By Peter Cameron, THE BADGER PROJECT
The Badger Project filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Department of Justice Thursday after it again refused to release a list of all certified law enforcement officers in the state.
The suit was filed jointly with the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit public accountability journalism organization based in Chicago.
The state DOJ had already rejected a similar open records request from the Invisible Insitute earlier in 2023. In November, along with The Badger Project, it again requested the records. Five months later, the state DOJ responded with a letter denying the request for the full list of officers and their working histories.
More than 30 states — including Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa — have released the full list of their officers to a nationwide reporting project, which includes the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project.
The lawsuit is being funded by The National Freedom of Information Coalition, through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and from the Society of Professional Journalists, through a grant from its Legal Defense Fund.
In his denial letter, state DOJ attorney Paul Ferguson argued that releasing the full list could “endanger” undercover officers. The state DOJ is not able to identify those officers and redact them, he wrote.
Ferguson also wrote that even for non-undercover officers, releasing their identities and employers “would have an adverse effect on the safety and privacy interests of the officers and their families.”
The Wisconsin Transparency Project, a law firm dedicated to strict enforcement of the state’s Open Records laws, and the University of Illinois First Amendment Clinic filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs.
“The state of Wisconsin does not and should not have secret police, and it should not require a lawsuit to establish that.”
“Courts have ruled time and time again that speculative fears of harm do not justify withholding government records from the public,” Tom Kamenick, president of the Wisconsin Transparency Project and the lead attorney in this case, said in a statement.
“Government officials must do more than merely claim that, hypothetically, something bad might happen if the records are released,” he continued. “Rather, they must show that harm is likely to occur and sufficiently serious to overcome the presumption of access to government records.”
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Kamenick has represented The Badger Project in other public records lawsuits.
In responding to the records request, the state DOJ did release its list of “flagged officers,” those who lost their jobs due to termination, resignation in lieu of termination, or resignation prior to completion of an internal investigation.
But that list only consists of law enforcement officers from within the state, which The Badger Project has used to report on wandering officers. That list does not include those who were fired or forced out from law enforcement jobs out of state and then came to Wisconsin.
Officers from at least one neighboring state have been moving to jobs in Wisconsin. After Illinois passed some law enforcement reform measures in 2021, some police started transferring to agencies in “more conservative states,” including Wisconsin, Kenny Winslow, executive director of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, told the Washington Post last year.
The Invisible Institute and The Badger Project are asking the court to force the release of the full list of law enforcement officers in the state as well as their work histories. When judges rule that public agencies have illegally refused to release records, that agency is forced to pay the requester’s legal fees, according to state law.
“The state of Wisconsin does not and should not have secret police,” Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, wrote in an email. “And it should not require a lawsuit to establish that.”
DISCLOSURE NOTE: As president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, Bill Lueders supported the plaintiffs’ grant application to the national NFOIC. The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council also contributed financially to the lawsuit.
Sam Stecklow of the Invisible Institute contributed to this story.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
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This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
