Some states relax restrictions on police records as part of reform movement, but in 35 states they're still hard to get

Gateway Journalism Review graphic; click the image to enlarge it

Legal experts say transparency of police misconduct records is a key part of police reform, but such records are either secret or hard to access in 35 states and Washington, D.C. Law enforcement agencies "claim they are personnel matters, privacy violations, or ongoing investigations that could be compromised," Kallie Cox and William Freivogel report for Gateway Journalism Review in the St. Louis area. "They are backed by strong law enforcement unions and the law enforcement bills of rights that protect the privacy rights of officers over the public’s right to know."

Change is coming, but slowly. "Seven big states have opened records in recent years: California, New York, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon and Maryland. Now 15 states have laws that allow these records to be mostly available to the public, up from 12 a few years ago," Cox and Freivogel report.

Many of those new open-records laws are recent, "the result of a combination of court decisions and reform laws passed since the murder of George Floyd. New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, Oregon and Maryland enacted laws in the past year opening records that were previously closed. California passed a law opening some records in 2018," Cox and Freivogel report.

But barriers to accountability are still a problem in many states, even some that have passed some open-records laws. For example, "in Illinois, a widely touted police reform law passed this year included a provision that closed the state Professional Conduct Database of officers who resigned, were fired or were suspended for violating department policy. Not only are the names withheld but also the supporting documents. To get statewide records, a person would have to contact each of the almost 900 police departments and request these misconduct records individually," Cox and Freivogel report. And in Pennsylvania, "Gov. Tom Wolf signed a bill into law in 2020 that created a database to track police misconduct statewide and force agencies to check the database before hiring an officer. But the legislature closed the database to the public."

Click here for more examples of states' open-records laws and discussion of how less-accessible states make it hard for journalists to get records. The story is part of a project on police accountability funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.