ABSTRACT
In discourses surrounding police complaint machineries, few notions carry more weight and evoke more passion than the principle of independence. e extent of the independent dimension within police complaints processes, particularly the independence of the investigative process, is widely used by policy analysts and politicians alike as a sort of litmus test of the robustness and eectiveness of a complaints system. Alongside other parallel notions such as “civilian” or “citizen” oversight, independence appears to oer solutions to the fundamental challenges of dealing with complaints against the police that police-led systems cannot. Furthermore, the trajectory of complaints agencies seems to be one of a relentless, if sometimes stuttering, march toward a greater role for independent mechanisms within police complaints arrangements (Filstad & Gottschalk, 2011). A lot rests, therefore, on how independent elements and processes within machineries for the oversight of policing operate in practice and are interpreted and made to function by actors responsible for them.
