The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners is weighing new accountability measures for its citizen complaint policy, months after adopting revisions that gutted some key requirements.

The BOPC initially approved substantial changes to the police department’s citizen complaints policy on May 15, which reduced the policy from 18 pages to 4 and rolled back several key requirements, including removing an appeals process and a 90-day window to complete investigations. 

A new version of the policy, up for a vote of the full board on Thursday, reintroduces some of the language slashed from the former policy and adds new requirements. 

The department’s policy establishes requirements for when a citizen wishes to file a complaint against a Detroit police officer and regulates how complaints should be referred, depending on the nature of the allegations.

The policy debate comes as Detroit voters prepare to elect a new slate of BOPC members on Nov. 4. 

For years, the BOPC has grappled with a backlog of citizen complaints, staffing issues and questions of transparency. 

There was minimal discussion this spring when the BOPC unanimously approved the initial changes to its complaint policy. After BridgeDetroit inquired about the board’s decision, some commissioners began advocating to restore some sections of the policy and add further requirements. 

Commissioner and former board chair Darryl Woods and Commissioner Linda Bernard are among the members who told BridgeDetroit they want to reinstate some previous provisions despite voting to reduce the policy in May. Neither specified why they voted in favor of the spring changes. 

BridgeDetroit reached out to all commissioners for comment about their initial vote in support of the policy. Commissioner Ricardo Moore didn’t recall his reasons for voting in favor of the policy changes, and noted it was approved four months ago. No other commissioners responded, verbally or in writing. 

The latest version of the complaint policy calls for translation services for citizens who aren’t proficient in English and requires Detroit police supervisors to record the complaint intake process on their body-worn cameras. 

The policy also specifies that all criminal and non-criminal complaints against police officers, whether serious force is used, be recorded in the department’s Management Awareness System, a Detroit Police Department database that tracks the work performance of officers. 

The board’s chief investigator has cited “signs of progress” over the past year in addressing the backlog of citizen complaints against police. That includes a doubled workforce and technology and process improvements. Meanwhile, the backlog ballooned to 2,200 complaints by May. Some board members say the efforts to close cases faster have only provided “small glimmers of hope.”

OCI investigated and closed 1,979 complaints so far this year, Warfield told commissioners at a meeting on Aug. 28, and over 1,300 new complaints have been submitted.

Of the 2,113 cases in OCI’s inventory today, Warfield said 1,608 were submitted 90 or more days ago and are considered backlogged. The remaining 500 were submitted less than 90 days ago. 

“Our OCI investigators and our staff are working very diligently investigating cases and I’m pleased of the progress that we’re able to make,” Warfield told the board on Aug. 21, “We’re right on track where we need to be in order to rid ourselves of the backlog.”

Complaint policy terms 

The BOPC was created in 1974 to police the police, creating a civilian oversight authority to represent residents of Detroit and address their concerns related to police misconduct and officer-involved shootings. The board is also responsible for receiving and investigating non-criminal police misconduct complaints, forwarding criminal allegations to the appropriate investigating authority and serving as the final authority for imposing or reviewing disciplinary action taken against any DPD employee.

Complaints that allege criminal misconduct, or involve a “serious use of force” or critical firearm discharge, are handled by DPD’s Professional Standards Bureau, according to the department’s complaint policy. 

Non-criminal complaints against any sworn or professional member of the Detroit Police Department are investigated by the Office of the Chief Investigator then reviewed and signed off on by the BOPC. 

How complaints are received, investigated, and closed fall under the BOPC’s authority and those policies are outlined in the Office of Chief Investigator’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Manual. Chief Investigator Jerome Warfield objected to sharing the manual with the public during a BOPC meeting in May, citing grammatical errors as the lead reason. 

BridgeDetroit’s analysis of the former and proposed citizen complaint policies found the new policy left more authority within the scope of the police department rather than the BOPC.

For example, the policy up for a vote this week would add a requirement that calls for the Office of the Chief Investigator (OCI), the board’s investigative authority, to complete investigations within 60 days, in accordance with the City Charter. A prior policy – requiring the OCI and the Detroit Police Department to complete investigations within 90 days, except under extenuating circumstances – was removed by the BOPC in the spring. 

A process for appeals if the police chief disagrees with a BOPC decision related to a complaint was removed in the spring. No amendments are being proposed to reinstate that language. 

Other elements removed from the original policy this spring include:

• Police intake procedures for citizen complaints
• What details are required in citizen complaints
• Procedures for interviewing officers and completing investigation reports
• Monthly statistical reports, including resident feedback and the number of complaints referred to Internal Controls

When the BOPC’s Policy Committee approved the department’s complaint policy in May, the discussion was mostly centered around whether DPD should receive complaints filed against its own members or if all complaints should be routed through the BOPC’s Office of the Chief Investigator. 

Over half of all citizen complaints investigated by the OCI and reviewed by the BOPC each year are received and entered by the police department, Deputy Chief Michael Parrish told BridgeDetroit. 

“So we’re falling down on the job we agreed to do under the federal consent decree,” Bernard said in May about consent-era language that was removed from the policy. “And, as you know, the most important thing that we address, of course, is citizen complaints.”

DPD operated under federal consent decrees from July 2003 through 2014 and the BOPC took on the role of making sure the terms of the consent decrees were met. 

Parrish told BridgeDetroit in an interview that some consent decree-era language no longer applies in a digital world. 

“Some of the consent judgment language was removed simply because we’ve moved past that,” Parrish said, “When the consent judgment was first imposed against the city and the police department, citizen complaints were being taken by pen and paper. Now, citizen complaints are entered directly into our Management Awareness System and they’re transmitted directly to the Office of the Chief Investigator.”