How hundreds of California police officers have kept past misconduct confidential

For decades, California police departments that want to sever ties with officers for misconduct have agreed to let them resign and to keep the bad behavior confidential in order to avoid lawsuits. But as a result, hundreds of officers have landed new jobs in law enforcement with no records of their past misconduct. John Yang speaks with investigative reporter Katey Rusch for more.
John Yang:
For decades, California police departments that want to sever ties with officers for misconduct have agreed to let them resign and to keep the bad behavior confidential. That’s in order to avoid potentially costly and time consuming lawsuits.
But as a result, officers with bad records have landed new jobs in law enforcement, and their new employers have no idea of their past. That’s the finding of a five-year long investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle and the University of California, Berkeley’s investigative reporting program.
Katey Rusch of the investigative reporting program was the lead author of the articles that appeared in the Chronicle. Katey, you say that these are called clean record agreements. How many of them were able to find in your investigation?
Katey Rusch, UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program:
We were able to find over 300 involving nearly 300 officers. So some of the officers had multiple. But I think really what the major finding is that we found them in so many different agencies across the state, 167 agencies across the state of California, and it didn’t matter the size or the region. We were finding these agreements.
John Yang:
And what sort of misconduct are we talking about? Did you find in these records?
Katey Rusch:
You know, that was a big question when we started the investigation was, were wondering, is this just minor mistakes that police are making and then getting these agreements to clean their records. And what we found was, no, this is serious misconduct, everything from dishonesty to sexual assault to excessive force.
John Yang:
And there’s also a wrinkle. There were some cases you found in which they sort of short circuited the investigations into their behavior by claiming a disability. And talk about what would happen to those officers.
Katey Rusch:
Yeah, those were really interesting cases. So in some situations, an officer would be accused of misconduct, and during the misconduct disciplinary proceedings, they would claim that they were injured, they had a back injury, they had PTSD, and then they would end up with these agreements that not only whitewashed their misconduct records, but then also guaranteed them a disability pension.
So a pension that’s meant for an officer who can no longer work, who is so incapacitated that they can no longer do their job. Now these officers are also getting that benefit as well, which is a huge benefit, a yearly salary for the rest of their lives with huge tax benefits.
John Yang:
And paid for by the taxpayers.
Katey Rusch:
Absolutely. Paid for by the taxpayers.
John Yang:
Is this just a California thing, or is this happening in other states as well?
Katey Rusch:
Well, our investigation focused on California. California employs the most peace officers in any state in the country. But what we found when were looking at this, and we couldn’t ignore, was that there are agreements like this in almost every state, from Texas to New York to Illinois to Idaho. We found these types of agreements.
John Yang:
You talked to the police chiefs of not only the departments that these people left, but also the departments that they went to. What did they tell you? What was their reaction to this?
Katey Rusch:
It was some of shock and disbelief. I had multiple conversations with some police chiefs and sheriffs who couldn’t believe that they didn’t know about the misconduct at a previous department. And on the other side, I talked to many police chiefs and sheriffs, just sit awake at night worrying about these agreements that they made that allowed officers who they don’t think should be working in the profession to continue to carry a badge and a gun.
John Yang:
And you also wrote that some of these police chiefs who worry about this, it wasn’t their call. The decision was taken out of their hands.
Katey Rusch:
Absolutely. And I think that was a really interesting part of this, was the involvement of the insurance companies. So when it gets to a certain step in the discipline process, sometimes the city’s municipal insurance gets involved, and then they have ultimate settlement authority.
So even though the police chief, the sheriff, the city wants to fire that officer and make sure that their record is not whitewashed, the insurance company comes in and says, nope, you don’t get a say.
John Yang:
And you wrote that in California, there’s an organization that actually advocates the use of these agreements. Who’s behind that organization?
Katey Rusch:
So, in California, most peace officers belong to a union, and as part of that union, they pay dues to a legal defense fund. And so they have this group of lawyers who they have access to. And the one that we found that was primarily working in the state of California was an organization called the Peace Officers Research association of California, PORAC, and their legal defense fund they have a group of attorneys, and that legal defense fund was involved in almost every agreement that were seeing in California.
John Yang:
There’s a relatively new law in California that requires the disclosure of police misconduct and gives a commission the power to ban officers from being police officers. How does that law mesh with what’s going on?
Katey Rusch:
I think that’s really interesting. That law took effect last year, and so we’re still seeing how attorneys and police officers are navigating that with these agreements. But what we found from our investigation is that law wasn’t aware of these agreements, doesn’t specifically address these agreements, and also only addresses a specific type of misconduct.
So there are only certain types of misconduct that are reportable to the state that are required to be reported to the state. And so that still leaves this loophole for officers to kind of get around this law.
John Yang:
Is anything being done to close that loophole in California?
Katey Rusch:
Right now the legislature in California is not in session. They reconvene in December. But there are a lot of conversations that I’m having, obviously because of our investigation with lawmakers about what could possibly be done. Would they model a state like Kansas or Colorado who have passed laws to specifically address these agreements? I think time will tell what California is going to do to address this, but I can tell you that they are having those conversations right now.
John Yang:
Katey Rusch, thank you very much, and thank you very much for this reporting.
Katey Rusch:
Thank you.