You know that the job of a police officer is a very tough job. It is something that everyone is not cut out to do. In matter of fact there are some people who are on the job right now that should not be a police officer. Now why would I say something like that? A police officer has formidable power to enforce the law. He/she works with truly little supervision most of the time. They have life/death decisions to make in a few seconds at times. At times you can recover substantial amounts of drugs of drug money. It can be a big temptation to someone with money needs or those that have ethical issues. Now this is where IAD or Internal Affairs Division comes into play. Most police officers do not like IAD or the people that work there. But it is a very necessary function within the police department and helps to keep many police officers honest.
I worked a few years in IAD as a sergeant, lieutenant, and captain before leaving. Now, unbelievably IAD is especially important for the officers and for citizens who file complaints. If an officer is innocent of the complaint, we will find out most of the time and clear him/her. If it is a valid complaint, then the officer will be held accountable for his/her actions. You need good honest police officers to work this unit. By this I mean you cannot have police officers in this unit that want to cover up the wrong doings of officers. I have had officers/sergeants/detectives that have tried to write off the complaints coming in on officers. They try to draft reports that state the officer did not do anything wrong or we cannot prove one way or the other on the complaint. We have rules that if you know the officer or are friends with him you cannot investigate their complaint.
In IAD we investigate both rule violations plus criminal allegations. A rule violation would be the officer was rude to me or cursed at me. The criminal allegation would be the officer hit or battered me for no reason. One detective went out with another detective to investigate a complaint of an officer battering a suspect. The senior detective told me later he was upset with his partner’s behavior. I asked what occurred when they went out on the complaint? He said his partner asked the complainant why you are trying to hurt this officer don’t you know he has a wife and kids. He pulled him to the side and told him never to do that again or I would tell the captain next time. This is what I was referring to earlier when I talked about police officers trying to cover for each other. The same thing goes on also with rule violations. That is why you must be incredibly careful about who you assign to IAD. Supervisors read over the reports and ask detailed questions when the investigations are turned in. I will talk more about IAD investigations in the near future.