After years of courtroom tussling between Inglewood and a civil rights group, a judge ordered the city to publish a trove of police use of force and misconduct records online.
Almost a month later, that still hasn’t happened — and Mayor James Butts told The LA Local the city won’t comply until the litigation is completed.
How we got here
California lawmakers passed The Right to Know Act in 2018, which opened up a new range of police use of force and misconduct documents to public records requests.
Less than a month before the law went into effect, the Inglewood City Council approved the destruction of records as far back as 1991 and changed its retention window for officer shooting records from 25 years to just five, according to a lawsuit later filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Butts denied that the move was intended to thwart the law, LAist reported in 2018.
The ACLU filed a request for two decades of police records shortly after the law went into effect and followed it with more requests in 2021 and 2022, according to court documents. Inglewood, the civil rights group said, took years to respond with any documents and provided incomplete records when it finally did.
In 2021, the ACLU sued Inglewood and its police department, accusing them of a “blatant disregard” for their duties under those laws. Trisha Shanklin, the sister of Kisha Michael, a woman who was shot by Inglewood police in 2016, is also a petitioner on the case.
The judge’s order
Four years later, a judge ordered the city to publish the records online for the next three years.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gary Tanaka wrote in a Nov. 20 decision that the city and its police department systematically violated the California Public Records Act in their handling of records requests from the ACLU and others.
“It’s really unfortunate that the city chose to spend time fighting this in court when they could have simply complied,” said Tiffany Bailey, ACLU staff attorney. “With this court order, the city will now further the rights of their residents.”
The ACLU and others welcomed the ruling as a victory for the families of people who have been shot and killed by Inglewood police.
“There’s so much lack of transparency in Inglewood politics,” said Lily Trejo, an Inglewood resident and former co-director of the youth leadership group ING Fellowship.
Trejo said the court decision gives her hope that more information about the city’s inner workings will eventually come to light.
David Loy, legal director for the nonprofit First Amendment Coalition, called the decision a “huge win” for transparency, saying it was “obviously overdue, but better late than never.”
What’s next?
First amendment advocates are still waiting for the actual documents to be published, and Inglewood police have not said when they’ll take action.
Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta and Lt. Scott Collins, the department’s public information officer, did not respond to a series of interview requests from The LA Local over the course of two weeks.
When an LA Local reporter asked Butts about the matter at the Dec. 9 Inglewood City Council meeting, the mayor said the city plans to release the documents as legally required when the case is closed.
The judge could issue a final, more detailed order as soon as February, according to Bailey, the ACLU staff attorney.
Butts also pushed back against the judge’s determination that the city had systematically violated the law. He claimed the city’s failure to comply with public records requests was a procedural issue between those who requested the records and the police department’s records specialist.
“There may have been, you know, wires crossed,” Butts said. “If that’s the case, we’re gonna fix it.”
