'I quit!' — Counter-complaints against investigators are driving police out of detective units

Officer A, an investigator at a front-line police station in the greater Seoul area, was recently counter-sued by a suspect in a case he was handling — turning the investigator into the investigated.

The case began with a series of complaints filed against a small bakery. After one individual repeatedly demanded compensation, claiming to have found foreign objects in the company's products, the bakery filed a complaint with police alleging obstruction of business. To verify the identity of the suspect, who had been using an alias, Officer A looked up the subscriber information linked to a phone number used during the complaint process and confirmed the person's real name.

The suspect then filed a complaint against Officer A, alleging that the process of identifying his real name was unlawful and citing abuse of authority, dereliction of duty, and violations of the Personal Information Protection Act and the Protection of Communications Secrets Act. The suspect was also reported to have told the investigator, "Now you know what it feels like to be sued."

Investigators being counter-sued by complainants or suspects in their own cases is not uncommon on the front lines of policing. In most instances, a party dissatisfied with the outcome or conduct of an investigation turns around and targets the officer in charge.

The head of an investigations unit at a Seoul police station said that whether a party feels aggrieved and whether a crime was actually committed are separate questions, and that charges are often difficult to substantiate. Officers working on financial crime units — which handle fraud, embezzlement and breach of fiduciary duty cases where interests are sharply contested — are particularly prone to such counter-complaints, according to officers in the field.

Lee Sang-hoon, a professor in the police studies department at Daejeon University, said that while people who have genuinely suffered from improper investigations cannot be barred from exercising their rights, complaints filed with the intent to influence an ongoing investigation are also mixed in, putting police in an uncomfortable position.

Parties to a case who believe an investigation is biased or improper can file a formal objection. Provincial and metropolitan police agencies review individual cases to assess whether they were properly handled and can recommend reinvestigation if warranted. Some parties, however, bypass that process entirely and file direct criminal complaints against the investigator.

This year, a new charge — "perversion of justice" — has become a fresh avenue for targeting investigators. According to the Korean National Police Agency, as of July, 3,535 police officers were under investigation on suspicion of perverting justice, outnumbering prosecutors (727) and judges (529) facing the same charge.

The head of an investigations unit at a front-line station said the introduction of the perversion-of-justice charge had led to a modest increase in complaints filed under that label. "When you look at the substance, the allegations are often similar to what used to come in as abuse of authority or dereliction of duty," the official said. "A lot of them start from dissatisfaction that the investigation didn't go the way the complainant wanted."

Being sued does not automatically remove an investigator from a case. Replacing an officer solely on the basis of a complaint would open the door to abuse of the process as a tactic to swap out an unwanted investigator. However, once a complaint related to an officer's duties is received, the investigator must explain the procedures and circumstances of the investigation and may be subject to questioning.

The head of a financial crimes unit at a front-line station said that if the allegations lack specifics, the complaint can be dismissed outright, but that even a small disputed point is enough to trigger a formal inquiry into the officer.

That added burden compounds the pressures already weighing on front-line investigators, who are struggling with a backlog of cases and a shortage of staff. When an amended code of criminal procedure abolishing prosecutors' investigative functions takes effect next month, the volume of cases transferred from prosecutors to police is expected to grow — and more officers are already looking to exit investigative roles.

According to the Korean National Police Agency, 1,191 officers have been removed from investigative duties this year — 633 at their own request and 558 by administrative order. The number of voluntary departures has hovered in the 500-to-600 range annually in recent years: 654 in 2023, 616 in 2024 and 565 last year.

"Cases keep piling up, and if someone doesn't like how their case was handled, they file a complaint against you, and even if there's no wrongdoing, you still have to explain why you investigated the way you did," one front-line investigator said. "There are people leaving investigative units because they can't take the pressure of the complaints and the lawsuits."

Blanket restrictions on complaints against investigators are not a realistic option, however, since parties to a case must retain a channel for redress when an investigation is genuinely unlawful or improper. Professor Lee said that internal mechanisms such as the investigation objection review committee could be developed into a filtering layer. "It may not be a fundamental solution, but it is meaningful in that the organization can intervene at least once between the parties and the investigator," he said.