can be made by following this link: https://plpd.online/complain.

When following this link, you will be greeted with a FAQ that answers commonly asked questions about the process of making a complaint and how your complaint will be handled by the investigating officer(s) assigned to your complaint.

Once the FAQ has been read and you have proceeded to the next step, you will then be able to search for the officer you wish to make the complaint by using the following options below: 

After finding the officer you wish to make the complaint against, you will then need to write up in-detail what happened in the incident; the location of the incident; date and time of when the incident occured; what you are accusing the officer of and state any witnesses who may have witnessed the accusations against the officer. (if applicable). The write-up is done in the following boxes below:

When creating a complaint, you are given the option to provide your name to the investigating officer(s) of the complaint or you have the option to remain anonymous if you do not want your identity to be revealed. Most importantly when submitting a complaint is including evidence to reinforce your accusations. Providing evidence is requried in order for you to submit a police complaint otherwise the complaint is highly likely to be closed for a lack of evidence to prove the allegations. Video evidence is the most preferred form of evidence, however witnesses, screenshots, etc can be used as evidence but may not be enough evidence to convict the officer you are making the complaint against. 

Additionally, demo files are not accepted as valid evidence for a number of reasons:

However you are able to record the demo file into a video format with the demo ESP enabled which can be submitted as valid evidence. For additional information, please refer to this guide: https://help.perpheads.com/page/demos

Once you have provided all the necessary details and evidence in your complaint, you are then able submit the complaint. From there, Internal Affairs command will assign either one or two investigating officers to handle with your complaint and will contact you when needed, such as asking you to comment on the officer's statement, etc.. You are also able to write to the investigators to address queries or concerns that you may have regarding your complaint.

7c) Rights of the Defendant

As a defendant of a police complaint, you will receive a statement request from the investigator(s) handling the complaint. This is likely to be the only time you will be contacted by the investigator(s) unless there are special circumstances. (e.g: receiving a second statement request, receiving a hearing request, etc.) Regardless, as a defendant you do have rights to defend yourself from the accusations being made against you. These are as follows:

7d) Final Report & Complaint Outcomes

Once the investigating officer(s) have collected all the necessary pieces of information and evidence from the complainant and defendant, they will proceed to write up a final report. A final report contains a summary of the complaint and a verdict on what should happen to the complaint as a recommendation for the Complaint Committee to take into consideration. Once the Complaint Committee has reviewed the complaint and the investigator's final report, they will vote on a final decision as to what will happen to the accussed officer.

A complaint will receive one of four possible outcomes:

    -The investigation conclusively found that the alleged act(s) did not occur.

-The alleged act(s) occurred, but was justified, legal and/or proper.

-The investigation produced insufficient information/evidence to prove or disprove the allegation.

-The employee committed all or part of the alleged acts of misconduct or poor service.

If a complaint's outcome is sustained, then one of the following disciplinary actions will be issued against the officer:

However, if the Complaint Committee feels that one of the following disciplinary actions above is unsuitable as an action to be taken against an officer, the Complaint Committee may issue a corrective action which are designed to help the officer improve and learn from their previous actions.

One of the following corrective actions may be issued by the Complaint Committee:

7e) What is the Complaint Committee?

The Complaint Committee is not a part of Internal Affairs, but is however still involved in the process a complaint goes through. The committee goes through all complaints and decides with, help from the final report, the outcome of every complaint.

7f) Appealing Disciplinary Action

DISPUTING DISCIPLINARY ACTION

If you have been issued disciplinary action as a result of a police complaint against you and you feel that the disciplinary action is unjust or excessive, you are able to make a dispute against it.

As stated in the Disciplinary Actions & Appeals policy, there are four grounds you can submit a dispute on:

When disputing disciplinary action, you are only able to dispute within 30 days of receiving the disciplinary action. Once this period has passed, you are unable to dispute. The exception to this rule however, is when you are providing new evidence that has not been previously seen or used in the investigation. If you are unsucessful in disputing the disciplinary action, you cannot dispute it again unless you are providing new evidence. 

Once you have determined on what grounds you want to dispute the disciplinary action on, you will need to make a helpdesk ticket to Professional Standards Department  (if you are unable to send it to them, send the ticket to Human Resources who will redirect it to them) stating the grounds you are disputing on and include an explanation as to why you feel the disciplinary action is unjust/excessive. If you are unsure about this process or are not comfortable with proceeding with it by yourself, you are able to have another officer of a higher-rank represent you, for example: your Section Supervisor.

From there, the Head of Professional Standards will review your dispute impartially and will decide to either review the disciplinary action taken against you and determine if the disciplinary action is justified or they will re-open and re-investigate the complaint.

APPEALING WRITTEN WARNINGS

After 90 days have passed since receiving a Written Warning disciplinary action, you are able to appeal to the Office of Professional Standards via a helpdesk ticket to have the Written Warning removed from your record. When writing this appeal, it is best practice to apologise for the actions that resulted in you receiving the Written Warning; why you wish for it to be removed and how you have improved since.