A list of citizens considered "chronic complainers" has been kept by the Columbus Police Division's Internal Affairs Bureau for years without a written policy outlining who may be placed on it and for what reasons.

A list of citizens considered �chronic complainers� has been kept by the Columbus Police Division�s Internal Affairs Bureau for years without a written policy outlining who may be placed on it and for what reasons.

Police say the �caller watch list� is simply a record of the small number of people who file repeated internal-affairs complaints about the division or individual officers, particularly if those complaints routinely are deemed unfounded.

Critics see the practice as having questionable value and the potential to be abused.

�This seems to be a very loosely cobbled-together list of individuals who some individual members of law enforcement have decided make too many complaints,� said Mike Brickner, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

In an interview with The Dispatch on Thursday, Police Chief Kim Jacobs said the division was in the midst of reviewing the list and drafting a policy to control its use. The city released the new �vexatious complainant policy� to the newspaper on Friday, after the two-page document was approved by Public Safety Director Mitchell J. Brown.

The recent internal scrutiny of the list followed a series of public-records requests that were made separately by The Dispatch and Robert Fitrakis, a lawyer, along with two of his clients � child-rights advocates James Whitaker and Bernadine Kennedy Kent.

The list that was released contains 63 names, along with phone numbers, addresses and brief notes about each entry, such as �frequent caller, unable to understand police tactics� or �banned from ride-alongs and is upset.� Other reasons for inclusion are less clear; about 20 percent refer to the people listed as �16-B,� the police 10-code for �disturbance-mental.�

Brown and police legal adviser Jeffrey Furbee referred questions to Jacobs, who oversaw the Internal Affairs Bureau�s reorganization in 2001. She said the list began informally to keep track of the handful of callers known to file often-spurious complaints against officers for reasons ranging from spite to obvious mental-health issues.

�Originally, it was just a little notepad of names on the corkboard,� she said.

Jacobs said the list has never affected the reporting of crimes or emergencies and is not accessed by dispatchers when residents call for help. It was kept only to help internal-affairs investigators assess a complainant�s credibility with input from the bureau�s commander, a deputy chief or chief, she said. �That�s all this list is. There are no instructions to sergeants to not take a complaint from those people.�

Jacobs expressed surprise when advised by The Dispatch of some of the notes, which say that police will not take complaints and also indicate that lieutenants and sergeants might have been making those decisions:

� �No complaints unless serious misconduct.�

� �Per Lt. ... cancel complaints unless serious misconduct.�

� �No complaints unless clear articulation of critical misconduct.�

� �Take no complaints against (a particular officer).�

�If it said, �no complaints,� then that�s kind of news to me,� Jacobs said. �I don�t think you'll see that anymore.�

The new policy says the list�s purpose �is not to summarily dismiss a complaint of misconduct� but only to alert investigators that complaints from certain citizens �require stricter scrutiny ... prior to allocating full, if any, investigation resources.�

Only the internal-affairs commander, deputy chiefs or chief now may add someone to the list.

�Allegations of misconduct will always be taken and evaluated,� the policy states.

The list will be reviewed annually by the internal-affairs commander. A person who does not make another vexatious allegation within two years will be dropped, according to the policy. Previously, there was no set way for a citizen to get off the list, and references to case numbers in the notes section suggest that some of the names have been on it for more than a decade.

Whitaker and Kennedy Kent, who were whistle-blowers credited with helping to jump-start a federal investigation into school tutoring-program fraud, had suspected that the list existed since 2006, when a lieutenant during that investigation said they were on it. They emailed city officials, including Jacobs, in 2012 demanding information about the list but got no response.

�No one should be on any daggone list,� Kennedy Kent said. �Complaints of a serious nature were not investigated because of that list.�

For the past year, she and Whitaker have argued that city police broke the law by failing to investigate the couple�s reports of physical and sexual abuse of children they know. Confirmation that the list existed bolstered their assertion that the division does not take them or their reports of crimes and police misconduct seriously, Kennedy Kent said.

Attorney Fitrakis� name was not on the recently released list, but he called the list arbitrary and discriminatory. The police, he said, �might want to involve someone with a master�s in psychology� before branding people 16-B, or mentally ill.

�The list�s becoming more public certainly has caused us to think more (about) how we phrase things,� Jacobs said. �It�s not meant to be offensive, but it is meant to provide information about what we might be facing.�

The old list has been whittled down to fewer than 20 names, she said. �It truly hasn�t been an issue, because we use it for the right reasons in the right way.�

She compared the practice to the designation of some citizens as �vexatious litigators� by the court system to rein in their filing of frivolous or harassing lawsuits.

Brickner of the ACLU called that an unfair comparison. People who face a vexatious-litigator designation are notified and have the chance to argue their side, he said. The new police policy does neither.

�When you don�t have strong parameters like this, it often very easily creeps to other areas,� Brickner said.

tdecker@dispatch.com