I’m talking about above and beyond groups like internal affairs for complaining about individual patrol officers. Supposedly police culture allows far more leeway for abuse when the higher ups are ok with it, which would mean chiefs, captains, lieutenants, etc. who are ok with abuse lead to a police department that is ok with abuse. When those higher ups believe in professional and respectful policing, that changes the culture in a top down way and the patrol officers represent that change.
Example, the Albuquerquepolice kill about the same number of people as the NYPD, despite NYPD having 34x more officers. Prince George’s county in Maryland also supposedly has a very abusive police force compared to other local regions. The entire police culture in a city or county could be corrupt and prone to abuse of citizens, who do citizens complain to when that happens?
Is it the city council, the mayor, an alderman, or someone else? Recall election for the D.A. and prosecutor if they refuse to press charges for brutality?
The reason I ask is because I just read about some police abuses in a fairly liberal, well educated city (not mine) which to me sounds odd. You’d assume people like that would know who to complain to to change things if they felt the police were overstepping their bounds. When Kelly Thomas was beaten to death by police, people had a recall election for the city council members they felt did not take the issue seriously. But what other political avenues are there for people on the local level? Luckily where I live the cops aren’t that bad.
You might bring the attention to your local or regional elected representatives in the state legislature. The effectiveness of this could depend a lot on said representatives’ political leanings, or perhaps your perceptions of their leanings. If they’re all gung-ho pro-cop all the way, they might not be much help.
There is no uniform structure for local government in the United States (or even with a state) so the responsibility of a given official or body will vary in each place. It might be any of those, it might be a sheriff, it might be a commission that answers to an elected official or body, etc.
Or a regularly-scheduled election. Not all places have recalls.
But it’s going to be hard, whatever you choose. There is no magic reform button. You can lose a political fight even if you’re right, and even well-educated people might tire of trying.
I would consider going to the District Attorney’s office. While they would probably turn to the State Police for investigation, I believe in most states the matter would finally end up before them.
In the UK, we have the Independent Police Complaints Commission, a national body, independent of the police and government, which handles complaints about the Police and sets standards about how Police should handle complaints. Is there no similar body in the US?
I am not a lawyer so these are just my untutored observations.
It is possible for it to be a federal offense but not probable. There would have to be good evidence of abuse of civil rights of a protected class. Not easy to prove and the feds usually only try when all other avenues have failed. The OP is asking what other avenues exist.
Re the OP, in general in the US the states are the sovereign entities. The obvious other sovereign entity is the federal government but that isn’t the answer to the OPs question. Any government inside a state exists because the state set them up and defined their roles. If there are problems with a local government, the buck stops with the state government. One shouldn’t assume the state police/troopers/patrol has a role in investigating local police-they may have but only if the state has assigned them the role. The state Attorney General is the logical first place to go given that is a body defined in the state constitution (I assume it is so defined in all state constitutions. I can’t find a constitution where it isn’t). Anyway, the important point is that all local governments, from the city of New York to a local school board in Utah, are creations of the state government and the state has ultimate authority and responsibility for them.
In my state the State Department of Justice would take the complaint and use the State Bureau of Investigation to, well, investigate. In fact this has happened recently.
A more simple answer might be to use the press. So long as you can convince them that you have enough evidence, they might well be prepared to force the issue by publishing whatever the malfeasance is.
These are bodies established to review individual cases of alleged misconduct. As I read it, the OP is asking who has political oversight authority over broader questions of police management and policy. In the UK, that would presumably be the Home Office, while in the US, as others have suggested, it would be the local government.
Yes but what if there are gray areas and the local police culture allows for more abuse than the citizens are comfortable with?
Ie due to higher ups being OK with brutality and a prosecutor that refuses to press charges, local police are able to engage in levels of abuse that would get them fired or criminally charged with a different local police force?
Albuquerque resident checking in. The US Dept. of Justice is involved. The jurisdiction is based on civil rights protections…equal protection clause I think.
Beyond that there are organized protests to draw attention to the issue. Trigger happy is only part of the issue. The police were using the evidence room like it was Costco, except everything was free. It has been a couple of decades, but there was a group of police officers robbing banks for a while (google Albuquerque Ninja bank robbers…yes, they dressed as a ninja, to make it look like it was one individual)
You can complain to your county sheriff’s department, state police, district attorney, or state attorney general. Local police departments have been “closed down” by state departments of justice in the past because they were not doing their jobs.
If they are violating federal crimes, then FBI, US Department of Justice.
The highest law enforcement official in the state is the Attorney General. Usually issues don’t have to get to the federal level, they can be handled at the state or county level. Until you get to the U.S. Attorney General who only has the president to answer to, it’s pretty clear what the chain of command is. Of course I’m using chain of command loosely since the different layers don’t have operational control of lower departments but they do have jurisdiction over those agencies.
It’s a tough situation. The town where I lived in New York had a local police dept. that grew out of a bone headed move by the town supervisor (mayor). Once someone is made a police chief in New York towns he can’t be removed by the town government. It’s supposed to be protection against local corruption but it allows the police to become corrupt themselves, or in this case mostly incompetent. State laws will prevail but you generally need to elevate the matter to the state level to deal with it. The town eventually managed to dissolve the police department altogether after the chief retired. It was a ridiculous situation, there were 3 state police barracks inside the town, the town encompassed a city with a complete police departments, and there were also two villages with their police departments inside the town.
I agree, the stereotype of Albuquerque is street gangs running wild, rude people on the sidewalk, muggings in the street. It is like mad max with more water.