When Richard Johnson died the day after being taken into Madison Police custody, the Wisconsin Department of Justice stepped in to investigate.
The department reviewed Johnson’s death under a state law that requires an outside agency to examine deaths involving police officers, to avoid biases and conflicts of interest. If the local district attorney declines to charge the involved officers, the Department of Justice is required to release its investigation report and posts those investigation files on its website for public review.
Dane County District Attorney Isamel Ozanne declined to charge the Madison officers in Johnson’s case in December. In the nearly two months since that decision, Department of Justice officials haven’t published their investigation report, raising questions from open government advocates about transparency and obscuring the public’s understanding of what happened to the 32-year-old Richard Johnson…