Is your police chief or elected sheriff doing a good job of keeping their department's employees, whom your taxes pay for, accountable to laws and policies?
Trick question. There is no way for you to know.
While Minnesota legislators this session have pushed various proposals that intend to improve police accountability, there is one critical area they have intentionally ignored: that state data practices law contributes to poor police management. The problem with the law is a design defect that provides huge incentive for any politically sensitive government department — not just police — to inadequately respond to the misconduct of its problem employees.
Under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, when a public employee — police or otherwise — is subject to a complaint, virtually all information beyond the fact that the complaint has been filed stays private. The blackout on information includes: the basis of the complaint, what facts were found when investigated, what conclusions were reached based on employment policies or laws, and what actions (if any) happened as a result.
Not accessible to the public. Not accessible to the media. And — unlike virtually all other formal complaint processes — not even accessible to the person who made the complaint!
The big exception is that if the complaint results in formal employee discipline (as defined through union contract), the blackout is completely reversed: All information about the complaint becomes public (other than a few minor or uncommon elements subject to a separate requirement of confidentiality).
Consider then the choice from the perspective of any police chief or elected sheriff. An officer in my department has committed an inappropriate and/or violent act that is contrary to policy and professional expectations. If I discipline, the media may find out, and/or it may spread on social media, and cause reputational harm to me, my department and perhaps the mayor whom I am loyal to. And all future criminal defendants arrested by this officer, through their lawyers, will easily find out about this situation, harming this officer's usefulness if all future reports and testimony get attacked as unreliable. If I try to solve the lack of usefulness by firing this officer, it may not be easy to have the action upheld by an arbitrator. Significant staff time may be wasted on the case. But even if successful, I'm in a difficult hiring environment and there's political pressure to limit or reduce my staffing budget, which could result in greater challenges to cover shifts.
With all such disincentives to effectively hold employees accountable to policy and law as would happen in the private sector, is it any mystery why former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had a long track record of complaints that did not result in discipline?