NGHR Due Process: Minn Cops Banged on a Door at 3AM and Immediately After a Black Man Opened It They Threw Him Down Steps, Handcuffed Him and Beat Him in an Alley b/c They Got a Domestic Dispute Call

From [HERE] Idrissen Brown says he was sitting in his Minneapolis apartment watching a movie with his girlfriend when he heard pounding on the door. It was about 3:20 a.m. on a Sunday in March 2016 and the couple wasn't expecting anyone after returning home from a night out.

They opened the door and found four Minneapolis police officers who said they were responding to a call from a neighbor about a domestic dispute.

What happened next, Brown said, still torments him four years later.

One of the officers grabbed him, threw him down the stairs and forced him into a squad car with another officer, Brown said. Instead of taking him to jail, Brown said, the cops brought him to an alley and pummeled him before dropping him off near his mother's house.

“When they turned the opposite direction of the jail, and he opened up the backseat and started to beat me some more, I thought I was going to die,” Brown said. ”I thought it was over.”

A few hours after he returned home, dazed and bruised, Brown said he called his local police precinct to file a formal complaint. He said he explained the entire incident to the woman on the phone and was told to call internal affairs, which he did.

Brown said he received a letter in the mail saying his complaint would be investigated. After some time passed, he said he called back and left voicemails but never got a response and eventually gave up.

“It felt like there was nothing I can do,” he said. “I felt like nobody cared.”

Brown’s complaint is on file with the Minneapolis Office of Police Conduct Review, which handles civilian misconduct complaints against law enforcement, but it was never investigated, according to police documents obtained by NBC News in a joint investigation with Minneapolis affiliate Kare 11. Instead it was labeled an “inquiry.”

The review office says complaints are labeled as "inquiries" when they are not in writing, when an investigator needs more information but can’t get in touch with the complainant, or when the person is reached but declines to cooperate.

Minneapolis police officers have been the subject of 2,034 misconduct complaints since 2016, but NBC News found that there have been an additional 791 "inquiries" in that time period — making up 28 percent of the total number of citizens who contacted the review office to file a complaint.

“Twenty-eight percent is a very high percentage,” said Susan Hutson, director of the National Association for Civilian Oversight in Law Enforcement, a nonprofit that works with agencies to establish and improve oversight in their own departments.

“The devil is in the details. Why is this occurring? Are people abandoning the process? Do they just not feel safe? But that is a statistically significant amount and you would want to know why.”

NBC News spoke to 50 people whose complaints about Minneapolis police officers ended up being classified as inquiries. They involved a variety of issues including excessive force, inappropriate behavior and unwanted injections of ketamine, a sedative. The death of George Floyd on May 25 sparked an increase in inquiries. Of those interviewed by NBC News, five were related to the Floyd case and one was about an issue at a protest that followed his death.

Twenty-three of the 50 said they received no response at all. Of the other 27, some said they were told to file a complaint in person and decided against it because it was too big of a hassle or they feared a face-to-face encounter soon after having a bad experience with the police.

Six said they received a call back asking for clarifying information but never heard from the office again. Four said they received a letter in the mail saying the complaint was not going to be pursued.

Floyd's death has focused attention on the complaint histories of the four officers present at the scene and the challenges in firing problematic cops. But the NBC News review of Minneapolis misconduct complaints suggests that the filing process is difficult and unclear and that a large number are going uninvestigated.

“I listened, and we did what we were supposed to,” Brown said. “And nothing happened.”

Andrew Hawkins, chief of staff of communications at the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, which oversees the police conduct review office, declined to comment on Brown’s case, citing privacy rules.

But he told NBC News that inquiries are typically followed up with two phone calls and a letter or an email. If the recipient does not respond, the department cannot proceed. Hawkins also said that phone calls are not treated as official complaints because complaints require a signature.

The police review office staff “clearly communicates to members of the community who call the office that they will need to file an actual complaint for it to be processed by the office,” Hawkins said.

But 18 of the 27 people who filed complaints by phone and spoke to NBC News said they didn’t recall being told about the signature requirement.

Even when a complaint is investigated, discipline is rarely administered in Minneapolis. Since 2016, there have been 2,034 misconduct complaints against officers in the Minneapolis Police Department. Of the 1,690 closed complaints, 23 officers, or 1.3 percent, were disciplined, a percentage considered low by Hutson.

Hawkins said the majority of the complaints involve lower level violations and do not require responses categorized as discipline. The responses include coaching and training.

Dave Bicking, a former member of the Civilian Review Authority, a prior iteration of the Office of Police Conduct Review, said he’s long been troubled by the police department’s oversight process.

“We have been in contact with a number of people that have filed complaints with the OPCR, and universally find out that it's very hard to get through and actually file a complaint,” said Bicking, who is now a member of the advocacy group Communities Against Police Brutality.