When the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut checked the websites of more than 100 Connecticut law enforcement agencies last October, it found 40 of them, including three local ones, had failed to post their complaint forms and policies online, in direct violation of a 2014 law.

Inspired in part by the large number of criticisms it had heard about complaint policies in larger city forces, the ACLU looked at the websites of 102 agencies, excluding some specialized agencies as well as small towns supervised by resident state troopers.

Then, two trained volunteers set out to call the 40 departments that hadn’t posted their policy and/or their form online, along with the 12 state police barracks and the departments serving Connecticut’s 10 largest cities. Three local departments — Norwich, Waterford and Groton Long Point — have taken steps to address the issue.

The callers, who first said they were conducting research and not looking to file a complaint, worked from a script. They asked a person at each department about things including whether their agency’s form was online, how someone could file a complaint and whether the agency accepted anonymous complaints.

According to the report the ACLU released last week, “Earning Trust,” the law enforcement officials’ answers varied widely.

Many of them suggested anonymous complaints would either not be accepted or would be taken less seriously, despite the Police Officer Standards and Training Council, or POSTC, policy mandating the acceptance of third-party and anonymous complaints. 

According to the report, the person who answered at the Norwich Police Department said an anonymous complaint is “not a complaint” and that the agency doesn’t have a complaint form online, even though it does. It doesn’t have the policy posted online.

That person further said people have to come to the station to file complaints and those wishing to see the department’s complaint policy need to file a Freedom of Information request.

The POSTC policy requires departments to accept complaints submitted online, by mail or by telephone.

Norwich police Chief Patrick Daley said he has taken steps since learning of the study to get everybody at the department on the same page.

First, he said, the department is in the midst of redoing its complaint policy to bring it more in line with the state model. Once it’s finished, he said, it will appear online, possibly along with other department policies.

As for the phone survey, Daley said it’s hard for him to take direct action because he doesn’t know who spoke with the ACLU. He said he wants to train everyone who answers the phone on the complaint process at some point, but in the meantime is asking them to direct all calls regarding complaints to shift supervisors, who he said know the policy well.

“I would rather have accurate information get to the person wishing to make a complaint,” Daley said. “If there’s an issue, we’ll never know about it if we don’t get feedback.”

The Waterford Police Department was singled out because it had neither a complaint form nor a policy posted online when the ACLU checked in October. The department resolved those issues in December after a woman looking to file a complaint alerted the POSTC that Waterford’s form was not online.

The report, however, also lists Waterford as a department the ACLU could not get in touch with after two tries. According to the report, a person at Waterford answered, but transferred the caller to a voicemail box both times.

It’s unclear from the report whether the callers left voicemails. Waterford Police Chief Brett Mahoney said he never received any, though, and department supervisors would have told him if they had.

Still, Mahoney said he sent the ACLU study to the entire department, along with a note reminding them of Waterford’s process.

Forms are available on the department’s website and the town’s, as well as in the department’s lobby and at Town Hall and the Community Center. As is required by law, Waterford police take anonymous complaints, don’t require notarization and take complaints about an incident no matter when it occurred.

He said he was disappointed the report didn’t highlight any of the dozens of departments that were in compliance with the law, but he still values the work of the ACLU.

“We want to do things the right way,” Mahoney said. “That’s why it’s important to get a viewpoint different than your own, read through it, and make sure when you’re reading, you’re addressing people’s concerns.”

Groton Long Point, a department with just nine sworn officers, also is mentioned several times in the report — something Chief Jeffrey Nixon said is “embarrassing.”

It’s true, he said, that his department failed to place its complaint form and policy online. But he made it a priority to work with the third-party programmers who manage the site and by Thursday had rectified that.

But he’s perplexed about the quotes gathered from the phone survey, one of which suggests one of his officers said an anonymous complaint “lacks substance.”

In his department, anyone who speaks to an outside agency for a survey is supposed to document it. But he can’t find any notes in his logs about such a call, and his officers don’t recall having answered any survey questions.

“I’ve worked hard the last four years to really clean up how we do business here,” said Nixon, an officer of more than 31 years who is "a big proponent of clean policing.”

He said Groton Long Point officers have been working with POSTC for some time to redo their entire policy manual as they seek state-level accreditation.

"We are not beyond reproach if we do something wrong," Nixon said.

David McGuire, executive director of the ACLU’s Connecticut chapter, said he would like to see a standard complaint form developed at the state level. He said adding meaningful consequences, such as possible loss of state funding, to the existing law also might increase compliance.

Still, he said this survey showed marked improvement from one the ACLU released in 2012, which found "widespread resistance and inconsistencies in police agencies’ approaches to accepting complaints."

"The state of policing has changed drastically since 2012," McGuire said. "Everyone understands building better relationships between the community and police is beneficial to everybody." 

Mike Lawlor, the state’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning, said many of the chiefs he’s talked to have welcomed the ACLU’s suggestion that they should redouble their efforts to comply with the law.

“It almost always takes some time for people to understand what’s expected and change the way they’ve done business in the past,” Lawlor said. “But I think it’s extremely important that new laws such as this are followed up on. It’s the follow that gets you where want to be.”

l.boyle@theday.com