Complaints

As to COMPLAINTS, the effect of Section 89 of the Police Integrity Commission Act, so far as relevant, may be stated in the following terms:

The Inspector's function in this regard is confined to dealing with complaints of abuse of power, impropriety and other forms of misconduct, ON THE PART OF THE COMMISSION OR ITS OFFICERS, and these are to be dealt with by reports and recommendations.
Thus it is clear that the Inspector's powers in relation to dealing with complaints do not extend to dealing with complaints agains N.S.W. Police.
In N.S.W., complaints by members of the public concerning police complaints may be made to the Ombudsman, the Police Integrity Commission or directly to the Police. In practical terms the Ombudsman deals with the vast majority of police complaints, usually by oversighting investigations of such complaints by the police themselves. Thus the vast majority of police complaints are investigated by the police, but such investigations are oversighted by the Ombudsman.
By way of contrast, the Police Integrity Commission's role is confined to investigating a small number of serious police complaints (perhaps less than twenty per annum) and to oversighting an even smaller number of complaints investigated by the Police at the request of the Commission.
The overall position may be demonstrated by reference, first, to the 2007 Annual Report of the Ombudsman.
The Report notes that during the reporting year the Ombudsman received and assessed 3,466 formal or written complaints (2198 from members of the public, and 1268 from the police themselves). Of these, 2157 were investigated by police, such investigations being oversighted by the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman has power to directly investigate complaints, but this power is used sparingly and only where relevant criteria are satisfied. There is also power to monitor the investigation of complaints by police, and in these cases the Ombudsman takes up the role of an independent observer of the investigation procedures. During the reporting year 34 investigations were monitored in this way.
Although the Police Integrity Commission may in theory choose to investigate or oversee the investigation of notifiable complaints, in practice only a handful are either investigated or oversighted by the Police Integrity Commission. For example, according to the PIC 2007 Annual Report published on 25 October 2007, during the reporting year only 11 complaints received by the Police Integrity Commission were investigated by it, and a further 25 were the subject of oversight by the PIC. Although the PIC has certain powers under the Police Integrity Commission Act to oversight the investigation of such complaints by police, it is not included in the extensive powers conferred on the Ombudsman under the Police Act.
The statutory office of the Inspector is quite independent of the Police Integrity Commission and is not subject to the Commission in any respect, and where complaint falls within the Inspector's jurisdiction, the latter is invested with wide powers (set out in Section 90 of the Act) in order to deal with such complaints, and, as noted in paragraph 3, such complaints are to be dealt with by way of reports and recommendations.