If there is a "close second" to headlines concerning open records disputes involving access to substantiated and unsubstantiated sexual harassment investigative records in public agencies and universities, it is open records disputes involving access to substantiated and unsubstantiated police misconduct records.

Yesterday, we posted a tweet from a WDRB reporter covering a hearing in Franklin Circuit Court. The parties, once again, were a news agency, WDRB, and the Kentucky State Police.

The issue? Access to an internal affairs investigative case file involving state troopers' use of force in the 2016 arrest of a 68 year old disabled construction worker in a hospital parking lot after they received a complaint that he had exposed himself.

The case, which was featured on WDRB's Sunday Edition in 2017, raised serious questions about officials' subsequent attempts to justify the force employed against that individual.

It is a report worth reading if you haven't already.

https://www.wdrb.com/news/sunday-edition-cellphone-videos-raise-questio…

Kentucky's open records law recognizes the public's right to inspect investigative files involving police misconduct. Not just police, of course, but workplace misconduct relating to any public employee.

A bill introduced in the 2019 legislative session of the Kentucky General Assembly would have restricted the public's right to inspect police disciplinary records. It's sponsor was persuaded that this proposal represented a serious affront to the public's right to know. He withdrew that part of the bill.

As open government proponents in Kentucky were attempting to persuade the bill's sponsor to withdraw this proposal, a new law took effect in California known as the Police Transparency Act.

For the first time, Californians have the right to inspect police disciplinary files, and the result has been eye-opening.

The article below recounts an incident — similar to the Kentucky incident — at a California hospital involving a 64 year old man and the efforts of police to subsequently justify the use of excessive force in executing his arrest.

Since the new law took effect, the California Reporting Project — "a collaboration of 40 newsrooms across the state to obtain and report on police misconduct and use of force" — has exposed multiple incidents of serious police misconduct resulting in little to no discipline.

No accountability translated into inappropriately light disciplinary measures.

The court is literally still out on the appropriateness of the discipline imposed on the Kentucky state troopers involved in the 2016 incident.

We know what the discipline was, but WDRB is still in a legal battle to obtain the investigative file to confirm whether the troopers were appropriately disciplined based on the gravity of their use of force in executing the arrest.

The Kentucky Open Government Coalition is deeply committed to preserving, and perhaps one day expanding, the public's right to know under our state law. We underscore cases in which our law may be threatened and we contrast our law with other states' laws in an effort to highlight the good, and the not-so-good, features of the Kentucky open records law.