Shiffer: Public demanded transparency in divisive case

Thanks to the public outrage over Jamar Clark's death, "transparency" is suddenly the hottest word in Minneapolis.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman used the word four times in his justification last week for bypassing a grand jury in the Clark case and all future decisions by his office in police-involved shootings.

Freeman invoked transparency again last week to explain why he was putting online thousands of pages of documents, unedited surveillance videos, forensic photos, a recorded 911 call and other data in the Clark case.

After Freeman's news conference, Mayor Betsy Hodges and Minneapolis police Chief Janeé Harteau praised the prosecutor for transparency. So did the police union leader, Lt. Bob Kroll. Gov. Mark Dayton lauded Freeman for setting "an important precedent for openness and accountability."

The concept also came up at a protest in the Hennepin County Government Center Friday, in which Clark's family members and others denounced Freeman for refusing to charge the officers who killed Clark.

"The reality is we forced him to come forward and be transparent," said NAACP leader Nekima Levy-Pounds, referring to Freeman's decision not to use a grand jury. When the evidence came out, "a child could look at the information presented and know we're being hoodwinked and bamboozled," she said.

Transparency in government is one of those rare ideas that bridges all political divides. It came into vogue after Watergate, and again in the 2008 presidential campaign, when both major-party candidates pledged to make their administrations the most transparent ever.

"Transparency is when the government makes it possible for people to see what the government's doing, what's being done in their name," said John Wonderlich, interim executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to open government.

These days, the push for transparency is aided by consumers' demand for immediate access to information, Wonderlich said. "Public expectations are higher than they were before," he said.

Trust in government institutions, unfortunately, has eroded. This is why secret grand juries, which are supposed to give power to regular people, are now viewed by many as undemocratic.

Minnesota law requires release of almost all data for any closed criminal investigation, which the Clark case became once Freeman declined to charge officers Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze. It remains puzzling and disturbing that the key videos in the Clark case — which included data that should have been made public immediately — were withheld for four months.

Still, Freeman deserves credit for providing an unprecedented volume of evidence that illuminated the choices he made.

Speakers at Friday's rally brought up the dozen witnesses interviewed by investigators who said they saw Clark in handcuffs before he was shot. They talked about the ambulance video that showed Ringgenberg grabbing Clark around the neck and pulling him to the ground.

No one at the rally expressed a belief that the access to information made for a better outcome.

"Transparency without justice means nothing," said Mel Reeves, a member of the Twin Cities Coalition on Justice 4 Jamar.

Still, it's hard to see how the system gets any better without it.

Contact James Eli Shiffer at james.shiffer@startribune.com or 612-673-4116.