On naming officers who shoot
Earlier this year, Baltimore police said they would stop releasing the names of officers who shoot or kill citizens, breaking with a decades-long practice still in effect in surrounding jurisdictions. Among the reasons they cited were 23 threats against officers in 2008 (nevermind that none related to police shootings and some were even made against officers by other officers), while pointing to several big city police departments who do not release the names. Police later said they would rethink the policy, though not much has changed. The name is released if the police commissioner decides that the officer should be commended for their actions; when an officers' actions are in question, the name is suppressed. My records show police have identified officers in five of this year's 22 police shootings.
Take St. Louis off that list of other cities who hold the names back. As Jeremy Kohler of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported this weekend, the chief there ordered city lawyers to modify their policy to allow the release of officers' names.
From the article:
"For years, the department has refused to release names of officers involved in shootings. Claiborne and Henry both tried for weeks to learn the names but were spurned in phone calls and visits to headquarters.
"It's a police report," she said. "The public should have access to that. We're taxpayers."After questions from the Post-Dispatch last week, the department said it was changing its mind: It will now release names of officers involved in shootings. long-standing department rule had required police to withhold any information that the Missouri Sunshine Law said it could. Chief Dan Isom ordered lawyers to modify that policy, said department spokeswoman Erica Van Ross."
Comments
I've commented on this before that (like most controversial topics) there is a middle ground to find accord.
I'm willing to give the officers and even the command structure the benefit of the doubt that there may be good investigative or other procedural reasons to hold back release of officers names **in the immediate wake of an incident** (death or otherwise).
But the flip side of that discretion must be an expectation that the names will be getting released in due course. Due course could be a few hours or even a few weeks in some instances... but that sliding scale can't be extended into forever.
If the Commisioner doesn't want to be ordered into a "no later than" or even worse an "immediate report" policy... it will be up to him to adopt one that is better and more open than they have been doing before the Courts get in the middle of things.
Posted by: MrRational | December 22, 2009 8:58 PM