When a journalism nonprofit asked the Wisconsin Department of Justice in 2020 for the names and work histories of all law enforcement officers in the state, the agency initially appeared ready to grant the request.

But the department received pushback from law enforcement groups, and the records were not released.

This new information came to light in documents recently obtained by The Badger Project in its lawsuit against the state DOJ. The suit is seeking the names and work histories of most law enforcement officers in Wisconsin. The Badger Project’s co-plaintiff in the suit is the Invisible Institute, the journalism nonprofit that made the 2020 request.

Other news organizations, including the Washington Post, had seen similar requests rejected by the Wisconsin DOJ in preceding years.

In 2024, after the state DOJ denied another request for police names and work histories, this time from both the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project, the organizations sued for access.

In March, as part of the regular evidence exchange in the case, called discovery, the state DOJ released hundreds of documents to the two journalism nonprofits.

Among the documents was a letter sent by Assistant Attorney General Paul Ferguson, who heads the state DOJ’s Office of Open Government, to every police chief in the state. The letter indicated that the state DOJ intended to fulfill the request and release a list of all law enforcement officers in the state, but asked the individual agencies to identify any undercover officers who should not be included in that list.

The Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association responded with a letter to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul the next day and urged the department to reverse itself, according to the documents obtained by The Badger Project.

Kenneth Pilegge, the association’s vice president, wrote that he had “significant concerns” in the letter.

“We have had contacts with members within our membership that have very serious concerns with this release and adamantly oppose this release without a court review,” he continued.

Neither the state DOJ nor the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association gave a comment for this story when offered the opportunity to do so.

Kaul assumed the position of attorney general, the head of the Wisconsin Department of Justice, in 2019. The department previously rejected the request for a full list of law enforcement officers’ names and work histories several times before he became AG, according to the released documents.

Dozens of states — including Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa — have released a full list of their law enforcement officers to a nationwide reporting project, which includes the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project.

The Wisconsin DOJ has, in response to repeated requests, released a list of “flagged officers,” those who lost their jobs due to termination, resignation in lieu of termination, or resignation prior to completion of an internal investigation.

This list, however, does not include officers who were fired or forced out of law enforcement jobs in a different state before taking a position in Wisconsin.

In previous denials, Ferguson has cited concerns that a complete list could “endanger” undercover officers and pose a general risk to officers and their families in a “volatile environment.”

The state DOJ says it isn’t able to identify undercover officers and redact their names.

Wandering officers

In Wisconsin, police and jailers who were fired or forced out of a previous job in law enforcement only to get hired at another one, called wandering officers, increased by 50% from 2021 to 2024. 

The total number of law enforcement officers in Wisconsin is sitting near record lows, according to investigations by The Badger Project. So the pressure to hire previously fired or forced-out officers can be high, experts say. Chiefs and sheriffs need to fill positions, and officers fired or forced out from previous jobs already have their certification, which costs law enforcement agencies and new recruits time and money to obtain. Wandering officers are more likely to again commit misconduct on the job, studies have suggested.

A full list of names of law enforcement officers, including those separated from jobs outside of Wisconsin who now hold positions in the state, would alleviate a considerable information gap, the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project argue in their lawsuit.

The records requested would not include home addresses or family information.

The lawsuit

The Badger Project’s lawsuit is being funded by The National Freedom of Information Coalition, through grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Legal Defense Fund. 

The Wisconsin Transparency Project, a law firm dedicated to enforcement of the state’s open records laws, along with the University of Illinois First Amendment Clinic, filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs.

The parties are submitting written arguments, called briefs, to Dane County Circuit Court, and then the judge will likely rule on the case, said Tom Kamenick, lead attorney for the Wisconsin Transparency Project.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Department of Justice withheld officer roster after police group pushback is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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An ally of Michael M. Bell, the Kenosha father who has been campaigning for a decade for a new look at the police killing of his son 20 years ago, is suing the Wisconsin Department of Administration for records in a dispute with the state Department of Justice and the Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board (CVRB).

Russell Beckman filed the open records lawsuit Tuesday in Dane County circuit court in response to the administration department’s denial of billing records from a private law firm that had a contract with the victims rights board.

