Following Court Ruling, City Manager Moves to Eliminate Secret Police File
More than a year after voters approved the Austin Police Oversight Act and supporters sued to force the city of Austin and the Austin Police Department to fully implement it, officials are taking steps to fulfill one of the Oversight Actâ€TMs key mandates â€" elimination of a secret file where some police misconduct records had been kept.
The file, known as the "G file," had been at the center of a lawsuit filed by Equity Action, the group that authored the Oversight Act. Two weeks ago , the judge in that case ruled that the city and APD were acting "unlawfully" by continuing to maintain the G file. Now, the city is taking steps to eliminate it and, in some cases, open up some records contained within it to the public.
A memo signed by City Manager T.C. Broadnax and Office of Police Oversight Director Gail McCant, distributed Sept. 12, outlines steps the city is taking to "promptly respond to public information requests" seeking G file records. The memo says the city has already received a number of requests seeking G file material (including from the ) and that they have developed a process to deal with an anticipated increase of such requests. The city is anticipating that the release of records â€" if they are ever released at all â€" will take between 45-60 business days.
Elimination of the G file has been a key goal of police oversight advocates for decades, because they argue it is a place for APD to conceal proven allegations of misconduct that the department doesn't want the public â€" or civilian investigators working at the Office of Police Oversight â€" to know about. (Broadnaxâ€TMs memo focuses on public release of G file records through the Texas Public Information Act ; the city did not immediately respond to questions about how the courtâ€TMs ruling would affect OPOâ€TMs access to G file records.)
When police departments internally investigate officers for misconduct, even proven allegations do not always result in discipline. Under state law, police departments using a G file are allowed to make investigation records confidential if the officer in question did not ultimately receive severe discipline (if an officer is orally reprimanded, for example). Another provision of state law imbues only one person with the authority to discipline police officers: the chief of police.
These two portions of state law create a dynamic in which a police chief could look at the results of an Internal Affairs investigation into officer misconduct that proves misconduct occurred and decide, for whatever reason they want, not to discipline the officer (or just slap them on the wrist). If that were to happen, the records could be locked away in the G file, totally inaccessible to anyone outside of the department â€" including members of the public and the civilian investigators at OPO.
There is another G file loophole that concerns oversight advocates. Say Internal Affairs investigates an officer and finds they broke a department rule and should be disciplined. If the officer resigns before that discipline is issued by the chief, all records relating to the misconduct investigation get locked away in the G file. In 2021, OPO found that 15 officers retired or resigned while under investigation.
In both scenarios, the department could conceivably have investigated an allegation of misconduct, proved it happened, and then taken steps to conceal any knowledge of that conduct from the public â€" all of which is made possible by the G file. But with the city taking steps to eliminate the G file, the secrecy that the file permits will be greatly reduced.
The Austin Police Association and their statewide counterpart, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, have fiercely protected the G file for decades because they say it protects officers by shielding records relating to frivolous or retaliatory complaints that are proven untrue. APA President Michael Bullock described some complaints contained within the G file as "outlandish" and "untrue."
Without a G file, the city will now have to argue against disclosure of such information relating to officer misconduct investigations on a case-by-case basis â€" which is how most law enforcement agencies throughout Texas, which do not have G files, handle these kinds of records requests. The Texas Public Information Act, which regulates disclosure of government records sought through public information request, allows local governments to withhold records for a variety of reasons â€" including those relating to active investigations (criminal or administrative), those that threaten a law enforcement officerâ€TMs safety, or those that represent a "clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" of any public employee.
The city could cite any of these exceptions before the Texas attorney general to prevent public disclosure of records relating to unsubstantiated allegations against officers. If they choose not to, or if the A.G. rules that such records must be released, the TPIA handbook says that governments should release all of the following information: names of complainants that triggered the misconduct investigation, names of the officers who are the subjects of complaints, an officerâ€TMs written response to the complaint, and the final disposition of a complaint (i.e. if it were proven true or false). So if the city ever released untrue allegations made against officers, they would also release the officerâ€TMs defense and other evidence exonerating them.
