Over the last three years, 21 people have formally complained of excessive force by police officers in Elizabeth, 16 have made allegations of wrongful arrests, entry and searches, and 10 have accused cops of committing various crimes, records show.

During that same period, Elizabeth officers were charged with sex assault, beating a handcuffed man and driving drunk, among other wrongdoing that led to indictments and at least one guilty plea.

Yet in 2016, 2017 and 2018, according to data obtained by NJ Advance Media, internal investigators at the troubled city department did not substantiate a single claim of serious wrongdoing by police.

Authorities say the internal affairs numbers, which are required to be compiled under state attorney general guidelines, don’t tell the whole story – partly because the gravest allegations get referred outside the department for a criminal investigation, putting any internal inquiry on hold.

Still, civil rights activists in Elizabeth say for years, police have failed to properly investigate their complaints, sometimes going so far as to intimidate residents who tried to report problem officers.

Confronted with the data, city officials pointed fingers at each other.

Mayor Chris Bollwage blamed Police Chief John Brennan, accusing internal investigators of playing favorites in their inquiries. Brennan defended his internal investigators and countered that his former boss, Police Director James Cosgrove – a Bollwage ally and fundraiser who recently resigned amid allegations he used racist and sexist slurs – was the one who interfered in internal affairs.

Meanwhile the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, which took over internal affairs functions at the department in April amid mounting complaints, has pledged reforms at the 300-officer department, which serves New Jersey’s fourth-largest city, one of the most diverse places in the state.

Acting Prosecutor Jennifer Davenport told citizens at a community meeting last week her office was doing a “deep dive” to overhaul internal investigations and workplace culture.

“Our review of the Elizabeth Police Department’s internal affairs functions remains in its earliest stages, and as such, it would be premature to make any definitive assessment," Davenport told NJ Advance Media in a statement when asked whether she found the city’s internal affairs numbers credible.

“However, we are fully confident that this process will result in substantive improvements to the fashion in which complaints are received and adjudicated.”

The promises for change follow the ouster of Cosgrove, who led the department for more than two decades until an inquiry by the prosecutor’s office found he had for years berated staff with racist and sexist slurs, prompting the state’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to call for his removal.

Bollwage, the mayor, has yet to publicly address the allegations against Cosgrove other than to accept his resignation after discussing the prosecutor’s probe with the attorney general.

He also did not respond to a list of questions from NJ Advance Media about the internal affairs data, instead providing a brief statement laying the blame on Brennan, the department’s top sworn officer, who answered directly to Cosgrove.

Bollwage said he “raised many of the same issues (regarding internal affairs) as well as others” with the attorney general. The mayor claimed he asked Grewal to remove Brennan and “change the IA leadership,” citing “favoritism” by internal investigators and saying under state rules he lacked the authority to intervene.

A spokeswoman for the attorney general declined to comment on that request.

SERIOUS COMPLAINTS UNHEEDED

Last year, NJ Advance Media released The Force Report, a never-before-seen database of police use of force records, which showed how often officers reported using compliance holds, punches, kicks and even their guns in the line of duty over a five-year period, from 2012 to 2016.

Police in Elizabeth reported using force at a rate higher than 90 percent of New Jersey police departments, including those serving larger cities such as Newark, Jersey City and Paterson.

Following Cosgrove’s ouster, NJ Advance Media requested internal investigation summary reports for the city going back three years under the state Open Public Records Act.

Police internal affairs records are largely kept secret in New Jersey, meaning all but the most egregious cases of police misconduct are withheld from public view. The summary reports do not identify individual officers or complainants, instead outlining the number and general nature of complaints, as well as whether they were upheld, disproven or thrown out for lack of evidence.

Between 2016 and 2018, the internal affairs office fielded 246 complaints of wrongdoing by Elizabeth cops, sustaining 54 of them, the data shows.

But 47 of those cases were categorized as “rule violations” and the remaining seven pertained to officers’ “demeanor." Complaints over rule-breaking are more likely to come from within the department, while complaints of excessive force or wrongful arrest are more likely to come from citizens and those arrested by police, experts say.

There is also not an exact match between complaints made and the outcomes of investigations, because internal inquiries can often span calendar years. In fact, during the three-year period NJ Advance Media examined, the Elizabeth internal affairs office “exonerated” cops in more excessive force cases than it took in, logging 22 exonerations compared to 21 complaints.

The data also doesn’t reflect some of the gravest allegations against Elizabeth police officers, though officials counter there’s good reason for that.

Dig into the numbers and you won’t find rookie cop Samaad I. Bethea, who was indicted in February on charges he sexually assaulted a woman last year. Or Officer Edward Shields, who was indicted last year on simple assault charges for allegedly beating a handcuffed suspect in police headquarters in an incident recorded on a body camera.

Assistant Prosecutor John Esmerado, the county prosecutor’s investigations supervisor, told NJ Advance Media there can be a lag between when a complaint is made and when the outcome is logged in the internal affairs summaries, particularly when the allegations result in a criminal probe, which puts the internal one on hold.

For example, he said, “we have two pending criminal cases against police officers, so there’s no finding while those cases are pending.”

Elizabeth is hardly alone in its track record of dismissing citizen complaints of police violence.

Experts say internal investigators can find use of force or a search or arrest to be improper without the conduct becoming criminal, but records have shown some departments around New Jersey rarely uphold any complaint that doesn’t result in a criminal referral.

An NJ Advance Media probe of the Atlantic City Police Department’s use-of-force record found between 2007 and 2014, just two of 570 excessive force complaints were sustained. In Paterson, where the U.S. Attorneys Office has charged multiple officers in an ongoing criminal probe, the television station ABC 7 found just one of 183 excessive force complaints was upheld from 2014 to 2018.

Maria Haberfeld, a police science professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, cautioned that it’s not unusual for departments to receive far more complaints of excessive force than they uphold.

“For people outside law enforcement, every use of force to them looks like excessive force, because force never looks pretty," she said.

CHIEF DEFENDS INVESTIGATORS, COMMUNITY CALLS FOR REFORM

The debate over police oversight in Elizabeth has been muddied by a bitter feud, with the mayor and ousted police director on one side and the chief on the other.

Following the internal affairs takeover by county prosecutors, long-simmering tensions between them boiled into public view when the mayor, Bollwage, disclosed an unspecified internal affairs complaint filed against the chief, Brennan. The nature of that complaint remains a mystery.

Through his attorney, Brennan stood by his internal investigators. Any suggestion that internal probes were done improperly is “nothing but a political lynching perpetuated for nefarious and selfish reasons" by the mayor and his allies, said the attorney, Stuart Alterman.

“The political winds have now changed with the ouster of the former director and political intermeddling of the police department should now cease," he said.

At the meeting at the African American Cultural Center Thursday, the acting prosecutor, Davenport, and several staffers heard residents say they have no faith in Elizabeth’s internal affairs process after seeing complaints of excessive force and wrongful arrest dismissed time after time.

The county officials said anyone who distrusts local police can still report wrongdoing to county or state authorities. Several residents said that extra step shouldn’t be necessary.

Rev. Joseph Adair, a former president of the Elizabeth chapter of the NAACP, said the office’s pledge to revamp oversight going forward was not enough.

“I think it would be better if you were to go back several years to investigate internal affairs and find out some of the things that may not have been investigated or (were) covered up,” he said.

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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