Paul Detrick
April 5, 2014
The April 2014 Reason-Rupe poll found that half of Americans think law enforcement officers are not held accountable for misconduct. That number rises to 64 percent for Hispanics and 66 percent for African Americans.
Do you think police officers are generally held accountable for misconduct, or not?
• Yes: 46 percent
• No: 50 percent
• Don’t know: 4 percent
Police misconduct is reviewed through internal affairs investigations, a process that has officers investigating other officers. In February 2013, Los Angeles Police Department officer Sunil Dutta wrote in the Washington Post about his time working as an internal affairs investigator. Dutta criticized the process, saying that it didn’t help a community’s perception of the police and didn’t help officers either:
[When] I interviewed community members who had filed complaints against officers, I was disappointed to learn that, despite my reassurances and best efforts to conduct impartial inquiries, many complainants believed that a fair investigation was simply not possible. Nor do misconduct investigations satisfy a skeptical public. If an officer is exonerated, the community often believes that malfeasance is being covered up.