As reported in the Los Angeles Times here, in a recent 6-1 vote, the California Supreme Court “rejected blanket policies by a growing number of police agencies against disclosure. The court said officers’ names can be withheld only if there is specific evidence that their safety would be imperiled.

I strongly encourage our readers to familiarize themselves with the published opinion here, particularly before weighing in on this very challenging topic. I will be referring to direct language from the court’s opinion in offering my own opinions about the decision.

Background: In December 2010, “…two City of Long Beach police officers (and others) responded to a resident‘s telephone call about an intoxicated man brandishing a “six-shooter” on neighboring property. At the sight of the two officers, the man (35-year-old Douglas Zerby) pointed at them an object resembling a gun. The officers immediately fired multiple rounds at Zerby, killing him. It turned out that the object Zerby was holding was a garden hose spray nozzle with a pistol grip.”

In its efforts to investigate the story, Los Angeles Times personnel filed a Public Records Act (PRA) request seeking the names of the officers involved in the Zerby shooting as well as the names of all LBPD officers involved in all officer involved shootings from 2005-2010.

The Long Beach Police Officers Association (POA), which is the employee bargaining unit for all sworn Long Beach Police Officers, filed a lawsuit in Superior Court seeking to block the disclosure on the grounds that such blanket releases of officers’ names could endanger the safety of those officers. The Superior Court issued a temporary order (TRO) restraining the City from releasing the information. The L.A. Times appealed. The trial court eventually vacated the TRO. The POA appealed unsuccessfully and then appealed again to the State Supreme Court, which recently ruled against the POA, deciding, at page 18 of the opinion that:

“We do not hold that the names of officers involved in shootings have to be disclosed in every case, regardless of the circumstances. We merely conclude, as did the trial court and the Court of Appeal, that the particularized showing necessary to outweigh the public‘s interest in disclosure was not made here, where the Union and the City relied on only a few vaguely worded declarations making only general assertions about the risks officers face after a shooting.”

I believe the majority on the Court erred in its opinion in this case. Had the PRA request only asked for the officers involved in the Zerby case, it might have been accurate in its assessment. To my knowledge, there were no specific threats received as a direct result of the tragic and mistaken shooting of Doug Zerby.

However -and I think this is key- the PRA request also asked for the names of all officers involved in all LBPD officer-involved shootings over a period of five years, from 2005-2010. This was clearly a blanket request for names of officers who were “involved in” shootings which had nothing to do with Zerby (the story the times was reporting) and which may well have been gang-related or over which specific threats had been received. Unfortunately the Court failed to draw this important distinction and also failed to require more specificity than is represented by the phrase “involved in.”

There can arguably be as many as a hundred officers “involved in” the investigations leading up to, and following, a typical officer-involved shooting. Should all of those officers’ names be released also? If so, for what reasonable purpose? I think the court allowed a PRA request that was too broad and far-reaching.

Additionally, in the current internet age, it takes little effort to identify a person’s home address, or a work address for a spouse, or a school address for a child, once an officer’s name is published. Releasing these names can also compromise the safety and privacy of an officer’s entire family or at least create a reasonable concern that this may be the case. I think the court authorized the release of personal information that could have the potential to adversely impact far more people than just the officers “involved in” the shooting incident. State Supreme Court Justice M.W. Chin, who published the sole dissenting opinion on the decision, appears to agree with this concern when he said:

“Public documents are readily accessible on line and can provide anyone with the home address of an individual, including a police officer. The address of a police officer in the hands of a gang member, violent offender, or angry friend, relative, or associate of a person who was shot by a police officer is of great concern for the personal safety of both the officer and (his or her) family.” (Page 2 of the dissent)

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the State Supreme Court’s opinion in this case, or with Justice Chin’s dissent, I think the entire exercise has been an excellent example of how our system of justice can work to resolve important questions of this sort.