Stop hiding bad actors: Idaho must restore police records transparency | Opinion

When members of the media use public records to find wrongdoing in government, the response shouldn’t be to shut down those public records.

But that’s exactly what Idaho Gov. Brad Little and state agencies did after an investigation by InvestigateWest, which exposed alleged sexual misconduct by dozens of Idaho prison guards — many of whom were allowed to resign and faced no other consequences.

After InvestigateWest’s investigation came out, the Idaho Department of Correction and the Peace Office Standards and Training agency, which certifies law enforcement, began to conceal information about officers’ employment histories, making it more difficult to scrutinize job candidates and ensure accountability for officers accused of misconduct, according to a follow-up investigation by InvestigateWest.

Idaho’s POST quietly stopped publishing detailed decertification summaries in January, replacing them with bare-bones entries that omit why an officer left a job or lost certification, according to InvestigateWest.

This rollback in transparency means the public can no longer easily see which officers resigned after alleged misconduct. That undermines public trust in the agencies that police Idaho’s communities and guard Idaho’s prisons.

Shielding whether an officer is fired or resigns makes it easier for problem officers to move between departments and makes it harder for to scrutinize hiring decisions.

It also makes it more difficult for defense attorneys to identify problem officers who might have a pattern of bad behavior or mistreatment of suspects.

The value of these public records has already been proved by InvestigateWest’s investigation exposing abuse and rape by prison guards and how the system protected them. How would the public benefit from not knowing these facts? And what is gained by secrecy that protects bad actors?

Before then, the Idaho Statesman used public records in reporting on the 2015 fatal shooting of rancher Jack Yantis by Adams County sheriff’s deputies Brian Wood and Cody Roland. Reporting showed gaps in the state’s police hiring system, which did not require thorough background checks — leading to Wood and Roland being hired despite both having disciplinary histories, including one being fired.

This is not a hypothetical situation.

Little and state officials have cited privacy and liability concerns, but they fail to offer compelling public safety reasons for concealing patterns of abuse, dishonesty or excessive force, and they fail to show how privacy concerns outweigh public safety concerns.

State officials are disputing whether concealing these records violate the letter of the law.

The state law does not explicitly declare that information as exempt. Nor does it require its release, making it unclear whether the policy changes comply with the letter of the law, according to the InvestigateWest report.

The state should err on the side of disclosure, as transparency, accountability and public safety are paramount. In Idaho law, the presumption is openness. Further, if the law is ambiguous, the Legislature should make it less so.

Idaho should follow other states’ practices and restore and strengthen access to POST decertification records, write the disclosure requirements into state law and make clear that in a democracy, transparency about police misconduct is not optional.

Maintaining such transparency puts bad officers on notice: If you act in bad faith, the public will find out about it. It may not just end your job but your career. Conversely, a policy of secrecy lets officers know that if they screw up, they can keep it hidden from the public.

You know who should be in favor of transparency? Good officers. They should welcome exposing bad actors in their midst, as most police have welcomed the use of body cameras. It garners public trust and goodwill, knowing that bad behavior will be exposed.

While there could be isolated cases in which an employee deserves protection, in general, there is not a compelling reason the state would want to pass bad actors along to other departments or protect perpetrators more than it protects victims – and potential victims.

The state’s task is clear: Disclose the reasons a public safety employee is no longer employed by an agency and fix the law to eliminate any ambiguity.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, assistant editor Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.