Police Files will soon have the names of every California police officer and prison guard. They are being acquired through numerous public records requests. In total, around one half of a million names will be assembled. Many of those names are of cops who have long left the force, but hundreds of thousands of them are still active throughout the state.
And so the question arises, what’s in a name? Not a whole lot by itself. Having the names of hundreds of thousands of current and former police officers and prison guards means much more when data is associated with those names. But, having a comprehensive list of names is a start, and will be a foundational building block for the Police Files database.
Over time, more and more data will be associated with many of those names: which ones hurt or killed people, who got caught lying or stealing, who helped cover up the crimes of other cops.
And it’s worth noting, even while being of limited value on their own, the names are not something that have been readily available in the past. Law enforcement agencies certainly aren’t publishing them, nor are the governmental bodies that purportedly oversee those agencies. Some investigative journalists, academics, and civil rights attorneys have acquired similar lists, but never before has the general public had wide-ranging access.
That’s about to change. Imagine being able to look up the full roster of sworn cops for every California law enforcement agency and detention facility. More importantly, imagine being able to find out the histories of violence or malfeasance behind those names, and which ones have jumped between agencies over the years.
Certain facts do come to light, however, simply through the process of requesting names. For instance, out of 56k California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sworn officers who remain active or left the department in the last two years, 160 were “permanently separated with fault”; 162 received punitive suspensions; 204 were demoted; 630 went on disability leave; 365 went on disability retirement; and 6,891 were reinstated. The reasons behind those changes in employment status are not known at this point.
Do those figures represent normal rates at the CDCR, or a spike or drop in any of those categories? Furthermore, how do those rates of firings and demotions (and reinstatements) line up with rates in other sectors of employment? Perhaps that’s fodder for intrepid reporters and/or motivated citizens to figure out.
Either way, the names, and eventually more meaningful data associated with many of the names, will become publicly accessible for wider investigation as never before when the Police Files database rolls out.
