Newsrooms explain lawsuit seeking names of Montana police officers

By MIKE DENNISON

HELENA – Two newsrooms suing the state for access to Montana law officers’ names say that information can be used to help identify “wandering officers” – those who commit misconduct at one agency and then get a job at another.

Montana used to provide these data, but a policy change under state Attorney General Austin Knudsen means Montana is now one of only 14 states that block access to police employment-history data, the newsrooms said this week.

“The public has a right to know who is authorized to use force on its behalf,” said Matthew Frank, publisher and co-founder of The Pulp. “This lawsuit is about restoring a transparency that POST itself long upheld.”

POST is the acronym for the Montana Public Safety Officers Standards & Training Council, which holds the information.

The Pulp, a nonprofit news organization in Missoula, and the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit newsroom in Chicago, sued POST on March 18 in state District Court in Helena.

The lawsuit is asking District Judge Chris Abbott to declare that POST is violating state open-records law and the state constitution by refusing to release the law officers’ names – and, to order those names released.

The Invisible Institute has created its National Police Index, which lists, by state, law officers who’ve worked there and their employment and disciplinary history.

The Index has data from 25 states, is awaiting data from four others, and says 21 states have either legal or technical barriers preventing the institute from obtaining the data.

POST, created in 2007 as an independent agency, certifies public-safety officers in Montana and has their disciplinary records. It used to provide the names of those officers, in response to public-record requests, the lawsuit said.

But in 2019, the Montana Legislature decided to place POST under management by the state Department of Justice. Then, in 2022, under Knudsen as attorney general, the Justice Department began directing POST not to release officers’ names, saying it violated their right to privacy, the lawsuit said.

The Invisible Institute and The Pulp made a request last October for the names of people who’d been certified as public-safety officers in Montana, their employers and any reason they had left employment. POST mostly denied the request, the lawsuit said.

Justice Department officials did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit or the allegations from the Invisible Institute or The Pulp.

Rob Farris-Olsen, the Helena attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Invisible Institute and The Pulp, said the Montana Supreme Court has said “time and again” that information on law officers is public, because those officers are in a position of public trust.

“POST’s change in policy is contrary to Montana’s fundamental constitutional right-to-know and decades of case law interpreting that right,” he said.

Chaclyn Hunt, legal director for the Invisible Institute, said the newsrooms are trying to obtain information that safeguards the public.

“So-called `wandering officers’ have presented a significant danger to residents of every state, and an impediment to lasting police accountability,” she said.

Mike Dennison is president of the Montana Freedom of Information Coalition