One-third of San Jose police officers faced complaints in 2021
SAN JOSE, Calif. - One in every three San Jose police officers had some kind of complaint lodged against them in 2021, according to a new report.
The figure is one of the key findings in an annual report from the San Jose Independent Police Auditor, which will be formally presented to the city council on Tuesday.
The Independent Police Auditor (IPA) reports directly to the city council and is outside the police department’s chain of command. The goal is to ‘increase confidence’ in the department through community engagement, making recommendations, and making sure the department investigates officer misconduct.
"So this office is very important," said retired Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, who spent five years as the San Jose Independent Police Auditor.
While she says the office has no power to actually mandate changes, Cordell said it does have the ability to bring issues of concern to the public.
"One of its goals has always been to increase transparency in policing because by doing that you then increase trust from the community," Cordell said.
In 2021 the IPA received 333 complaints against San Jose police officers which included 1,000 allegations that officers violated procedure or the law. That’s up 24% from 2020.
"So I am not surprised by that at all. And I don’t think that that number itself says very much. What you want to look at are what kinds of allegations are contained in those complaints," Cordell said.
In 2021 16% of those complaints contained use-of-force allegations and nearly one-third of all sworn officers had at least one complaint lodged against them.
"It is not a statement that one-third of the San Jose police department officers are engaged in misconduct. No. It is a statement that they were the subject of complaints, but we don’t know how many of the those complaints were actually justified," Cordell said.
The report says the department received more than 120 allegations of bias-based policing or racial profiling but the department sustained none of them.
The IPA also reviewed 240 closed internal affairs investigations agreeing with 82% of the conclusions but disagreeing, or having concerns with the rest.
Cordell says this raises one over-arching issue: "The police, be it San Jose, Los Angeles or San Francisco, should never investigate themselves. Never. There should be independent entity that conducts investigations into police misconduct.," Cordell said.
The San Jose City Council will formally receive, and discuss, the findings of the latest independent police auditor annual report at its regular meeting on Tuesday afternoon.