The Crisis Continues Inside Police Internal Affairs

February 12, 2013

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU-NJ) has recognized the importance of ensuring that police departments act in accordance with best practices. Too often, we receive complaints from citizens who feel that they are unable to get their grievance about an officer’s conduct addressed by the department that is best equipped to handle and respond to the complainant: the officer’s home department.

In June 2009, we published a report examining how many of New Jersey’s municipal police departments were in compliance with the Attorney General’s Guidelines. The results were disturbing. We learned that the majority of departments failed to follow the law and the guidelines regarding individuals’ rights to file IA complaints. We then attempted to work with many of the departments. Over the past two years, we have taken numerous steps to provide assistance to those departments seeking to correct their errors and implement best practices in this area.

This report picks up where the June 2009 report left off, incorporating the lessons from 2009 to conduct an even more thorough analysis in 2012. The results remained disconcerting. Once again a majority of local departments provided inaccurate information in response to the most basic questions regarding individuals’ rights to file IA complaints.