San Jose Police Claim

Last week, San Jose Independent Police Auditor Barbara Attard issued a report stating that SJPD's internal affairs department had downgraded the classification of hundreds of community complaints.

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_6100879

The internal affairs team only has to investigate "Formal Complaints" where a community member agrees to publicly testify that a police officer committed misconduct and to see the complaint process through to its conclusion. Community members are seldom willing to participate in such an extensive process due to fears of retaliation, investigation or deportation by the migra, especially if they are on parole/probation which could trigger automatic jail time if their complaint is not successful and there is retaliation or any extra attention of any kind.

Therefore, whenever a community member complains to internal affairs but is not willing to pursue a public complaint for any of the above reasons, the internal affairs crew labels the complaint as an "Inquiry" meaning that it was resolved with a simple discussion. According to the report from Independent Police Auditor Attard, 118 complaints (55% of all complaints) were downgraded to "Inquiries" last year which means that they do not go on the records of the police officer being complained about and which are not publicly available. This underreporting by SJPD's internal affairs has allowed Chief Davis to claim that there are no problems because there are so few complaints from the public and therefore there are no problems. Or at least no problems that can't be fixed with little internal reforms within the department.

Today, at the SJPD press conference Davis repeated his claims that everything is fine and that the SJPD has the trust and support of the community because there are so few complaints, ignoring the criticisms in the Independent Police Auditor's report which would wipe that smug arrogance off the face of a lesser man.

The Coalition for Justice and Accountability was present to contradict the Chief's smiling self-assured claims that all is well. Community members and representatives of organizations spoke out about the need for immediate investigation into the SJPD taser killing of Steve Salinas on May 25th and the tasing and beating of the Custodio Family in February of this year. Marilou Custodio told the story of how she and her youngest son witnessed the tasing and beating of her two elder sons, and then had her head slammed onto a police car three times and told to "Shut the f*** up!". The family now faces charges of "resisting arrest".

The movement against police brutality and for a real process for holding the police accountable is heating up in San Jose. People who want to bring an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the murder of community members by the SJPD should email the following for more information on how to get involved:

svdebug [at] newamericamedia.org
JusticeForCustodios [at] yahoogroups.com