The most frequent complaints, she said, are for courtesy and illegal searches and arrests.
It’s important, she said, to file not just directly with the law enforcement agency, but also with their oversight commission and the state’s police standards commission. She also copies key people in the city — the district attorney, the city attorney, the mayor and his chief of staff, for example — on complaint emails.
“Informal complaints to me are nothing but a slap on the hand,” she said. “Saying, ‘Don't do it again,’ while they do it again.”A state law that went into effect in 2019 requires California police agencies to release records relating to police shootings and other times when officers use force during arrests. KPBS has analyzed all the records that San Diego police agencies have released so far and built a searchable database.