When I first became a cop in 1997, I was told that if I wasn’t getting complained on, that probably meant I wasn’t putting in the work. There was some truth to that. If you’re making traffic stops, arresting people, writing tickets, breaking up fights, and telling people things they don’t want to hear, somebody is eventually going to complain about you.

Some cops took that advice way too far, though. Some still do. A complaint isn’t a badge of honor, and being an asshole isn’t proof that you’re out there doing God’s work.

A lot has changed since then. Complaints can become public controversies before anybody has established what actually happened. Body cameras, social media, lawsuits, public-records requests, and increased scrutiny have changed how complaints are documented, investigated, and discussed. Some of that scrutiny is long overdue. Police officers should be accountable, and departments have an obligation to take complaints seriously. But the increased attention also means departments had better be able to defend the integrity of their investigations.

Internal Affairs should make bad cops nervous. If you’re lying in reports, abusing your authority, retaliating against people, or repeatedly violating policy, you ought to be concerned when somebody tells you IA is looking at you.

A good officer might not enjoy being investigated, but that’s different from being afraid of the process itself. Nobody likes having a decision made in a few seconds picked apart over the next several months. Still, an officer should be able to trust that the evidenceInformation or an item that may help prove or disprove a fact in an investigation or court case. will get a fair hearing, even when the outcome isn’t what they’d hoped for.

If your dependable officers are afraid of Internal Affairs while the officers who constantly cause problems seem perfectly comfortable with it, I’d want to know why.

A complaint isn’t a finding

One thing I’ve never liked is the assumption that an Internal Affairs investigation has to end with somebody getting disciplined to be considered successful. The purpose is to establish what happened. Sometimes that means sustaining a complaint and holding an officer accountable. Other times it means determining that the officer acted appropriately, that an allegation wasn’t supported by the evidence, or that the investigation couldn’t establish what happened.

Police officers get complained on for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they did something wrong. Sometimes they did exactly what the job required, and somebody didn’t like it. A complainantA person who reports an incident, problem, or alleged offense to law enforcement. The complainant is not always the victim. might misunderstand what happened, leave out relevant information, exaggerate, or deliberately lie. None of those possibilities gives a department an excuse to dismiss a complaint before investigating it.

If someone believes an officer did something wrong, take the complaint. Don’t discourage them, make them jump through unnecessary hoops, or treat them like they’re causing trouble for asking questions. Then examine the reports, video, radio traffic, witnessA person who saw, heard, knows, or can provide information about an incident or fact under investigation. statements, policies, and whatever other evidence is available. Give the officer an opportunity to explain the decision, and consider that explanation against the evidence.

The Department of Justice’s COPS Office addresses the need for fair, thorough investigations in its guidance on Internal Affairs investigations. That’s what I expect whether an investigation ends in discipline or clears the officer.

Clearing an officer isn’t a failure, any more than sustaining a complaint is automatically a success. A poorly handled investigation can allow serious misconduct to go unpunished, just as it can unfairly damage an officer’s reputation or career. Either outcome should concern anyone responsible for running a police department.

The rules everybody learns

Every department has its written policies, but employees also learn a different set of rules by watching what actually happens. They see which supervisors document problems and which would rather make them disappear. They see who gets disciplined, who gets another chance, and who seems to survive one complaint after another because they’re on the right side of somebody in command.

Problem employees are often pretty good at figuring this out. After a while, they know which excuses have worked before, which supervisors will defend them, and how far they can push things without facing any real consequences.

Meanwhile, a dependable officer who makes one questionable decision may find himself under a microscope. Another officer makes essentially the same decision and gets a conversation in the supervisor’s office. One gets the benefit of context while the other gets every action interpreted in the worst possible light.

Officers notice those differences. They may not know everything behind a disciplinary decision, and there can be legitimate reasons for treating two seemingly similar cases differently. Prior misconduct, the seriousness of the violation, intent, and the available evidence can all affect the outcome. But command should be able to explain those differences rather than expect everyone to accept that the standard somehow changes depending on who’s involved.

