New data tool allows journalists and the public to track ‘wandering cops’ in Utah

In September 2019, the Logan City Police Department hired Officer Miguel Deras, who had recently left the University of Utah’s campus police. Police officers move from job to job just like anyone else, but Deras was not like anyone else.

He left his previous post without a great reference, considering that a petition had been signed by more than 130,000 individuals—including current and former University of Utah students—demanding he be fired for mishandling sensitive photos of murdered student Lauren McCluskey.

In 2018, McCluskey went to university police to report that someone had stolen explicit photos of her and was using them to try and extort money. A Utah Department of Public Safety review would later find Deras had inappropriately shown the pictures to at least three of his male colleagues without a work-related reason and had told one colleague that he could “look at them whenever he wants.”

After the state’s investigation was completed in 2020, Deras was promptly fired by Logan City.

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Published by Utah Investigative Journalism Project, 2024. Reporting by Eric S. Peterson and Sam Stecklow.

NH was tasked with tracking police employment history. Citing cost, regulators decided against it.

After the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, a task force appointed by New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu called for state police training regulators to update their antiquated database so that they could track “wandering officers”: those police officers who commit misconduct at one department, only to find a job at another because they maintained their state certification.

“We don’t pull enough certifications from police officers,” former Bartlett police chief Janet Hadley Champlin testified before the New Hampshire Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency Commission in July 2020. “I know of some police officers whose conduct that I think, ‘Wow, I can’t believe they’re still a police officer.’” 

Included in her recommendations to the commission, also called the LEACT commission, was a call to improve the state database “that will specifically track problem officers who move, or attempt to move, to and from law enforcement agencies within the state.”

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Published by New Hampshire Bulletin, 2024. Reporting by Sam Stecklow.

Police employment history is usually a public record. In Alabama, it’s a state secret.

In a wave of criminal justice reforms passed after George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis, Alabama lawmakers created a secret statewide database to track misconduct and complaints against police officers.

The bill “gives us the tools and opportunity to ensure bad actors from community and state law enforcement agencies are held accountable and don’t end up hopping from one department to the next,” Rep. Neil Rafferty (D-Birmingham), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said shortly after filing it.

This database was intended as a tool for local law enforcement agencies to track potential misconduct histories of officers they hired from other agencies, often known as lateral transfer officers. To that end, it collects information about some use of force complaints about them, and about officers who were fired or resigned while under investigation.

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Published in AL.com, 2024. Reporting by Sam Stecklow.

In about-face, Montana blocks access to basic police data

In 2022, Montana’s policing regulators at the Public Safety Officers Standards and Training Council, or POST, received a request for basic information that the board had released before: the names of the law enforcement officers that POST certifies to work in Montana, and their public employers.

It’s simple data that most states around the country release. Montana, up until that point, counted itself among them, having provided the data to journalists at least twice before: In 2017 to a reporter with the Scripps News Washington Bureau, and in 2019 to Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based journalism nonprofit. 

However, this new request, from a reporter with the Associated Press, was different. Not because the content or context of the request were significantly different, but because the political environment at POST had undergone seismic shifts.

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Published in The Pulp, 2024. Reporting by Sam Stecklow.

Half the Story

Massachusetts passed historic police certification reform. But even with the POST Commission, the public can’t see which cops have been part of the “officer shuffle.”

After the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, lawmakers in Massachusetts took an action that advocates had been pushing since at least 2010: creating a system to certify — and decertify — police officers. For decades, Massachusetts had been part of a small outlier of states that had no mechanism to prevent a police officer, once trained, from getting hired after they’d been fired or forced out of another agency for misconduct.

“This bill will allow police departments to make better-informed recruitment and hiring choices while improving accountability,” said then Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito when the bill was filed.

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Published by Horizon Mass, 2024. Reporting by Chris Faraone and Sam Stecklow.

Missouri is home of police decertification. It also keeps data showing wandering officers a secret.

On July 4, 2023, Samuel Davis, a 26-year-old officer for the Northwoods Police Department in North St. Louis County, took Charles Garmon into custody at a Walgreens. After handcuffing Garmon, Davis drove him to a remote intersection outside of a Pepsi bottling plant in Kinloch, a now-largely industrial city of under 300 residents, some four miles and five municipalities from Northwoods.

