Why an internal Complaints Authority will not work for CYFS.

As posted on CYFSWATCH

The Police Complaints authority is a complete and utter waste of time.

The vast majority of complaints made to it are referred back to the Police 'professional conduct division'.

The police officers who fill this division will:

1. Try to convince you to agree that you complaint was groundless. the formal name for this is conciliation, and in the official report it gives the impression that some form of redress or apology or conciliation has been offered. This is far from the truth, what in fact happens is that police use sophisticated interrogation and manipulation techniques to destroy your confidence in your complaint and to get you to drop it.

2. If you refuse to be 'conciliated' you will be subjected to character assassination and ad hominem attack - your motives will be questioned - and the complaint will be denied. Any lie put forward by the offending officer will be accepted out of hand and your evidence counts for nothing.

3. You have the right to protest this Police investigation of themselves -- and the PCA response will be to refer your response back to the police, and they will get to concoct another series of denials of it all.

4. This carries on until you get sick of it.

5. Even if the PCA does come down on your side the Police can give it 2 fingers as it has no authority over them at all.

These are the stats for complaints from last year taken from the PCA yearly report:

A. Total complaints - 2829

B. Accepted for jurisdiction - 2481

C. Not pursued - 164

D. Sustained or partially sustained - 96

E. Conciliated or not sustained - 563.

The balance are still ongoing.

So in a year, Police accept they were out of line in a whopping 3.8% of cases.

There sure are a heck of a lot of people out there making false complaints aren't there?

How lucky we are to have a police force that can be trusted to investigate themselves eh?

Now, apply the same process to CYFS complaints....................