Quote Quoting cdwjava
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Summaries of the nature of complaints and their conclusions, even a range of penalties set down, sure - all for that! Individual personnel records, no.
Then there is no real accountability if you cannot reveal that Officer Jones lied in grand jury proceeding and that his department only gave him a slap on wrist rather than the termination Officer Jones deserved. If federal employees can withstand having information about their misconduct made available to the public, surely state and local employees can withstand that, too.

That internal investigations might be politically motivated by the department is actually another reason for real transparency. Let's see the process and the evidence against the officer. If it's trumped up, let that come out in public, too. BTW, your assertion that the internal process is politicized and thus cops are either pegged guilty or not punished based on something other than the evidence of their misconduct is exactly why independent review panels outside of the control of the police department is a good idea. The federal government does that for a number of agencies, including the IRS. Yet where I’ve seen that idea proposed for local police departments, often I see the local cops almost uniformly opposed to that. And yet you say they cannot trust their internal investigators either. What then would you propose? Simply do nothing about misconduct and hide it all from the public? That would serve your purpose of protect the good cop, but also all the bad ones too.

If the internal process is corrupt, then fix it. Shine a light on that process and do what is needed to avoid the department politics taking over, even if that means using an external investigation agency to do it. But that is not a good reason to hide from the public the results of the those internal investigations and what punishment is meted out.