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    Default Re: This is Why More Police Department Transparency is Needed

    Quote Quoting cdwjava
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    There are good reasons for many of the protections provided under CA law, not the least of which is personal safety. I cannot speak as to the state of those law in most other states, only in CA. I do not defend malfeasance at all and have both investigated and recommended the termination of officers who have been guilty of violating law or policy. But, having completely transparent personnel records can be a disaster both for an officer's career (even if cleared of all wrongdoing), and his or her personal safety as there tends to be a good amount of personal data included in those records.
    A well crafted disclosure law would prevent personal information like home address, phone number, etc., of officers from being made available to the public. But the public should have, at a minimum, ready access to records showing which officers have been found to be guilty of misconduct, what that misconduct was, and what discipline the department imposed. In NY, the public cannot even get this basic information. I am a firm proponent of transparency in government. A democracy can only thrive if the citizens can hold their officials accountable for their actions, and they cannot do that if they cannot get the information needed to see how their government functions. When I was a revenue officer for the IRS, most of my not personal personnel information was available to the public for the asking with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. I too had concerns for my safety; revenue officers are the ones who seize property to collect delinquent taxes and are frequently threatened and sometimes assaulted. But safety is no good argument against making available records of misconduct and discipline against an employee. The only reason to hide that information, IMO, is to shield public officials from accountability, thus giving space for corruption and abuse to thrive.

    Quote Quoting cdwjava
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    Officers involved in high profile incidents often have their careers ended even if ultimately found to have committed no wrongdoing. The public outcry is often too great to resist even if there was no legal or policy violation. The media perception becomes the reality and a career is over. Releasing heretofore confidential info to include past accusations and other personal info as many public access activists in CA are seeking, would serve only to further cool the ardor of officers out here. As it stands, the perception of career survival (with pension reform must now extend to 34 years or more) now relies largely on keeping one's head low and doing as little as possible.
    I would agree that in the case of accusations that have not yet been sustained that some greater care in release of that information needs to be considered. I would say the same thing about criminal suspects who have been arrested but never tried, too. But I would still require police departments to keep records of accusations and release the statistics of the number of accusations, the type of misconduct alleged, and how many of those allegations were sustained to help the public get a sense of how well the system might be working. I would also prohibit confidential civil settlements by the government, too. If the government is going to pay out thousands or millions of dollars for misconduct, the public has a right to know the details of that.

    Quote Quoting cdwjava
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    [B]I agree that bad officers should be terminated. I don't know of any officers that might say otherwise.
    I've heard police unions give lip service to that exact sentiment, but then when it comes time to implement procedures to actually hold bad cops accountable, what happens? Almost invariably the police unions are adamantly opposed to those efforts. So forgive me if I take that sentiment with a bit of a grain of salt.

    Quote Quoting cdwjava
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    Oh, and those law enforcement records CAN be accessed through legal process (Pitchess), so it's not like they are forever concealed without an avenue to reveal them. Fortunately, Pitchess allows for an in camera review by a court prior to the release so as to determine if there is actually something relevant in the record that might concern the legal matter at hand.
    That’s not good enough. That helps a litigant, but it worthless to the general public in getting information to determine how well their government is functioning. You need access to ALL the misconduct records, not just piecemeal access that might drip out to the press in the course of litigation, to do that.

    Quote Quoting cdwjava
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    Sadly, there have long been tales of NYPD and many other east coast departments maintaining personnel whose actions would warrant termination or even prosecution elsewhere. When I was first considering entering into law enforcement, I had considered moving to my wife's hometown, Philadelphia. But, after a conversation with some of her family who both lived and worked there (one IN law enforcement) I was told that it was not the best place to be working as an honest cop. It was more than depressing to hear such a thing, yet I know that such cultures still exist here and there even if I have never worked within such a culture.
    You probably made the right choice. I used to live the Philadelphia area. The amount of state and local government corruption, including the cops, the courts, the highway departments, and pretty much any other government official was truly disturbing. While I was there a major scandal unfolded that resulted in a number of Philadelphia municipal and state court judges being convicted in federal court for corruption related to taking bribes from Philadelphia area unions to get their members off on charges they faced. I would like to say I was shocked by that, but in Philly that wasn’t surprising; government corruption, unions, and organized crime all seemed to go hand-in-hand. And I have no reason to believe it is any better today than it was back when I was there. Government in NJ and NY were in much the same boat. And it is corruption like that, also found in places in the south, that lead a lot of people to be suspicious of cops and tend to think they are all corrupt and cannot be trusted. And the way to help combat that problem starts with shining a bright light on the activities of the cops so that the public can hold them accountable. Keeping everything in the dark allows the mold of corruption to grow and thrive.

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