Does the Volusia County jail have a mandated investigative system in placed, to properly process misconduct complaints against jail officers?
Updated December 12, 2011
"When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."- Poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Florida Law, in the particular, F.S. 112.533 mandates that "every law enforcement agency and correctional agency shall establish and put into operation a system for the receipt, investigation, and determination of complaints received by such agency from any person, which shall be the procedure for investigating a complaint against a law enforcement and correctional officer and for determining whether to proceed with disciplinary action or to file disciplinary charges, notwithstanding any other law or ordinance to the contrary."
These policies are commonly referred to as either "professional standards policies" or "internal affairs procedures".
In November 2011, VolusiaExposed.Com made a public record request for the Volusia County jail's internal affairs' policy that defines their "system" for receipting, investigating and determining complaints received regarding their staff's conduct. Volusia County officials initially denied having any active internal affairs procedures in place (see highlighted areas of below email communications between VolusiaExposed and County officials)
However, only after Volusia County officials engaged us in a war of words, did they finally identify their alleged policy that defines their "system" for investigating complaints against correctional officers.
Policy and Procedure 400.09, does not meet the requirements of Florida law. This particular policy only appears to define the report writing procedures for correctional officers. It does not address the receipt, investigation and determination of a complaint of misconduct that might be alleged by a jail inmate or a civilian. Since Florida law requires all law enforcement and correctional agencies to develop a "system" to receipt, investigate and determine complaints received from ANY person, it is clear that Volusia County Policy and Procedure 400.09 does not meet the requirements mandated by Florida Statutes 112.533.
We attempted to address our concerns to Volusia County Jail Director M.C. Ford. We sent her an email in which we, detailed our concerns and invited her to supply a response for inclusion into this article. As of the publication of this article, we have received no response from Director Ford.
QUESTION: - If the Volusia County jail is NOT in compliance with Florida law in regards to having a "system" in place to receipt, investigate and determine complaints of misconduct against their correctional officers, then how can the citizens of Volusia County expect that these misconduct allegations are being properly addressed?