TL;DR at bottom
So I watched the documentary posted yesterday about America's largest gang (surprise! It's our cops...). I was most shocked by the portion where undercover investigators were AGGRESSIVELY kept from filing official complaints. I say to myself, "UnionSparky, it's 2015 now, I bet you can find the complaint form online now." Down the rabbit hole I went, the ADD kicked in, and now I'm looking at budget plans, town hall meeting minutes, etc...
A long trail of searching .pdf files and forms from my county and state government led me to a monthly support report from my local PD. This report mentions sending investigating officers to a "cutting edge 'Use of Force Certification' seminar". This 4 day, out of state seminar is SO vital that, according to my local PD report, "Without it, controversial officer-involved shootings and other uses of force ...can easily be misjudged, with devastating consequences. In some cases, officers have gone to prison and agencies have suffered crushing losses in civil suits because the factors in how humans perform under stress were not properly assessed by uninformed investigators..." and that after the course, an investigator "...will also know how to best mine the memories of those involved for relevant recollections."
Highlights include: -false negative (perceived absence of a gun when one exists) rate for officers is approximately 4% in a high-stress and rapidly unfolding situation such as a shooting -false positive rate (perception of a gun when it does not exist) for such incidents... may be as high as 30 to 40+% -The brain is capable of attending to only one source of information at a time. -Memories are just as likely to be inaccurate as accurate, since... -Under conditions of high stress or threat, a variety of perceptual and informational errors are to be expected, and... -The mind will see what it expects to see and miss or misinterpret other potentially significant details. Therefore.... -Confabulation occurs when the subconscious mind “fills in the blanks.” Confabulation can never be totally eliminated. -Scientific and practical limitations governing human performance must be taken into account when evaluating performance.
Don't worry though, the seminar also teaches that, "It is not an investigator's job to determine if an officer's behavior, let's say, was right or wrong in a use-of-force situation. But it is the investigator's job to clearly and objectively present all the potentially relevant facts to the person or person responsible for that decision." This probably includes the last 4 days of training on ALL THE POSSIBLE REASONS you may have for excusing an abuse of force...
It leaves us with this final thought, however: "Corrective action plans emphasizing retraining and remediation versus discipline and punishment are more appropriate in response to officers who make mistakes, have misjudgments, or err in making these split-second decisions."
Just TOO MUCH mind-numbing circle-jerk propaganda to list in its entirety.
TL;DR: I learned where their priorities where when my local Police Department spent thousands on sending investigators out of state to multi-day (4) seminars to learn how to cover up abuses of force claims in the same month it hosted a free (since they hosted) 8hr. workshop on "Street Crimes" with "street tested techniques you won't find anywhere else!"