photo by Patricia Evans
Foundational to our work is the belief that the public deserves access to data that is accessible and usable. Our open data work centers around a set of practices and tools for making this happen. Through our work on the Civic Police Data Project (CPDP.co), we learned that transparency requires more than access alone. The public needs tools for understanding. We know that data such as police misconduct records and use of force reports as well as larger, detailed reports including civilian complaints, matters beyond the interactions or records of individual officers: it is part of how we help journalists, lawyers, organizers and the public assess and challenge the department’s claims about its reforms.
It is from this lens that we have begun broad research and reporting to better understand the legal and political conditions of police data transparency on a national level. In partnership with a host of newsrooms, nonprofits, and media organizations alongside Big Local News, we are pushing to obtain crucial data around officer certification and employment history nationwide. Since the coalition began making yearly record requests in 2019, 36 states have fully released their certification data while 14 have issued full denials. Four of the states that initially released the full request for records have since shifted policy and now reject it. Those who deny access often argue that releasing this information would endanger officer safety.
Yet, this data is already public record. Police Departments regularly post identifying information through their social media channels, training departments, and as part of open records laws. What is not available to the public, and virtually unknown, is a comprehensive database of the certified officers of each state alongside their employment history.
It is well-documented that officers with a history of misconduct and abuse who have been fired, quit under investigation, or otherwise left one department will move to another department, often in a different state. Because agencies share limited information about officers records (if any), it is unknown just how pervasive the issue of “wandering cops” is. Yet access to this data would provide journalists with the tools to report on issues of police misconduct and oversight and give the public tools to better understand the makeup of their local police departments.
Some of our partners in the coalition have started publishing stories about what denial to this access means for particular states as well as nationwide implications. Investigative reporter Sam Stecklow continues to contribute to this reporting and the nationwide push for open data. We’ll share excerpts of these stories below as they’re published.
In 2015, Louisiana lawmakers created a database to track police certifications, which officers must maintain to work in law enforcement. Legislators claimed the information would prevent police officers with histories of misconduct from finding new law enforcement jobs in other jurisdictions.
But, by virtually all accounts, that database has failed to achieve its objective. According to repeated journalistic investigations, officers in Louisiana regularly maintain their certifications after being criminally convicted. Many fail to report to the state why they leave their jobs as required by law. And some then go on to commit misconduct with new police departments.
Despite the state expanding its police-oversight powers in 2017, the problem has persisted. On top of this failure of oversight, Louisiana is also one of 14 states that keep this database secret from the public, according to a report project by a national coalition of news organizations.
When new officials took on the oversight of Arkansas law enforcement officers under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders early this year, they made keeping bad cops off the street a focus.
They said they adopted new processes and safeguards intended to prevent problem officers from hopping from department to department and have even looked at individuals who may have slipped through the cracks in the past.
But Arkansas remains one of 15 states that keep the identities of its officers private, making public oversight near impossible.
The Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training denied several Advocate public records requests for data from its database of certified law enforcement officers in the state.
Metro Times and a nonprofit news organization teamed up to file a lawsuit Monday against the Michigan State Police for refusing to disclose public records about the identities of current and former police officers.
The lawsuit, filed in the Michigan Court of Claims by the University of Michigan’s Civil Rights Litigation Initiative, alleges MSP violated the Michigan Freedom of Information Act by refusing to divulge the data.
Among other things, Metro Times and the Invisible Institute requested the names of all certified and uncertified officers in Michigan, along with information about their employment history. The information is held by the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES), which is housed within the MSP.
After the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Colorado lawmakers passed a bill requiring the state’s Peace Officer Standards & Training (POST) board to publish a public database containing some basic disciplinary information about police officers.
But Colorado still refuses to release a more extensive database of all law enforcement officers whom the state has certified to arrest people and carry a gun, and where they have worked.
The refusal to release this information makes Colorado one of just 15 states that keep this type of police officer data secret, according to a nationwide reporting project, preventing the press and public from adequately monitoring the state’s oversight of wandering or second-chance officers.
The state Attorney General’s office denied a records request late last year. The request was made by a coalition of outlets tracking “wandering officers,” cops that are fired or leave their departments due to poor performance or misconduct and are rehired elsewhere. The state DOJ did provide its list of decertified officers, which it has been tracking since 2017, and its list of “flagged officers;” those who remain certified but were fired for cause, quit in the middle of an investigation, or in lieu of termination.
Using the flagged officers list obtained from the state DOJ, a 2021 investigation by The Badger Project found nearly 200 active officers in the state who had been fired or forced out from another law enforcement agency. Later that year, Wisconsin Act 82 was signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers, which requires law enforcement agencies to keep records on all officers, share those employee files with other agencies, and gave Wisconsin’s Law Enforcement Standards Board broader powers to decertify officers. Another investigation from The Badger Project in February 2022 found at least 12 “wandering officers” had been rehired in western Wisconsin.
