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There continues to be justifiable anger over the Minneapolis Police Department's past misuse of coaching to address police misconduct. But we disagree with attorneys Leita Walker and Isabella Salomão Nascimento, who wrote in a commentary last week — "Five years after the murder of George Floyd, city still only paying lip service to transparency" — that all complaints against the police should be publicly disclosed immediately when filed, including even the lowest level of complaints that now merit coaching rather than formal discipline (such as improper uniforms or use of profanity).

Because the state Data Privacy Act prohibits this, they propose that city officials should lobby to change the Data Privacy Act, and in the meantime, should bypass the law by assisting complainants to publicize their complaints on their own. Their proposal is problematic and legally risky because the Data Privacy Act is not designed to hide police misconduct, but instead to protect public employees from being tried and convicted in the media based on unsubstantiated complaints, which the authors acknowledge are certain to occur. Police officers deserve this protection because they are — quite appropriately — under such intense public scrutiny that a widely publicized unsubstantiated complaint would irreparably damage their reputation (and perhaps their career) even if it is disproved upon investigation. Moreover, city officials who try to bypass this protection would risk civil and criminal claims that they were indirectly violating the law.

We suggest that we can both respect the Data Privacy Act and increase the transparency of police discipline. That's what transformative police reform is all about. ELEFA, the independent court-appointed monitor for the Minnesota Department of Human Rights settlement agreement, recently reported that it is reviewing all coaching cases and is monitoring the city's compliance with all of the new rigorous transparency mandates in the court-enforceable agreement. In addition, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara stated to the Minnesota Star Tribune last December that — on his own — he had personally reviewed all cases referred to coaching after he was appointed in late 2022 and found them to be appropriate for the infractions involved.

It is encouraging that the commentary authors' examples of transparency failures are about past incidents, prior to the implementation of the settlement agreement. With full implementation of the new court-mandated transparency systems and ELEFA's help, our community should stay watchful to ensure that these kinds of incidents stay in the past.

Catherine Shreves and John Satorius are co-chairs of the Plymouth Congregational Church Re-imagining Community Safety Group.