Shielding Bad Cops

[Shuftin]

Salt Lake City Utah Doing Everything Possible To Block Release Of Information On Bad Police Officers To Public


2006-09-18

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – The latest round in a legal tennis match between The Salt Lake Tribune and the Salt Lake City Corporation Police Civilian Review Board was served Thursday as city attorneys filed to block an appeal that granted the paper access to records previously withheld from public view.

At stake are the files of three police officer review cases in which the review board and the police chief disagreed on the final disposition. In those records, the board sustained allegations of excessive force, dishonesty, a civil rights violation and the destruction of evidence.

The Tribune filed a records request for the files of four cases under the state's Government Records Access Management Act in February but was denied access to three of them citing the protection of private information in two of the cases and an unfinished appeal process on the third.

Though the same request was denied by the city's appeal board in March, the State Records Committee ruled on Aug. 17 that the interest of the public outweighed the private interest of protecting sensitive information about the officers.

The state committee ordered the records of the four cases, which The Tribune requested in February, be released with only information about witnesses and complainant redacted. Information about the officers involved was not to be altered or concealed, according to the ruling.

But on Thursday, city attorney Martha Stonebrook countered the state committee's ruling, saying the public interest does not outweigh the private interests of the officers.

The release of the information also could potentially confuse the public in matters "differentiating an advisory recommendation by the review board from an actual sustained finding of misconduct by the police chief," which could "unfairly stigmatize police officers in situations where the police chief does not sustain the allegations of misconduct," wrote Stonebrook in the complaint.

The release of the information could result in the unfair treatment of officers in review situations and negatively affect the chief's ability to execute disciplinary matters, Stonebrook alleges. The complaint was filed three days shy of the 30-day appeal deadline.

[Shuftin]

State Of California Sheilding Bad Cops - Disciplinary Action Against Police Officers Is Now Secret, So The Public Loses, Is At A Much Greater Risk


2006-09-17

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – The Public has lost a major skirmish in the battle for government transparency in California.

Late last month, the state Supreme Court ruled records of disciplinary action taken against police officers must remain secret even when a government body that is independent of the officer's employer holds the documents.

The case involves a San Diego County Sheriff's deputy fired after failing to make an arrest in a domestic violence case and then lying about it. The officer eventually appealed the firing to the county Civil Service Commission.

The San Diego Union Tribune sued the commission under the public records act, seeking documents on the case. The newspaper's lawyers argued the state law that makes any records involving law enforcement personnel confidential doesn't apply when the agency holding those records is not the officer's employer.

It is a simple, straightforward argument. The public has a right to know what action is taken against employees paid with tax dollars and the identity of those employees.

A Superior Court judge ruled against the newspaper, but an appellate panel overturned that decision, deciding that the records were public. The case was then appealed to the Supreme Court, which overturned the appellate decision in a 6-1 decision.

The fault lies not so much with the court but with a Legislature that bows to pressure from law enforcement unions and grants them special rights and exemptions from disclosure that work directly against the public good. Deep-pocketed unions have pulled off, from their perspective, an excellent job labeling anything other than lock-step adherence to their demands as "anti-police" or "anti-law enforcement," a clear political death knell.

But that doesn't mean that restrictions on police officer records represent sound public policy. In fact, just the opposite is true.

As public records lawyer and advocate Terry Francke has repeatedly said, sometimes the very public employees about whom people may need to know the most, those with the power of arrest and who can administer lethal force, are the very ones who enjoy ironclad restrictions on their records.

Police officers are a generally conservative lot, yet their unions often act in ways that many conservatives abhor, becoming the ultimate special interest in Sacramento and winning huge legislative concessions to protect their members' records.

In the San Diego case, the officer was fired after responding to a domestic violence call and failing to arrest a suspect despite there being probable cause to do so, not writing a report of the incident and then lying in a patrol log that the victim bore no signs of physical injury and that the suspect had fled.

The sheriff's department did the right thing in firing the officer. Such action is what the public expects.

But the officer appealed the firing and eventually the county agreed to a settlement of the appeal that changed the record from a termination to a resignation and removed the untruthfulness charge.

One of the most basic issues involves the officer's identity. His or her name has never been released. The court's ruling means that the names of any disciplined officers are secret.

The Legislature, bowing to special interest pressure, created a system that allows bad cops to cloak themselves in shrouds of secrecy. Officers fired for cause can force settlements that clean up their records and hide their identity. This potentially leaves them eligible for future public employment in other jurisdictions as law enforcement officers.

And it allows officer's disciplined but not fired to be assured that their records remain sealed and their identity's hidden from public knowledge. Even police officers disciplined for wrongly shooting people are protected.

Police and their advocates argue that opening records that may contain false allegations against officers besmirches their reputations.

It is unfortunate when an officer is wrongly accused of abuse and misconduct, but their individual interests and reputations cannot outweigh the public need for government transparency. The shrouds have to be lifted. Behind them, bad cops can find their ways back to the street.

The only fix is legislative. California's lawmakers need to pass a bill creating public access and accountability in police disciplinary cases.

But such a bill, despite the overwhelming need, won't happen. Lawmakers probably won't even introduce it, let alone pass it

They don't have the guts.