A strong work history shouldn’t give an officer immunity from discipline. I’ve seen enough in leadership to know that someone can do good work for years and still make a decision serious enough to warrant consequences. Deal with it. At the same time, being unpopular with command shouldn’t turn every complaint into an opportunity to build a case against somebody.

There’s another consequence to this kind of management that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. If the officer making traffic stops, answering calls, and taking initiative is constantly exposed to criticism, while the officer doing the bare minimum stays out of trouble, employees eventually notice that too. Some will start avoiding decisions they probably should be making, because they’ve learned that doing less is safer than doing the job.

Then leadership wonders why nobody wants to take responsibility. I’d suggest looking at what you’ve been rewarding and what you’ve been punishing.

When the investigation becomes the problem

Internal Affairs can become a management weapon when the people controlling it have already decided what they want the outcome to be. Sometimes that takes the form of repeated investigations, minor issues being treated like major misconduct, or complaints being reopened long after they should have been resolved. Other times the department follows the procedures on paper, but the people involved can see that the investigation is headed toward a conclusion somebody in command wanted from the beginning.

I learned a long time ago what it feels like when an investigation stops being about finding the truth and starts being about reaching a predetermined result. Many years ago, I was dating a woman whose ex-husband and his family had weaponized their young child against her and, as a result, me too.

Before long, an investigator with another agency’s office was asking questions and making claims. Turned out, he had a personal interest in this family and it became obvious pretty quickly that this wasn’t a neutral investigation.

Statements were being twisted, events were being described in ways I didn’t recognize, and information seemed to be getting fitted into a story that had already been decided before anyone seriously asked what had actually happened. The investigator was trying to build a narrative. This wasn’t the first time I had heard complaints about how he handled “investigations”, and it wasn’t the last.

He is no longer an issue, but the dirty reputation he had already built lasted much longer than my own experience with him. That experience has stayed with me because it showed me how quickly an investigator can lose credibility when people believe the conclusion came before the evidence. Once that happens, even a legitimate finding becomes harder to trust.

The same thing can happen with Internal Affairs. An investigator asks one employee neutral questions while treating another like he’s already guilty. Evidence that supports an allegation gets careful consideration, while evidence that might contradict it receives little attention. Or the investigator knows what the chief, sheriff, or another supervisor wants and starts working toward that answer.

An investigator doesn’t have to be everybody’s friend, and probably shouldn’t try to be. But the people involved should have reason to believe that the investigator is looking for the truth. If evidence supports a complaint, document it. If it contradicts the complaint, document that too. Don’t ignore something because it complicates the conclusion you wanted.

Small departments have an additional challenge. We don’t always have a separate Internal Affairs unit or investigators who are completely removed from the people involved. The chief might be responsible for reviewing a complaint involving someone he’s worked beside for years. That doesn’t eliminate the obligation to be fair, but it does mean being especially careful about personal relationships, conflicts of interest, and the appearance of favoritism. Sometimes an outside investigator is the better choice.

Ultimately, command owns the integrity of that process. If you want to discipline an officer, identify the actual misconduct or performance problem, investigate it, document the evidence, give the employee a fair opportunity to respond, and make the decision you’re prepared to defend. Don’t use Internal Affairs to manufacture a justification for something you’ve already decided to do.

And if you have an officer who repeatedly causes problems, quit looking for ways to excuse the behavior. Good cops have plenty to lose when bad cops are allowed to continue working without consequences. Dishonest officers can destroy criminal cases, reckless officers put others in danger, and supervisors who retaliate against employees can damage an entire department.

Good officers should want legitimate misconduct investigated, including misconduct by other officers. What they shouldn’t have to accept is a process that protects favored employees, targets the unpopular ones, or punishes people for reporting problems.

If officers watch someone get hammered for speaking up, they’ll remember it. If they watch a problem employee survive complaint after complaint because command likes him, they’ll remember that too. And when something serious eventually happens, leadership may find itself asking why nobody said anything.

Maybe somebody did. Maybe everyone else saw what happened to them.

I don’t judge an Internal Affairs process by how many officers it disciplines or how many complaints it dismisses. I judge it by whether the people responsible for investigating misconduct are willing to follow the evidence, even when the evidence leads somewhere they didn’t expect or don’t particularly like.