Secrecy in American Policing: A Disturbing Trend
Its police department has refused to release the name of the officer who killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, saying that doing so would put the officer’s life at risk.
The department’s concerns are not outlandish, given how volatile the situation in Ferguson has gotten, and the law in this area is murky. There are no federal laws governing the disclosure of police records, and state standards differ widely, as Jonathan Peters spells out in a helpful explainer for the Columbia Journalism Review. Missouri’s Sunshine Law states that “except if any portion of a record or document of a law enforcement officer or agency, other than an arrest report, which would otherwise be open, contains information that is reasonably likely to pose a clear and present danger to the safety of any victim, witness, undercover officer, or other person … that portion of the record shall be closed and shall be redacted from any record made available.” A few lines later, it states: “In making the determination as to whether information contained in an investigative report shall be disclosed, the court shall consider whether the benefit to the person bringing the action or to the public outweighs any harm to the public, to the law enforcement agency or any of its officers.” There’s plenty of gray area there.
But the lack of disclosure in Ferguson goes beyond the officer’s name: Authorities have also refused to release the initial autopsy report, or even stated the number of shots fired. And this lack of transparency fits into a disconcerting trend in which police departments are increasingly leaving the release of basic information up to their own discretion.