After a journalist requested police certification and employment history data from Nevada, the agency handling that data denied their request.
Last year, journalists with Big Local News, part of Stanford University’s Journalism and Democracy Initiative, sought police certification data from every state in the country. The project aims to make this data more easily available to journalists seeking it in the future.
In January, one of those journalists requested officer certification and employment history data from Nevada Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST), which oversees the training and certification of police officers in the state.
The agency denied their request.
According to another journalist that worked to coordinate the appeals in states that rejected journalists’ requests for the data, the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism organization based in Chicago, also requested the same data in 2019.
A new reform to police disciplinary procedures grants additional powers to Virginia officials investigating law enforcement officers accused of wrongdoing, while also limiting public access to hearings and records.
The measure, sponsored by Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, follows landmark reform legislation passed by the General Assembly in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Gov. Glenn Youngkin last week signed the bill, SB 88, which will go into effect in July.
The new law, supported by the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police (VACP), has drawn criticism from activists and watchdog groups for potentially barring the public from disciplinary hearings and limiting transparency into records of alleged misconduct.
It also provides investigators with subpoena power under the Virginia Administrative Process Act for appeal hearings. Finally, it gives the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) the authority to prevent officers-in-training from being certified if they commit serious misconduct.
Despite passage of two police reform bills in 2023, Delaware remains one of just 15 states that keeps data about police officers that the state has certified, and where they work, secret, according to a nationwide reporting project.
This makes it impossible for citizens and journalists alike to monitor the state’s oversight of so-called “wandering officers” who switch departments only to continue patterns of aggressive behavior toward civilians.
Now, Delaware’s culture of police secrecy is being challenged in court. A lawsuit filed last week on behalf of Delaware Call is seeking data held by the state Police Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST), which tracks all law enforcement officers currently working in Delaware, and which agencies employ and have employed them.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, Virginia lawmakers took action on reports that state policing regulators failed to strip the police certifications from dozens of officers with criminal convictions ranging from embezzlement to possession of child pornography and sexual assault.
The Legislature passed a bill in October 2020 requiring police departments to complete internal investigations even if officers resign during them, and to provide any records of misconduct to new prospective employers for officers; strengthening the requirements for agencies to send reports of misconduct to state regulators; expanding the offenses for which officers can be stripped of their certifications; and requiring a state board to write a statewide standard of conduct for policing.
“This will keep them from job jumping,” said state Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, one of the main sponsors.
Three years later, barely anything has changed. The statewide code of conduct draft has languished in the review stage for over a hundred days past its deadline. While the state Criminal Justice Services Board (CJSB) has increased the number of officers it decertifies, critics accuse the board of inconsistently applying its expanded abilities to decertify officers.
The number of police officers in Michigan has fallen from 23,000 in 2001 to 18,500 today, a 19.6% decline. In just the last three years, the state lost about 900 officers.
Without enough cops, departments are spending more on overtime and struggling to meet the demands of investigations and traffic patrols, creating serious concerns about public safety.
The staffing crisis has forced police departments into the uncomfortable position of contemplating lowering their applicant standards, a scenario that worries activists and law enforcement experts at a time when law enforcement is already under fire for high-profile incidents of misconduct. Some departments have eased restrictions on drug use, nepotism, residency and age requirements, and minimum education standards, while others have eliminated tests for physical ability and typing, according to a March 2022 survey from the Police Executive Research Forum.
What’s further concerning, experts say, is the pressure on departments to hire “wandering officers,” which are cops who hop from agency to agency after committing misconduct.
Pennsylvania will not release a state-maintained database of certified police officers, even after a national coalition of newsrooms asked Gov. Josh Shapiro to intervene.
The newsrooms, including Spotlight PA, sent a letter on July 14 asking for the Democratic governor to assist with accessing public information about police officers that Pennsylvania State Police maintain.
“This type of information is the bedrock of what Americans expect to access from their public bodies,” the letter to Shapiro reads.
“We are collecting and analyzing the data in an effort to hold the systems that govern policing in each state accountable to the citizens they serve, by allowing journalists and researchers to analyze the employment history of officers that, when compared with other data and sources, may enable reporting on issues of police misconduct and oversight.”
Michigan is one of 15 states that denied access to the information, while 36 have disclosed at least some portion of certification data, in response to requests made by a national coalition of news organizations.
Metro Times and the Invisible Institute appealed MSP’s denial of the data, arguing that the “disclosure of basic identifying information of public officials is essential for maintaining a free and democratic society.” The appeal, too, was rejected.
The University of Michigan law school’s Civil Rights Litigation Initiative represented the Metro Times and Invisible Institute in the administrative appeal. Its director, Mike Steinberg, rejected MSP’s argument that releasing the names of officers would endanger them. MSP “already releases the names and photographs of police officers when they graduate from the academy,” he said. “We don’t think that would hold up in court. They haven’t provided any instances where public safety was jeopardized because the name of an officer was made public.”