Cissy
11-24-2015, 09:52 AM
In a*Boston Globe*story*published Monday about police officers who have provoked a large number of complaints from civilians, a retired sergeant is quoted as saying that, “If you’re not getting complaints, you’re not working.”
Kraft’s explanation for his record: “I did my job.” People who work for civilian complaint review boards—the sometimes independent,*often toothless*bodies that investigate complaints against police officers—hear this kind of thing all the time. It is an insidious idea, and not only because it equates good police work with the kind of aggressiveness that leaves people feeling violated and angry, but because it besmirches many officers who do their jobs perfectly well and don’t ever hear complaints about their methods.
That’s most police officers, by the way. While the Boston Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel doesn’t have complaint data broken down by individual officer, the equivalent body in New York does.*In a recently published report covering the period of Jan. 2014 through June 2015, New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board found that misconduct complaints “are driven by a small percentage of the police force.” During that time span, just 10 percent of the NYPD’s nearly 40,000 officers were responsible for 78 percent of the 6,920 misconduct claims the board received. Just 1 percent of officers were responsible for about a fifth of all complaints. Meanwhile, 86 percent of NYPD officers did not receive even a single misconduct complaint.* *
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/11/boston_police_department_cops_rack_up_dozens_of_ci vilian_complaints.html
Kraft’s explanation for his record: “I did my job.” People who work for civilian complaint review boards—the sometimes independent,*often toothless*bodies that investigate complaints against police officers—hear this kind of thing all the time. It is an insidious idea, and not only because it equates good police work with the kind of aggressiveness that leaves people feeling violated and angry, but because it besmirches many officers who do their jobs perfectly well and don’t ever hear complaints about their methods.
That’s most police officers, by the way. While the Boston Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel doesn’t have complaint data broken down by individual officer, the equivalent body in New York does.*In a recently published report covering the period of Jan. 2014 through June 2015, New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board found that misconduct complaints “are driven by a small percentage of the police force.” During that time span, just 10 percent of the NYPD’s nearly 40,000 officers were responsible for 78 percent of the 6,920 misconduct claims the board received. Just 1 percent of officers were responsible for about a fifth of all complaints. Meanwhile, 86 percent of NYPD officers did not receive even a single misconduct complaint.* *
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/11/boston_police_department_cops_rack_up_dozens_of_ci vilian_complaints.html