The Associated Press
OAKLAND- Nearly 800 citizen complaints filed against the Oakland Police Department have not been investigated, according to a report by a court-appointed monitoring team.
At least 775 entries in the Internal Affairs Division’s database were not assigned case numbers or investigated and some go back as far as January 2003, the report released Monday said.
Some complaints were not investigated because the department would not take the complaint over the phone, and an official complaint form was never completed. In other cases, the officer taking the call believed the caller to be mentally ill and disregarded the complaint, the report said.
Also, complaints that were informally resolved were never documented. There is no explanation why other complaints were not investigated, according to the monitoring team, composed of two civil rights attorneys, a suburban Chicago police chief and a retired Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department division chief.
The team was charged with keeping tabs on the department’s compliance with reforms stemming from the “Riders” police misconduct scandal.
In response to the team’s discovery, internal affairs officers are trying to contact everyone who made a complaint that wasn’t investigated. As a result, about 75 new cases have been opened, according to city officials.
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