There’s already a process in place for citizens to make complaints against police officers, but VIPD top brass announced Wednesday that a new system currently in the works is going to make sure those claims are investigated properly.
"We’ll now be able to hold individuals accountable for the process going through with safeguards at all levels," Police Commissioner Novelle Francis said at a press conference Wednesday.
A mandate for implementing the new complaint process is included in the joint consent decree between VIPD and the U.S. Department of Justice, which has been in effect for the about the past 18 months. Francis said some sections of the decree do have specific timelines for implementation, while others will be phased in over a five-year period.
VIPD hopes to have most everything implemented within three years, starting with Phase I of the complaint process, which centers on a public education campaign, he added. Along with brochures written in English, Spanish and French patois, the department will be rolling out a series of public service announcements (PSAs) and posting placards explaining the new system throughout various government agencies. The PSAs premiered after Wednesday’s conference.
According to Francis, residents wishing to file a complaint against a VIPD employee, whether uniformed or civilian, can fill out complaint forms that will be available in all command zones, libraries and various government agencies territory-wide. Completed forms can then be deposited into what Francis said is a secured lockbox, which will be handled only by members of VIPD’s Internal Affairs division.
Residents can also call the department’s new complaint hotline at 1-877-391-7376.
Compliment forms, where residents can also detail positive experiences with officers, are also available, Francis said.
He explained that the next step of the process entails coming up with a policy that "spells out" how the complaints will be investigated, specific deadlines for addressing them, officer training procedures and how to deal with the outcomes of investigations. A draft of the policy has been drawn up, but still needs to be "tweaked" and submitted to the U.S. Justice Department before it can go into effect, Francis said.
Interestingly, Francis said one of the issues being hashed out in the process of preparing the policy statement is the proscribed 50-day window for investigating complaints against officers, which is currently laid out in the officers’ collective bargaining agreements.
"This is unheard of elsewhere and is one of the issues that’s been raised by the monitors," he said. "We’re very tight with the deadlines and that’s perhaps something we’re going to talk to Collective Bargaining about."
Francis said alternatives might be finding a way to put an officer on suspension with or without pay or putting them on desk duty until a complaint is resolved.
As an aside, Francis also said a draft of the department’s proposed use-of-force policy is now pending approval before the Justice Department.