Outside of the Pepsi plant, Davis pepper sprayed Garmon, beat him with a baton — breaking his jaw — and “told Garmon not to return to Northwoods,” according to a federal civil rights lawsuit Garmon later filed. 

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Published by the Gateway Journalism Review, 2024. Reporting by Sam Stecklow and William H. Freivogel.

Wisconsin is in the minority of states shielding police data. We’re suing to change that.

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. 

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Published by the Wisconsin Examiner, 2024. Reporting by Sam Stecklow.

Despite Reforms, Louisiana Still Keeps Some Police Data Secret

In 2015, Louisiana lawmakers created a database to track police certifications, which officers must maintain to work in law enforcement. Legislators claimed the information would prevent police officers with histories of misconduct from finding new law enforcement jobs in other jurisdictions.

But, by virtually all accounts, that database has failed to achieve its objective. According to repeated journalistic investigations, officers in Louisiana regularly maintain their certifications after being criminally convicted. Many fail to report to the state why they leave their jobs as required by law. And some then go on to commit misconduct with new police departments. 

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Published by The Appeal, 2024. Reporting by Sam Stecklow.

Delaware opened up access to some police misconduct records — but still denies requests for basic police data

Despite passage of two police reform bills in 2023, Delaware remains one of just 15 states that keeps data about police officers that the state has certified, and where they work, secret, according to a nationwide reporting project. 

This makes it impossible for citizens and journalists alike to monitor the state’s oversight of so-called “wandering officers” who switch departments only to continue patterns of aggressive behavior toward civilians.

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Published by Delaware Call, 2024. Reporting by Sam Stecklow.

Virginia is in the minority of states keeping even the most basic police data secret

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, Virginia lawmakers took action on reports that state policing regulators failed to strip the police certifications from dozens of officers with criminal convictions ranging from embezzlement to possession of child pornography and sexual assault. 

The Legislature passed a bill in October 2020 requiring police departments to complete internal investigations even if officers resign during them, and to provide any records of misconduct to new prospective employers for officers; strengthening the requirements for agencies to send reports of misconduct to state regulators; expanding the offenses for which officers can be stripped of their certifications; and requiring a state board to write a statewide standard of conduct for policing.

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Published by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO, 2024. Reporting by Sam Stecklow.

Arkansas declines to release police officer database, preventing public oversight of problem cops

When new officials took on the oversight of Arkansas law enforcement officers under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders early this year, they made keeping bad cops off the street a focus.

They said they adopted new processes and safeguards intended to prevent problem officers from hopping from department to department and have even looked at individuals who may have slipped through the cracks in the past.

But Arkansas remains one of 15 states that keep the identities of its officers private, making public oversight near impossible. 

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Published in Arkansas Advocate, 2023. Reporting by Hunter Field and Sam Stecklow.

Even with new POST database and reforms, Colorado is in the minority of states keeping comprehensive police officer data secret

After the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Colorado lawmakers passed a bill requiring the state’s Peace Officer Standards & Training (POST) board to publish a public database containing some basic disciplinary information about police officers.

But Colorado still refuses to release a more extensive database of all law enforcement officers whom the state has certified to arrest people and carry a gun, and where they have worked. 

The refusal to release this information makes Colorado one of just 15 states that keep this type of police officer data secret, according to a nationwide reporting project, preventing the press and public from adequately monitoring the state’s oversight of wandering or second-chance officers.

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Published by Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, 2023. Reporting by Sam Stecklow.

Gov. Shapiro refuses to intervene on Pa. police officer data disclosure

Pennsylvania will not release a state-maintained database of certified police officers, even after a national coalition of newsrooms asked Gov. Josh Shapiro to intervene.

The newsrooms, including Spotlight PA, sent a letter on July 14 asking for the Democratic governor to assist with accessing public information about police officers that Pennsylvania State Police maintain.

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Published in Spotlight PA, 2023. Reporting by Danielle Ohl with Sam Stecklow contributing reporting.

Michigan’s police secrecy raises concerns about ‘wandering cops’

The state of Michigan is keeping the identities of police officers a secret, making it impossible for the public to monitor “wandering cops” who leave one agency after alleged misconduct and move to another law enforcement job.

Michigan State Police declined a Freedom of Information Act request from Metro Times and the Invisible Institute seeking the identities of all certified and uncertified officers, saying “the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.”

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Published in the Detroit Metro Times, 2023. Reporting by Steve Neavling with additional reporting by Sam Stecklow.