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.
The request for the data was part of a project to create a national database to identify, track, and report on “wandering officers” who move from department to department after engaging in misconduct.
So far, 34 states have disclosed at least the names of certified officers, in response to requests made by a national coalition of news organizations.
Metro Times and the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit based in Chicago, requested the data on Jan. 3. On March 8, MSP declined to provide the identities of certified and uncertified officers, along with other information, arguing “the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.”
MSP also argued that releasing the names of officers “would endanger the life and safety of the law enforcement officers and their families, because the information would lead to [their] doxing,” referring to the act of publishing identifiable information about an individual on the internet.
But by withholding the identities of officers, MSP is impeding the public’s ability to track cops who lose their job in one place only to be rehired at another.
“To address and prevent police misconduct, we need to know which officers are moving between agencies or departments and evading accountability,” Eli Massey, student attorney for the Civil Rights Litigation Initiative, tells Metro Times. “This lawsuit is about that necessary transparency, which the public is entitled to, about who is supposedly serving and protecting us and who is engaging in misconduct.”
To deny a public records request under Michigan’s FOIA, the burden is on a public body to demonstrate that withholding information outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
The lawsuit argues that MSP fell short of that standard by failing to show that anyone would be harmed by disclosure and points out that the agency’s code of conduct requires officers to “identify themselves by name and badge number when requested by the public.”
Further, the lawsuit states, MSP routinely identifies its new officers, including with photographs, to the public. For example, in May 2022, MSP released the names of its 19 newest officers and their assignments to a media outlet.
“If Defendant already releases the names of troopers — along with photographs, which Plaintiffs are not requesting — to news outlets, then it is difficult to maintain that releasing such information to Plaintiffs would endanger the safety of officers or others,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit argues that the public interest in tracking wandering cops far outweighs any legitimate concerns raised by MSP.
“In the era after the killing of George Floyd and dozens of other unarmed Americans by police officers, the public interest in exposing police misconduct is at its zenith,” the lawsuit says. “Especially in an era where news stories of police abuse are common, the attempt to keep the names of all police officers secret contradicts democratic values such as government transparency and checks on government power. Indeed, hiding the name of police officers is something that we would expect to happen in countries with authoritarian forms of government, not in a democracy.”
Without the records, it’s unclear how often police who engage in misconduct in Michigan are moving from department to department. But it does happen.
Last year, the Eastpointe Police Department hired a former Detroit cop who resigned after an internal investigation found that he had punched an unarmed man in the face and then lied about it.
After a news story revealed the hiring in September, MCOLES responded by suspending Officer Kairy Roberts’s license, preventing him from serving as a cop in the state.
The hiring happened because Detroit and Eastpointe failed to comply with a state law aimed at thwarting wandering cops. Detroit failed to report the alleged misconduct, and Eastpointe falsely claimed to MCOLES that Roberts had met the character fitness standards, which is required for officers to get their licenses reactivated, MCOLES Director Timothy Bourgeois told Metro Times in September. DPD acknowledged the failure and said it is investigating, and MCOLES suspended Roberts’s license after learning about the allegations against him. The Eastpointe Police Department then placed Roberts on leave, and he resigned soon after.
A Detroit Free Press investigation published in July 2017 found about two dozen problematic officers who “jumped from department to department in recent years.” Some of them were fired and criminally charged, only to find work at another law enforcement agency.
In 2017, state lawmakers tried to put a stop to wandering cops by passing a bill that requires police departments to retain records that explain why an officer leaves. The law also requires officers to sign a waiver to allow other departments to view their previous records.
But the law doesn’t work if police departments don’t properly report officer misconduct, Bourgeois says.
Isaiah McKinnon, a retired chief of police for the Detroit Police Department, said the consequences of hiring an abusive cop can be deadly.
“In law enforcement, what you have is a person who has the potential of taking a life,” McKinnon, who also served as deputy mayor of Detroit, says. “You basically have more power than the Michigan Supreme Court. We want to make sure those people who commit heinous acts are not purposely or inadvertently allowed to join a law enforcement agency.”
According to the lawsuit, the information sought by the news organizations is critical for the public to access.
“It is clear at this point that Plaintiff’s primary purpose in obtaining the information it requests from Defendant is to promote public accountability, responsibility, and transparency of Defendants and its officers,” the lawsuit states.
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