The Pros & Cons of bringing a police complaint

“You have to come to the conclusion there must be hundreds of people that shouldn’t be here, who should be thrown out. There must be hundreds who are behaving disgracefully, undermining our integrity and need ejecting.”

Sir Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, October 2022

In the context of the recent damning Casey report regarding the state of health – or lack of it – of the Metropolitan Police’s complaints and misconduct system, and which occasioned the extremely frank comments of the Met Commissioner as cited above,  I am sure that one of the questions which I am frequently asked as a specialist in claims against the Police is at the forefront of many people’s minds – i.e whether or not a victim of Police violence, unlawful arrest or other form of misconduct should pursue a formal complaint…

Whereas a damages claim can entitle a person to significant financial compensation for the wrong which has been done to them, a professional standards complaint cannot result in a compensation award but can lead to the officer or officers involved being found guilty of professional misconduct – and possibly even dismissed from the Police service (although I would stress that later outcome is a rare event indeed).

This is not an ‘either/or’ decision, of course, as many people do bring both a claim and a complaint against the officer who has wronged them – but there are a number of significant pros and cons effecting these two overlapping processes of justice which mean that in each and every case careful consideration must be given to whether it is right for the aggrieved individual to ‘bother’ with a complaint or not.

I will here outline some of the key considerations which go into that decision making process and will start by highlighting that whilst a wide variety of limitation dates apply to claims against the Police (see my recent blog post on that subject) in regards to complaints the Police have discretion to refuse to investigate any complaint which is brought more than 12 months after the event complained about.

The Pros & Cons of bringing a police complaint

Pros

1. Bringing a complaint is a means of ‘speaking truth to power’; it is through the exercise of our civil rights that we maintain them.

2. It is the route through which a police officer might be disciplined and/or dismissed and/or criminally prosecuted – often something which the victim of Police abuse of power ultimately wants far more than financial compensation.

3. It places on record your experience, which will be reflected in complaint statistics, properly highlighting the state of health of our Police service and public opinion of the same.

4. Your complaint may prove to be one of many which will be placed on the officer’s record over time. Multiple complaints against an individual officer – whether upheld or not – flag up that officer for scrutiny by his superiors (not always acted upon, however) and can assist other victims of misconduct in proving their cases against that officer, if he is indeed a serial abuser of power.

5. Complaint investigations can provide important evidence to assist subsequent civil compensation claims (e.g. officers’ accounts in writing or indeed in interview under criminal caution, in response to the complaint) and ensure the early and extensive preservation of all available video material (including crucial CCTV and body camera footage).

6. The complaint process can provide a useful way to ‘sound out’ the merits of a potential civil claim, by requiring the Police to provide an upfront response in writing to the incident.

7. If the complaint is upheld this can increase the pressure on the Police to agree to an early settlement of a related civil claim – though that is not always guaranteed.

Cons

1. The practical results of pursuing a Police complaint are often very far removed from the high- minded theory. The Casey report highlights how one Metropolitan officer who faced 11 misconduct allegations (including sexual harassment, assault, fraud and distribution of an explicit image of himself) remains a serving member of the Force. Since 2013, 1,809 Met officers/ staff had been involved in more than one misconduct case, but a mere 13 had actually been dismissed (0.71%). Note that these statistics only relate to complaints made against officers by other members of the Met (or their families) – and therefore do not include the far greater number of complaints made by the general public. However, they certainly map onto my own experience of representing thousands of citizens in Police complaints over the last three decades.

2. The Police complaint system has a high degree of (I am sure quite deliberate) delay and opaqueness built into it. Complainants are largely excluded from the investigatory process after initial contact and there is never a definite time-frame within which the complaint investigation must be concluded; it can literally drag on for years, adding further insult to the initial injury and leaving people with legitimate complaints feeling frustrated, belittled and disregarded. By way of example, consider the experiences of my clients Zac (whose complaint process lasted 5 years) and Sharon (whose complaint process lasted 4 years). In both of those cases, despite multiple failings being identified on the part of the offending officers, neither officer was ultimately dismissed.

3. The police still investigate the police in the vast majority of complaints and the approach of most police investigators, in my long experience, is to look for reasons not to uphold the complaint.  Indeed, in my experience, complaint investigations often seem to be operations designed to shield the offending officer from criticism.

4. The fact that a complaint is being pursued can be, and very often is, used by the Police as an excuse not to respond to a person’s civil claim arising from the same incident – causing an eventual delay of months or even years to the resolution of that claim.

5. A decision to uphold a complaint is not binding on the police in respect of any subsequent civil claim (allowing them to continue to contest the claim if they see fit) but conversely  a decision not to uphold a complaint (though also not binding on a civil court) can impact negatively on settlement of a related civil claim, being used by the Police to attempt to adversely influence a Judge and/or Jury against the Claimant/ complainant.

6. Bringing a complaint will require you (and potentially any witnesses you may have) to put detailed accounts ‘on the record’ in the form of statements and/or answers to Police questions without having the opportunity to first consider crucial Police disclosure, such as body camera footage and officers’ statements, as would happen in a civil claim.

7. The much- vaunted Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is in my experience all too often a paper tiger either unable or unwilling to either take the lead in conducting complaint investigations or, when an appeal lands on their doorstep, to overturn the findings of a biased and inadequate local Police complaint investigation. Without a truly independent and robust watchdog, the whole Police complaint system is generally flabby, inadequate, and unfit for purpose.

In the circumstances, my advice to clients is often not to incur the delay and likely disappointment of a complaint but instead to focus on bringing a civil claim, being the method by which my clients can have the type of true control over the justice process which is denied to them in the complaints system (in which they are at best often treated as no more than one witness amongst many). My advice in this regard is based on real world practicalities – because we simply do not have the effective and independent complaint system that we deserve.

That advice is not universal however; in certain circumstances it can be tactically appropriate to bring a complaint in order to ‘flush out’ the Police explanation for their actions ahead of putting pen to paper in the letter of claim. I also, of course, respect those many individuals who feel it is their civic duty to bring a complaint irrespective of the low likelihood of a positive outcome, whilst in other circumstances the misconduct is so heinous and/or obvious that a complaint is likely to result in a satisfactory finding (I stress that such cases are rarer than you would think however because of the complaint process failings which I have listed above).

The decision is ultimately yours; I will treat each case as unique and give you the best of my knowledge and experience as tailored for your particular circumstances – but the 14 points as set out above are the framework for that discussion.

If you have suffered Police misconduct, please reflect upon them, consider what outcome you are looking to achieve, and get in touch with me to discuss further. I look forward to hearing from you.