When asked about viral videos showing cops escalating violence against protesters, police departments refused to name the officers or provide updates on their investigations.
It has been almost two months since a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car accelerated into Brooke Fortson during a protest over police violence. She still doesn’t know the name of the officer who hit her or whether that person is still policing the city’s streets. The officer did not stop after hitting Fortson and instead turned around, nearly hitting other demonstrators in the process, and sped off.
We set out to see whether the incidents caught on camera were investigated, whether officers were named and what information we could get about any investigations or discipline. We found a widespread lack of transparency that made it difficult to find out even the most basic details about whether and what sort of investigations were taking place.
While officers have the right to use force if their own or others’ lives are in danger, the widespread violence against protesters has been unwarranted, said Chris Burbank, the former chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department. Departments have only named officers in 17 of the cases we examined as of publication. A name can allow the public to learn more about the disciplinary history of an officer and to see any patterns in prior allegations. It also could allow us to see if officers appear in multiple videos involving use of force.of officers’ complaint histories. Still, the police department declined to identify the officers in videos we compiled, making it impossible to check their records in the database.
In some states, there are union contracts and laws preventing the disclosure of officer names, said Phil Stinson, a former officer and now a professor at Bowling Green State University. In other instances, though, Stinson said, departments may just be “stonewalling” or trying to get rid of problem officers before things become public.In Florida, Miami-Dade Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. Erin Alfonso at first declined to provide the names of officers from a May 31 incident we examined.
“All allegations, complaints, or concerns of the public will be taken seriously,” the San Jose Police Department said in a statement. The department said all videos provided by ProPublica are “part of an extensive Internal Affairs investigation. As such, this is a personnel investigation and [we] cannot communicate further.”
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