The problem was that the San Francisco Fire Department did not have standardized policies for investigating complaints of poor service or employee misconduct initiated by the public, other emergency service providers, or its employees. The purpose of this research was to create a manual that standardized the guidelines for investigating complaints.A literature review was the primary procedure utilized in the study that employed evaluative and action research methodology to answer the following questions: 1) What procedures should be followed when investigating complaints? 2) What legal issues need to be considered when investigating complaints? 4) How should information discovered during the investigation be analyzed and reported? The results of this study produced a policies and procedures manual for investigating complaints of poor service and/or employee misconduct received by the San Francisco Fire Department.Recommendations for the use of this research included a) submission of the manual for approval by the City Attorney's Office and the San Francisco Department of Human resources b) incorporation of the guidelines into the department's human resources policies and procedures manuals c) incorporation into the EMS Incident Management System procedures d) selection of a limited number of members to be trained as investigators and e) evaluation of the program after six months.