Improving Sfpd’s Cooperation with the Office of Civilian Complaints:

Although the Chief of Police has imposed responsibility on Commanding Officers to ensure that personnel under their command promptly serve OCC notices, track the officer’s response, and ensure that MRFS are returned to OCC within the specified time limits, insufficient emphasis has been placed on the importance of doing so. The consequence of this lack of emphasis is investigative delays. 5

SFPD tolerates officer failure to comply with the General Order concerning prompt return of MRFs. It does not impose discipline for such failures promptly and consistently, and thus SFPD internal practices provide no incentive for officers to comply with an OCC investigation.

SFPD is not complying with the Charter mandate that it provide full cooperation and assistance to OCC in the investigations of citizen complaints (Charter section 4.127).

Delays in OCC investigations are caused in part by delays in prompt receipt of needed documents from SFPD. These delays contribute to the eventual dismissal of valid citizen complaints because the investigation could not be concluded within one year (Section 3304(d)).

In some cases, an ongoing SFPD crime investigation might be affected if an OCC investigator were to interview a witness and disclose SFPD investigative material, and that is a legitimate concern. However, many categories of documents that OCC sometimes needs in the course of an investigation of a citizen complaint do not present that threat and can be routinely – and promptly – released to OCC. For example, search and arrest warrants, ballistic reports, forensic reports, crime scene photographs, diagrams, DMV traffic accident report forms and suspension orders, reports of Vehicle Code violations (such as driving without a license or with suspended or revoked license) appear to fall within this category.

Prompt, unbiased, and thorough investigation of civilian complaints of improper conduct by on-duty law enforcement officers, and the sure and swift imposition of appropriate sanctions, are crucial to public confidence in and cooperation with peace officers. When meritorious complaints do not result in imposition of discipline, public confidence in its police force and the disciplinary process is eroded.

The dismissal of sustained, presumably meritorious, civilian complaints for untimeliness is due in part to MCD’s handling of OCC’s requests for documents and of sustained complaints.

Although SFPD recognizes the importance of the civilian complaint process, SFPD and the MCD unit have not made and are reluctant to make changes in their procedures that would avoid the need to dismiss many sustained complaints for untimeliness. 10

The failure to apply apparently applicable exceptions to the statutory one-year time limit results in unnecessary dismissals of meritorious complaints and to a consequent erosion of public confidence in the civilian complaint process.

The failure of MCD to generate for itself and the Chief of Police a monthly list of OCC sustained complaints pending in MCD and/or before the Chief for action, with the one-year time limit highlighted, might contribute to inadvertent or intentional delays in acting on those complaints within the time limits, leading to their dismissal.

OCC must maintain its independence from SFPD if the public is to have confidence in the impartiality of its investigations. Nonetheless, cooperation and mutual trust between OCC management and MCD in the handling of sustained complaints are essential to their shared goal of maintaining public confidence in SFPD officers. Any adversarial relationship between OCC and MCD might interfere with the prompt, impartial process of sustained complaints.