Law Enforcement Essay Topic #5, “Should Internal Affairs assignments be limited in tenure?
When evaluating Internal Affairs department practices, some departments employ a practice of limiting the tenure of officers assigned. In Metro Nashville, our Office of Professional Accountability has set limits of approximately three years in assigning officers to OPA. This was the practice until about 2020, but we currently do not impose those limits. It is my opinion that those assignments should be limited, but with exceptions in extreme cases.
There are several benefits to limiting assignments in Internal Affairs/OPA. One of the primary reasons is to avoid burnout. Most officers seek out police work for the opportunity to help people and keep their communities safe. The majority of officers do not get into police work to investigate complaints against other officers. It is a field of specialization that is often overlooked in importance, and oftentimes officers do not realize how beneficial a well-functioning Internal Affairs department is until they have seen it firsthand.
Burnout can arise because officers may be used to confronting law breaking or bad behavior from the public, but do not expect to have to deal with policy violations and infractions or poor decisions from their coworkers. Police work has a culture of camaraderie, so there is a tendency to want to overlook or ignore internal problems or have sympathy for coworkers who may be under stress at work or at home. Constantly dealing with employees who may make poor decisions can wear on you, and it is not for everyone. The three-year limit can help employees avoid that burnout or give them an end in sight.
Additionally, long-term assignments on OPA can have a deleterious effect on an officer’s effectiveness. With burnout can also come an almost adversarial relationship with their peers. IA or OPA officers can be seen as “hall monitors” that the rank and file may not trust as much because of their position. I have witnessed officers treat OPA-assigned employees differently, almost as though the are “out to get them.” This can decrease the likelihood that officers share information with those assigned to OPA.
Our OPA has instituted (and discontinued) a practice of officer rotations of 8-12 weeks in OPA. Officers are selected to work in that area in brief rotations to give them an overview of how cases are investigated and the standards employed to hold officers accountable. This tends to give those officers on rotation a greater understanding and appreciation of the methodology in OPA investigations. This in turn can spread to other members of the department as those officers end their rotations and go back to their normal assignments, sharing what they have learned and observed with their coworkers. MNPD has proposed reinstituting that rotation program in the interest of transparency. This can also help identify employees who may have an aptitude or interest in a longer-term assignment in OPA.
While limited tenure is the best practice and should be an overarching goal, there can be exceptions just as any area of specialization in a police department. We benefit from tenured professionals in a multitude of areas such as homicide, accident reconstruction, crime scene investigation, or almost any other area you can name. There are some things that are best learned through experience. A robust training program is great, but may not replace everything that experience in the role can provide. MNPD has benefited from employees being in these roles for an extended period of time, so it would be difficult to argue against that when it has worked so well for us.
The deciding factor on whether an employee should not be limited to a rotation or limit in tenure really comes down to the individual. There are some employees who find their niche in IA/OPA, and burnout is not an issue for them. They also do not become overly concerned with being ostracized from their peers or seen as hall monitors. They understand the importance of the work they do in keeping the department accountable and will work just as hard and take as much satisfaction in exhonorating an employee as they do sustaining a violation of an employee they know is guilty. I personally would not want to lose experienced, thoughtful, professional OPA employees due to an arbitrary time limit if they want to stay in that assignment. I think departments in general can find that balance of short rotations for exposure, 2-3 year assignments as a general rule, and longer term assignments for those professionals, especially supervisors, whose experience and dedication would be difficult to replace.
