Today our client Katey Rusch has published a massive story about a decades-long practice of burying police misconduct in “clean record” agreements so that cops who have committed misconduct can conceal that when they go to get another job. This story was made possible after years of advocacy by our brilliant students in the UCI Press Freedom Project led by Professor Susan Seager. After years of back and forth with hundreds of agencies and dogged reporting, today the San Francisco Chronicle published the blockbuster story. “The reason our persistent UCI law students were able to get these supposedly secret agreements released is because the agreements are actually public records under California law,” Seager said. “Any contract that calls for the payment of taxpayer funds must be disclosed under the California Brown Act and Public Records Act – and it doesn’t matter if the parties say in the agreement that it is ‘confidential’ – it is not.”
The story exposes “a secret system of legal settlements that has whitewashed the corruption, criminality and other misconduct of law enforcement officers throughout California for decades, an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program found.”
A sidebar titled “How we did this project” explains how our clinic helped this reporting:
“Reporters worked with media lawyer Susan Seager and the Press Freedom Project, a clinic run out of UC Irvine School of Law, to request clean record agreements and other records from 501 agencies across the state, including all city police and county sheriff’s departments as well as school and transit police forces…Reporters requested agreements executed from 2010 through 2023, though state retention laws only require agencies to keep such agreements for two years. In response, 224 agencies claimed to have no such agreements, while 168 refused to release any or some of the agreements, claiming the records were not subject to disclosure. Most of these agencies asserted that the agreements were peace officer personnel records exempt from disclosure under California Penal Code 832.7.
“Those whose conduct is hidden by these deals — also known as ‘clean-record agreements’ — include a deputy accused of groping a woman held in a county jail, an officer who investigators determined falsified a report to link a man to a crime, and a deputy who was found to have violated department policy when he fatally shot a teenager as he lay wounded.
“More than half of the officers who secured clean-record agreements uncovered by the investigation also received lump-sum payments as part of the deals, totaling $23.7 million. One officer got $3.1 million. At least five officers have secured multiple clean-record agreements.
“In many cases, police departments hid alleged misconduct even while maintaining it occurred. In every case where reporters could establish the outcome of a department’s internal investigation through documents or interviews, they found that clean-record agreements were given after police agencies had fired the officer, or had begun the process of doing so, based on what they saw as clear evidence of wrongdoing.”
The story is available here: This is the secret system that covers up police misconduct — and ensures problem officers can get hired again.
Today is a great day for press freedom and for holding government accountable to the people. Congratulations to reporters Katey Rusch and Casey Smith!