Kenosha News editorial: Police hiring law needs more teeth | Editorial

Legislation to provide some transparency to police hiring and stop the practice of shuffling “bad apple” officers from one law enforcement agency to another was passed last fall and signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers with little fanfare.

There was probably a good reason for that – it doesn’t have much teeth. The intent of the new law is laudable – it requires law enforcement agencies, jails, and juvenile detention facilities to maintain a work history file for each employee and sets up procedures to make those files available to prospective new law enforcement employers.

According to news reports, “union protections often make it difficult to fire officers…so law enforcement agencies will sometimes seal a problem officer’s personnel file in exchange for his or her resignation.”

We’ve seen how it works out in other professions and the results have often been disastrous. We’ve seen instances where problem teachers have been hired by new schools thanks to sealed file agreements and we’ve seen it with the Catholic Church where abusive priests were shunted off to new parishes.

We don’t kid ourselves, either that it’s not practiced in many private industries that just want to get rid of a problem employee and shuffle them out the door without going through a protracted disciplinary procedure. Just seal the file and give them the gate.

In theory, the new law would put an end to that in Wisconsin law enforcement.

Meghan Stroshine, an associate professor of criminology and law studies at Marquette University, said the law provides a much-needed mechanism to keep bad actors in policing from moving to new agencies after being terminated for unlawful or unethical behavior.”

“….There should be no cases where a police department is in the dark about the reason(s) an individual was fired from another law enforcement agency, nor should there be the possibility of sealing officers’ personnel files in exchange for their resignation,” she told reporters for the Badger Project, a non-partisan citizen-supported journalism non-profit. The legislation had the support of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, the largest police union in the state. Jim Palmer, executive director of the union, said, “No one wants a bad officer out of the profession more than a good one, and the law now requires all agencies to review the performance records anytime they consider hiring experienced officers.”

We heartily agree and we hope this new law provides some much-needed transparency.

But we are troubled by the fact that law doesn’t provide penalties or consequences for police agencies who fail to comply. Without teeth, this is largely a suggestion and not much of a law. We would urge the Legislature and the governor to go back and put a few fangs in the law if they really expect it to end the bad apple shuffling practice.