In the lawsuit, which he filed without a lawyer, Beckman states that he “believes the Department of Administration is attempting to conceal these records because they may contain information that constitute evidence of misconduct and unlawful collusion between high ranking Wisconsin State officials and citizen members of the CVRB.”

Michael M. Bell’s son, Michael E. Bell, was killed in November 2004 by a Kenosha Police Department officer after an altercation in the driveway of the home where the younger Bell lived. A department internal investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of the officers on the scene.

Michael M. Bell subsequently campaigned for a Wisconsin law, enacted in 2014, that requires fatalities at the hands of police to be investigated by another department

Since settling a civil lawsuit with the city of Kenosha arising from the killing, the elder Bell has sought to reopen the investigation into the death of his son. The younger Bell was being physically restrained by police when an officer shot and killed him, eyewitnesses and police reports agree. The police account reported that officer fired the shot after another officer at the scene, who was standing near the 21-year-old, shouted that Bell had grabbed his holstered service handgun.

Citing discrepancies between the official police account of the incident and eyewitness testimony as well as physical evidence at the scene, Michael M. Bell has maintained that his son probably never touched the second officer’s weapon, none of the officers were in danger of being shot by the younger Bell, and that the killing was unnecessary.

The elder Bell has said the second officer may have been sincere in his assumption that his gun had been grabbed. Based on eyewitness accounts, however, he thinks  the second officer was not where his son could have grabbed the gun. Bell believes the officer who fired the fatal shot was in a position to know that the second officer was mistaken and did not need to take his son’s life.

Bell’s repeated attempts to persuade authorities to reinvestigate the events of that night have been unsuccessful, including multiple appeals to Attorney General Josh Kaul.

In December 2022, Beckman, a retired Kenosha police detective who has been assisting the elder Bell for more than a decade, filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Crime Victims’ Rights Board on Bell’s behalf.

The complaint charged Kenosha police and city officials had concealed information about Michael E. Bell’s death, and in the process committed “alleged crimes [that] included the felonies of perjury, destruction of public records, misconduct in public office and conspiracy to commit these crimes.”

The complaint also charged that Kaul “and high ranking subordinates” at the state Department of Justice repeatedly ignored attempts by Beckman and Bell to bring their concerns to the attorney general’s attention.

In June 2023, Madison attorney Hal Harlow emailed parties in the case — Beckman, Bell and a DOJ lawyer — that he had been “retained to act as legal counsel to the Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board” in the matter.

In November 2023, the CRVB decided it lacked probable cause for the complaint, holding Michael M. Bell didn’t have “victim status” in connection with the complaint’s allegations. “The alleged conduct is against the government and its administration, not against individual persons,” the decision stated.

After that ruling, according to the lawsuit, Beckman “filed a number of public records requests with the CVRB, seeking records that may have evidence supporting his belief that Attorney General Josh Kaul and/or his staff may have colluded with the CVRB to influence their decision to dismiss the complaint.”

The board supplied records that have become part of the appeal that Beckman has filed on Bell’s behalf. The appeal is now before the Wisconsin Appeals Court District IV in Madison after being dismissed in circuit court.

Meanwhile, Beckman filed an open records request with the Department of Administration seeking attorney billing records for the Crime Victims Rights Board in connection with the Bell complaint.

The department issued a blanket denial of Beckman’s request. DOA cited the ongoing litigation over the lawsuit against the board and asserted that “those records and that information would reveal strategy and efforts that would affect the ongoing litigation.” The department also denied a request to reconsider its denial, and a request for a copy of the contract for the outside law firm.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday argues that the denials violate Wisconsin’s open records law. The attorney billing records, the contract and its addendums are not “attorney work product” and are not privileged attorney-client communications, Beckman argues.

Beckman said in an interview Tuesday he wants the billing records and contract because they might shed light on interactions between the DOJ and the Crime Victims Rights Board, which are supposed to operate independently of each other. He said he’s learned other unexpected information in his work with Bell over the years that turned up by perusing attorney billing records.