This story is being co-published by the Wisconsin Examiner and Invisible Institute, a nonprofit public accountability journalism organization based in Chicago.
Since 2017, Wisconsin policing regulators have tracked what they call “flagged officers”: cops who get fired, resign in lieu of a termination, or resign before an investigation into alleged misconduct can be completed.
The regulators, with the Law Enforcement Standards Board (LESB), were prompted by a series of reports on officers accused of sexual assault and dishonesty who had been able to get rehired — including as a police chief — with little oversight from the state.
“What we’re trying to do is eliminate the opportunity for somebody to slip through the cracks,” the chair of the LESB said at the time, referring to a phenomenon often called “wandering officers.”
Seven years in, it’s difficult to see what has changed: Because flagged officers can still be hired, they often are — and at an increasing rate, according to recent reporting. And because the flagged officers list is limited to only some officers who were disciplined or resigned, there is still potential for additional officers with histories of misconduct to have slipped through the cracks to new agencies undetected.