A Black Lives Matter protester confronts a Minneapolis Police Officer over the death of Jamar Clark, Nov. 19, 2015. Photograph taken in front of Minneapolis' 4th Precinct police station.

If you don't believe by now that policing in the US is broken, you haven’t been paying attention. Case in point: as calls for police accountability and transparency continue to echo across the land, there is also the call for people—all people … no seriously, all people—to simply comply with officers when faced with unjust arrests or harassment. The theory is “live to fight, or file a complaint against the officer, another day.” On its face that appears to be sound, reasonable advice. But what if you can’t file a complaint against police because the police won’t let you? Then what? In Minneapolis, a group of “undercover” lawyers (that’s such a cool term, by the way) attempted to file hypothetical complaints against police officers at various precincts:

The Office of Police Conduct Review assigned three attorneys to each of Minneapolis’ five police precincts to make hypothetical complaints. They dropped in at different times during the day over several weeks, and were told to be polite, but firm. They were to strictly follow the basic, two-step process listed on the city’s website. But the testers were turned away 13 of the 15 times they tried to make a complaint.

The “undercover” lawyers were turned away when they tried to make a complaint. Not that they filled out the complaint form and it was “lost”; not that they filled out the complaint form, it was accepted, processed, investigated and found without merit. “Of the 15 times they tried to make a complaint,” they were turned away 13 times. As in, “get the hell out of here with this mess.”

What words do we use to describe such behavior? Shameful? Corrupt? Feel free to add your own.

If there is a silver lining to this, the only precinct that did not give the lawyers the runaround was Minneapolis’ 4th precinct. The precinct that was occupied for more than two weeks over the murder of Jamar Clark by Black Lives Matter activists . The precinct that Black Lives Matter activists occupied for more than two weeks over the murder of Jamar Clark.

Who says protesting doesn’t work?