Before this summer’s highly criticized clashes between San Jose police and demonstrators during protests over police brutality and racial injustice, citizen complaints against officers were on the downswing, having dropped in 2019 to its lowest point in at least six years, according to a new report by San Jose’s Office of the Independent Police Auditor.
The city-appointed civilian watchdog agency tallied 216 complaints against police last year, with allegations ranging from excessive uses of force to unwarranted searches and detainment to procedural violations, which accounted for the lion’s share of filed grievances. Complaints last year were down 36% from 2014.
Still, Shivaun Nurre, the city’s independent police auditor, sees room for improvement — most notably in the training of recruits, police department culture and interpretation of use of force.
While these findings predate the police department’s response to protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the concerns raised by Nurre and her team take on a new resonance in the midst of a nationwide reckoning of police reform and accountability efforts.
Just as Nurre last year recommended that the police department track officers pointing their guns at someone as use of force incidents, this year she wants to see them also log officers who hit suspects with their vehicles.
Currently, if officers injure someone or cause damage with their police vehicle beyond what’s reasonably expected, such incidents are documented as vehicle collisions.
“I think classifying this type of conduct as an accident sets a mindset that the officer didn’t intend something, and I don’t think that’s really reflective of the circumstances,” Nurre said.
One case highlighted in the report detailed officers’ response to a call about two security guards involved in a confrontation with two men. When officers arrived at the scene, the suspects ran onto a nearby dirt trail, and one officer followed in his vehicle. After unsuccessfully trying to use his vehicle several times to block the suspects’ path, a patrol car collided with one of the suspects and ran him over, breaking his tibia, pelvis and ankle.
An internal investigation found the officer did not intend to hit the suspect so deemed the collision accidental and an allegation of excessive force unfounded. After the independent police auditor appealed the decision to the police chief, the department re-opened its investigation, analyzed it as a force allegation and exonerated the officer.
In 2019, Nurre’s office disagreed with the findings of six investigations it audited — or just 4%.
Overall, only 3% of the citizen complaints filed against police officers in 2019 were deemed “sustained” after an Internal Affairs investigation, meaning the officers committed the reported misconduct. Internally generated misconduct complaints filed by officers or employees within the department were substantiated by police investigators at a much higher rate.
In 2019, the department sustained 80 of the 141 internal misconduct allegations — or 57%, which is slightly lower than the five-year average of 64%. The vast majority of those were procedural violations or accusations that fall into the broad category of “conduct unbecoming of an officer.”
Officers accused their colleagues of harassment five times last year and two of the complaints were sustained. In the case of both internal allegations and citizen complaints, the department did not sustain any use-of-force misconduct or discrimination complaints.
While reviewing citizen complaints over the past few years, Nurre’s office noticed a pattern of red flags raised about the police department’s Field Training Program, where new recruits are assigned to experienced “field training officers” for training and evaluation during their first few months on the job.
In several instances, the field training officers — expected to provide an exemplary model for younger officers — taught recruits to issue questionable citations, instructed them to conduct improper pat-down searches and made inappropriate comments to detainees in front of the recruits, according to the report.
Nurre’s office also found that a handful of the officers tasked with training recruits also had a considerable number of citizen complaints lodged against them. One field training officer had 14 complaints filed against him in the past six years and another had seven complaints — three of which were sustained.
To ensure the program is effective and teaching the right lessons to recruits, Nurre says the department needs to reassess who is qualified to serve as a field training officer, how they are trained and how their performance is evaluated.
“That phase of a young officer’s tenure in the department can really mold their mindset of the department and how to be a good officer,” Nurre said. “The culture of the department is transmitted to the recruit by the Field Training Officer, and I think we need to be mindful of which officers we have serving as that role model.”
The San Jose City Council is scheduled to discuss the report at its meeting Tuesday.
Paul Kelly, president of the Police Officers Association, said the drop in citizen complaints cited in the report “validates our officers’ success at de-escalating volatile situations and the thoroughness, objectivity and fairness of Internal Affairs Investigations conducted into citizen complaints of officer misconduct.”
“These facts certainly don’t support the calls by some for the disbanding of the Internal Affairs Unit, that looks more and more like a solution in search of a problem,” he said in a statement, adding that he has “no objection to exploring the appropriate category to place incidents involving police cars into.”
As for the recruiting program, he added, “We will continue to participate in continuously improving how we train recruits and reinforce the values, integrity, and best police practices in them to ensure successful police and community outcomes.”
