By Dave Collins
lawmakers are considering
imposing new requirements on police departments statewide on how they receive
and investigate complaints from residents alleging misconduct by officers.
Legislators have drafted a bill
that they say is in response to several police departments not accepting or
investigating complaints about inappropriate behavior by officers. The
Judiciary Committee approved the bill last week, and it awaits action in the
House and Senate.
The committee singled out East
Haven police for not accepting complaints about racial profiling. Such
complaints led to a U.S. Justice Department investigation that began in 2009
and found a pattern of discrimination and biased policing in East Haven, particularly
against Latinos. The probe led to four town officers being sentenced to prison
and police being required to make improvements as part of a 2012 consent
decree.
A federal report earlier this
year said East Haven had made “remarkable” progress in fixing the problems and
commended Police Chief Brent Larrabee and his management team.
Larrabee, who became chief in
2012, said Monday that he disagrees with the committee’s characterization of
his department, calling it too broad. He said most town officers were never
accused of wrongdoing in the federal investigation.
He also took issue with the
committee saying in a report that bill was partly in response to “East Haven
Police Department’s profiling of residents and not accepting their complaints.”
“I’m not sure where they’re
coming up with that information, other than the indictment (of the four
officers),” Larrabee said. “That certainly has not been the practice or the
policy of the department.”
State Rep. Toni Walker, D-New
Haven, co-sponsored the bill.
Andrew Schneider, executive
director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, told the
Judiciary Committee in February that Connecticut needs statewide standards for
how police departments accept and investigate complaints.
“In the past year, the ACLU of
Connecticut has heard from many people who had trouble filing complaints about
police misconduct with police departments in Connecticut,” Schneider said.
The ACLU said a study it did in
2012 found that many police departments had barriers to accepting police
misconduct complaints from residents.
“Some departments don’t make
complaint forms available to the public,” Schneider said. “Most refuse to
accept anonymous complaints and many impose time limits on receiving complaints
and many require sworn statements and threaten criminal prosecution or a civil
lawsuit for false statements.”
The bill would require the
state Police Officer Standards and Training Council, which runs the Connecticut
Police Academy in Meriden, to develop and implement a policy on how police
departments should handle complaints alleging misconduct by officers. It also
would require police departments to implement that policy, or a similar one
that meets standards spelled out in the bill.
The council would have to
consider whether to allow anonymous complaints and whether to include
protections for people who file complaints, under the bill.
Cromwell Police Chief Anthony
Salvatore, secretary and treasurer for the Connecticut Police Chiefs
Association, told the Judiciary Committee that the association doesn’t oppose
the bill.
