one of the keys to combating police misconduct here in New Jersey is a system for reporting police misconduct put into place by New Jersey's former Attorney General Gurbir Grewal three years ago but a new report from the State Comptroller found that most police departments are not offering those reporting systems and have failed to comply with the internal affairs mandates senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan spoke with an advocate who's taken it upon himself to help police departments update their systems there are a lot of frankly alarming findings in the comptroller's report Advocates like Marlena you will point to a new state comptroller's report that showed 80 out of 100 Jersey police departments failed to properly Post online forms allowing the public to complain about how they're treated by officers the Comptroller also found a third of the police complaint forms included at least one forbidden feature like this a warning about filing false reports and These Warnings act as a deterrent to to filing a complaint so warnings about criminal prosecution and Punishment and these kinds of warnings are actually in direct violation of the internal affairs policies and procedures set by the Office of the Attorney General those sorts of warnings can scare people who have valid complaints comptroller Kevin Walsh says his office randomly sampled a hundred police departments from all across the state to see whether they're giving residents a proper online Complaint Form as directed by New Jersey's attorney general three years ago the police department's website is supposed to in effect be the front door the public needs to feel that that door is open to them if they want to file a complaint the Comptroller found 80 out of 100 departments not in full compliance 15 in partial compliance and just five that got it right Hoboken, Oceanport, Monroe, Spring Lake and Neptune City which offers forms in all 11 required foreign languages forms are available from the attorney gen it's easy to link to them or make them available on the website and the overwhelming majority of police departments that we heard from when we shared our findings with them let us know that they had already corrected the problem or were in the the process of doing so when you see this type of non-compliance rampant non-compliance uh you kind of got to feel well maybe they probably don't really care and I think that's the message the police absolutely do not want to be sending John pass a Cumberland county-born Civics gadfly who's pushing New Jersey police departments to comply with the attorney general's rules for posting complaints the comptroller's report showed 26 of the Departments wrongly demanded IDs from folks filing a complaint I've noticed Police Department is asking for your social security number your aliases they're treating you like a criminal when you file it it is I I believe I'm not sure if it was intentional it has the effect of dissuading people from filing Internal Affairs complaints against officers paff says he's filed public records requests with departments in Sussex and Salem counties asking why they haven't posted required summaries of internal affairs cases and police discipline Reports most of them have really just been very well whoops we forgot here you go it's up there now it kind of though makes me wonder like why am I having to do this and we have prosecutors officers that are supposed to have oversight authority over all the local police departments he says you'll tackle the issue in all 21 Jersey counties we asked New Jersey's Office of the Attorney General for comment and haven't heard back New Jersey State Office of chiefs of police declined an interview euble says New Jersey also needs to make police disciplinary records subject to public searches this would allow members of the public to access disciplinary records of the police officers in their communities and she says establishing Civilian Complaint review boards would give residents input into an internal disciplinary process that for now remains dangerously opaque I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight news