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In 2024, a sheriff’s deputy working for the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department was forced out for being lousy at his job. But even though the deputy, Cristian Morales, was flagged in the state’s negative separation database, he ended up being hired a few months later by the Menasha Police Department. 

Earlier this year, Morales was arrested and accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend using the city’s Flock camera system. He’s now facing criminal charges.

While some folks are suited for the difficult work of being a law enforcement officer, many are not. It’s hardly a controversial statement to say that police, who can arrest people and use force when necessary, should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us.

And yet our reporting at The Badger Project has found that police chiefs and sheriffs in Wisconsin often give these “wandering officers” second or third chances, despite research saying that officers fired or forced out for misconduct are more likely than other cops to reoffend.

At our last count, more than 300 active officers in Wisconsin had been fired or forced out of previous law enforcement jobs. Many of these separations involved novices who couldn’t cut it in a tough job during their probationary period, when the bar for termination is low. But some, we’ve found, lost jobs for misconduct, including drunk driving, writing misleading reports and using sexist and racist language.

In Wisconsin, law enforcement agencies can report to the state DOJ when they fire or force out an officer, so we can track when that cop goes on to get hired by another policing agency. But we are currently unable to track these wandering officers who have been fired or forced out in other states and come to work here because we don’t have a list of all law enforcement officers here.

That’s why The Badger Project, along with our partners at the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organization, requested the full list of names and work histories from the Wisconsin Department of Justice and sued when it refused.

In April, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled in our favor and ordered the DOJ to release the records. She cited a previous state appeals court ruling that said law enforcement officers “necessarily relinquish certain privacy and reputational rights by virtue of the amount of trust society places in them and must be subject to public scrutiny.”

Prominent members of Wisconsin’s law enforcement community have criticized the judge’s ruling, saying it goes too far. An appeal could be coming.

Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, wrote an op-ed saying the release of these records could put officers at “risk of harassment, doxxing and worse.” He said officers’ birthdates are part of the records whose release we are seeking. Not so: While our initial records request asked for birthdates or birth years (to distinguish between officers with the same name), our lawsuit only asked for birth years, not months and days.

The state DOJ raised another objection, saying release of the names would jeopardize undercover officers. But what cop uses his or her real name when working undercover? We did not request photos of the officers.

I salute and thank the men and women in law enforcement who are serving their communities. I don’t envy the chiefs and sheriffs who must staff their agencies at a time when finding good job applicants for law enforcement jobs is as hard as ever.

And you know what? We at The Badger Project are not against second chances for cops who screwed up. Perhaps an officer who made a fireable mistake has learned from it. Whether that officer should continue in law enforcement is not for us to decide. Our job, as journalists, is to shine a light on those in power and get facts to the public who are being policed by these folks.

If chiefs or sheriffs want to hire an officer with problems in the past, they should say so publicly and defend their decision. They just can’t make these decisions in secret.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Peter Cameron is managing editor of The Badger Project, a nonprofit news outlet.

Your Right to Know: Names of police should be public 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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The two most common complaints I hear from people seeking public records are “Why is it taking so long?” and “Why does it cost so much?” Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to mount a successful legal challenge to delays or fees because of the way the state’s laws are worded.

Wisconsin’s Open Records Law imposes no deadline on producing records. All it says is they must be produced “as soon as practicable and without delay.” What does that actually mean? While the state Department of Justice recommends that simple requests receive a response within 10 business days, the DOJ itself doesn’t heed its own advice, often taking months — even years — to fulfill requests.

Courts haven’t given much guidance. They’ve essentially said it’s a reasonableness test that takes into account the size and complexity of the request, the resources of the government agency, and whether they are making a good faith effort to comply. But how long is too long? 

Ideally, we’d have a deadline in our law, as some other states do. This may require prioritizing resources properly, which should already be happening. Fulfilling record requests, the law says, is “an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties” of public officials.” And yet I’ve seen agencies with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars who have one person doing this work.

The other common problem with the records law is it allows custodians to charge fees for complying with records requests. Here, I am especially concerned about “location” fees. The government can charge for the “actual, necessary and direct cost” of finding records, typically at the hourly rate of the lowest-paid employee capable of searching. But sometimes this is still a considerable amount, and some custodians even want to charge for employees’ benefits.

This amounts to, essentially, the government getting paid twice for the same work. Our taxes already pay the salary or wage of the employee searching for records. The requester pays them again.

Permitting location fees also incentivizes government agencies to be sloppy in their recordkeeping. The more disorganized their records are, the longer it will take them to find records, so the more money they can collect from requesters. Those high costs also discourage requesters from following through with requests.  

For example, I’ve run into police departments that still store their personnel records in paper boxes, so if somebody wants, say, disciplinary records, the department can quote an often prohibitively high price to search each box for disciplinary files. Even if records are stored electronically, they can be hard to retrieve if they are not sensibly organized.

How can we fix these twin problems? If I were in charge (and I’m not), I’d put a strict deadline in the law and eliminate location fees altogether. But realistically, we are unlikely to see either reform. 

Perhaps a more practical solution would be to tie the two problems together. Change the law so that custodians can charge location costs only if the records are produced within a strict deadline — perhaps 10 business days.  

That compromise would incentivize better, more organized record keeping. Government agencies would now want to keep their records — especially those people frequently request — arranged in ways easy to search and easy to find. It would also incentivize them to devote enough resources to fulfill record requests promptly.  

The result? Requesters will get records faster and cheaper, and government agencies might also see a net increase in revenue, as more requesters opt to pay for prompt service rather than walk away.

Pairing these two issues is an idea worth pursuing.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Tom Kamenick, a council member, is the president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project.

Your Right to Know: How to solve high record costs and long delays 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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Wisconsin’s Open Records Law gives requesters the right to request records from their government. After all, as the law states, “a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate.” 

But how to get started? Under the law, “any person” can make a request for records from any Wisconsin state or local government agency or official, verbally or in writing. You don’t have to start from square one: There are many tools available to help you make requests and ensure you get the records you want with minimal fuss. 

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Counsel has long posted a records request template on its website, wisfoic.org. It cites Wisconsin law and uses language to target your request and help you avoid surprise fees.

Many national groups also post letter generators online that can be used to make requests to state and local governments.  

For example, the Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting student journalists, posts a heavily used letter generator, which is available for free and can be used to make requests.

An organization called MuckRock not only has a letter generator, but also allows users to post responsive records they receive on its website at muckrock.com. Here you can search through records others have received from all over the country.

Other groups post records they have received through their own open records and U.S. Freedom of Information Act requests.  

For example, a group called Reclaim the Records posts genealogical and historical records on its website, reclaimtherecords.org. The website governmentattic.org provides a searchable collection of oddball federal government records and reports.

Of course, this is in addition to records the government proactively publishes or posts online itself. A wealth of information is already available on Wisconsin agency and local government websites, or in local libraries. 

Federal agencies are even required to follow the “Rule of 3,” or make electronically available records that have been requested three or more times. The website data.gov contains more than 400,000 datasets, from what it describes as the home of the U.S. government’s open data.

In some cases, it may be easiest just to start with a phone call to the state or local agency that has the records you want. It may be able to send you the record on the spot, or help you understand available records to target your request.  

If you’re looking to better understand the law, the Wisconsin Department of Justice Office of Open Government posts numerous resources online, including its Public Records Compliance Guide, which is helpful for requesters and records custodians alike.  

A well-drafted records request is useful for everyone: It can help requesters get the records they want, in less time, and at a lower cost. It can also help custodians find records more easily, freeing them up to respond to others’ requests and carry out other duties.

But the most important tip is to not be intimidated by the process: There are no magic words required to trigger your right to get records, and the law must be interpreted broadly in favor of access.

Wisconsin’s Open Records Law, by design, makes it easy to get records, to fulfill its important objective of informing the electorate. Don’t hesitate to exercise your right to use it.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the group’s vice president and a partner at the law firm Pines Bach LLP.

Your Right to Know: How to jump-start your records requests 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.