CIVILIAN REVIEW OF POLICE: THE SAN FRANCISCO EXPERIENCE
By Mary C. Dunlap,
Director of San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints

As Director of the Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) in San Francisco since May 1996, I have noticed a sharp increase in the past couple of years of contacts asking about our work and structure.  These contacts usually come from both civilian and police groups exploring whether, and (much more often) how, to establish effective mechanisms of civilian oversight of police, in a wide range of contexts such as municipal law enforcement, institutional police, security forces.  Between mid-1996 and mid-2000, our office has received hundreds of phone calls, letters and emails, as well as in-person visits, including delegations from cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago and Washington D.C., and the Republic of Georgia, the City of Taipei in Taiwan, the nations of Senegal, South Africa, and India, all seeking answers to the question: "How do you do what you do, and, again, exactly what is it that you do?" 

This pervasive quest for information, experience, designs and perspectives about civilian oversight of law enforcement is international in scope, passionate in intensity, and ongoing in nature.  A forthcoming study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and directed by researcher Peter Finn, examining civilian review mechanisms in 10 U.S. cities, cannot be issued soon enough.  I understand that Mr. Finn's mailing list is growing longer by the minute. The much awaited report is currently undergoing its final edit before publication by the U.S. Government Printing Office.  That report seeks to answer the question: "How are U.S. cities that have civilian oversight doing the job?"

Police, like every other professional group, can act from gross self-interest, which can be harmful if not lethal to    others.  Police officers confront an array of obstacles to effective self-policing: (1) The "code of silence" may grow from professional solidarity but can cause closing of ranks and toxic insularity against the  public interest; (2) Police are scapegoated and targeted for hostility and violence by some members of society, and some officers become reactive and retaliatory for being blamed for the actions of other officers; (3) A profession whose tools include powers of arrest and physical weapons, along with powers of mediation and the non-violent "weapon" of "verbal judo", can attract those who bully and self-aggrandize alongside heroic officers; (4) Police forces can be misused by corrupt or      dysfunctional people in power, inside and outside police departments, to inflict harm, discriminate, punish personal enemies or cater to particular interest groups, rather than being guided by the law enforcement credo to "protect and serve" all members of the public. 

Moreover, where a society's laws and criminal justice system reflect and practice biases and prejudices (such as shown by a recently published study of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency that African-American and Latino juveniles receive harsher penalties compared with whites committing similar offenses in the U.S. criminal system), police officers can become instruments of societal discrimination without any invidious individual intent or even group consciousness.  Current concerns about racial profiling and the outcry against officer-involved beatings and shootings that appear in whole or part to be racially motivated form additional reasons for every city and town to construct and provide a proper mechanism of civilian accountability for police.  Methods, structures and costs will vary (San Francisco has 31+ staff and an annual budget of $2.5 million devoted to the OCC's mission, for example, while some cities depend upon small groups of volunteers), but a mechanism must be available.

Even as it is crucial for police to self-police within any system, self-policing is insufficient to accomplish the kind and degree of accountability to the public that is healthiest and most complete.  Police, no less than lawyers, doctors, farmers, teachers, or any other occupational group, need mechanisms to receive and be responsive to the feedback, complaints, and criticisms of those served.  Unchecked police authority, aloof from careful examination of the experience of those on the receiving end of police actions, risks not just interpersonal injustice but the establishment of tyranny.

San Francisco's OCC has re-dedicated itself in recent years to trying to be part of a self-examining, model-building solution to this universal need, even as we struggle with the all-too-real and sometimes very frustrating (where not profoundly disappointing and infuriating) barriers to the fulfillment of OCC's mission in San Francisco.  OCC's mission consists of accountability of every sworn member of the San Francisco Police Department to all of the people in the city and county, via a system of    formal, written civilian complaints,  professional and objective civilian investigation, and active police participation through a combination of cooperation and legal compulsion.

