Your EEOC complaint is not confidential

Officers ask me this one in a lowered voice, usually before they tell me anything else about what is happening to them.

“If I make an EEOC complaint against my department, is it confidential?”

No.

I wish I had a better answer for you. I don’t.

The investigation itself is not public record. That part is true, and it is the part people hold onto. But your complaint goes to your employer. Your department gets to read it. Every detail you put in there about the harassment, the discrimination, the retaliation, the hostile work environment you have been living in. The names you listed. The dates. What was said to you and who was standing there when it was said.

And you and I both know what happens after that.

Rumors move through a law enforcement agency the way a wildfire moves through a Texas summer drought. You have watched it happen to somebody else. You may have watched it happen and kept your mouth shut, because that is what you do when you want to keep your head down and keep working.

So let me answer the real question underneath the one you asked. They are going to find out.

Now the part that matters more.

You can do this.

You work a job that requires you to be brave. You have already proved that, on calls where you had no idea what was on the other side of the door and you went anyway. Nobody handed you that. You earned it.

And listen to me on this one. If you are asking whether a complaint will stay quiet, you are already past the point where quiet was going to save you. People do not ask that question when things are fine. You are asking because something is already happening to you, and you have been carrying it alone, probably longer than you have admitted to anyone.

What you need now is somebody in your corner, not better secrecy.

So here is the next move.

Book a call with me. Fifteen minutes, free. Tell me what is going on, and I will tell you whether I think you have something you should get started on. I will also tell you if I don’t.

Do not sit on this. The clock on these claims starts running the day something happens, not the day you decide you are ready to deal with it.

Go book the call.

-Bridget

This post provides general information and does not constitute legal advice. Laws vary by jurisdiction.