It’s not unusual for a news article to end with some reference to why we’ll never know the rest of the story. Colleges facing scandal often end media inquiries by stating that they “don’t comment on personnel matters,” even though they are publicly funded institutions. Even local governments often shut down questions by pulling the “personnel matters” card. But one place this rule doesn’t seem to apply is your local law enforcement agency.
Police reform efforts continue to make law enforcement files more accessible to the public. In many states, citizens can even obtain internal affairs investigation files. The state of California, though, is the first to create an actual database for this purpose.
In 2018, California became one of the aforementioned states granting public access to police records. Senate Bill 1421 (and SB 16, in 2021) codified the requirement for local law enforcement agencies to allow citizens to obtain use-of-force and other misconduct records. To do so, citizens would file a specific request to the agency that they wanted to obtain the information from…