Among the barriers that OCC has begun to surmount in recent years are maintenance of a well-paid, well-trained and mission-driven workforce of professional investigators and investigative supervisors/management, attorneys, administrative personnel, and policy staff enjoying high morale and a sense of pride in work.  However, this high quality staff is hard to keep in an environment in which the OCC is regularly attacked by numerous police union representatives, civilian critics, political intermeddlers, embarrassed or vindictive officers, and an array of journalists, for moving too slowly, moving too quickly, not completing investigations rapidly enough, not being thorough enough, not being progressive enough, being too progressive, sustaining cases, not sustaining cases, and so on. 

At OCC, we have come to understand that, if we do our job right, we will probably displease almost everyone involved much of the time.  What is most important is to keep basic principles foremost, and forego popularity or efforts to please others: if we are unimpeachably fair, doggedly thorough, and enthusiastically open and responsive to valid, good faith criticism and self-examination, then the rest be damned.

However, it is especially difficult to traverse the constant flood of negative impressions when OCC's work, and the underlying reasons for its conclusions in almost all cases, cannot be presented publicly, nor in most cases even to the civilian complainants, due to the confidentiality of records of civilian complaints under Penal Code section 832.7.  The only cases OCC investigates that ultimately become public in detail are the  small number (probably not more than 10-12 cases each year, on the average) that result in filing of charges of serious misconduct presented publicly before the SF Police Commission, where the Chief of Police has approved the charges and is represented by OCC's attorneys seeking discipline greater than a 10-day suspension against a named officer.

The public rarely knows the outcome of the bulk of the 1000 or more cases closed each year that the OCC makes painstaking professional efforts to investigate fully and fairly.  If I could change this mandated confidentiality of California law addressing civilian complaints about police misconduct, at least as it governs agencies like San Francisco's OCC, I would do so.  I would legislate openness of the complaint files to the public, so that officers who have engaged in wrongdoing will be known and recognizable, that officers who have been exonerated will be known and recognizable, and, that the nature and quality of the work of the OCC would be accessible to the agency's multitude of critics as well as to those who do not know what to believe about our work.  I do not believe that police (or any other group's) accountability to the public can thrive in secrecy from the public. 

Meanwhile, as long as Penal Code Section 832.7 provides the type and degree of confidentiality as to officer records that it does, SF's OCC will rigorously and diligently protect the confidentiality of officer records.  Those who work at OCC know that the utmost respect for due process to officers and for officers' legal rights, as defined by the Constitutions and state laws, is a key ingredient to OCC's respectability and effectiveness.  Any system that seeks to correct the problem of officer misconduct by short-circuiting officers' protections would and should fail.  Sacramento, however, needs to right the imbalance as to the public's lack of knowledge about police misconduct cases.  Every survey done on this issue shows that the public does not want police disciplinary records hidden, and wants police disciplinary hearings to be accessible to the public.  Civilian accountability probably cannot ever be truly effective if police departments remain free to "deep-six" confirmed cases of officer misconduct, for any reason "buddy justice" and favoritism, fear of embarrassment, fear of officer or civilian suits against police departments, resistance to the public's need for greater inclusion in policing decisions.

For more details about OCC and its operations in particular, and to read our 1998 and 1999 annual reports including the approximately two dozen policy recommendations made by OCC during 1998-1999 to improve SF Police Department functioning, please visit our website: www.ci.sf.ca.us/occ.

OCC Director Mary C. Dunlap is a longtime member of the State Bar of California (1972-date), and an experienced civil rights attorney.  She co-founded Equal Rights Advocates, Inc., one of the nation's longest-lasting women's rights firms, in 1974, and twice argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, once for the right of pregnant schoolteachers to be free of compulsory leaves, and once for the right of gay/lesbian/bi-sexual/transgendered persons to call their international event in 1982 the "Gay Olympics".  She has been a visiting law professor at several schools over the years, including teaching the first sexual orientation and law classes at Stanford Law School '88 and University of Michigan Law School '94.