For years, the city of Inglewood, California, has had an issue when it comes to police shootings and public transparency. With the election of a new Black mayor, many thought there was a chance to revisit some of these cases, which stretch back at least 20 years, to seek redress. Now all of that may change as the city has made a controversial decision to destroy records of police shootings.
On Dec. 11, 2018, the Inglewood City Council decided to shred records of closed investigations that are at least 25 years old. The council also will allow police internal affairs reports that are more than five years old to be destroyed. The city has cited the storage space and cost of keeping these old files of closed cases as reasons for the move.
Even Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr., a former Santa Monica police chief, agrees with the action. “It’s actually quite routine for us to do records destruction,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “The finance department, the police department and other entities — whenever they want to destroy records that exceed a time limit — they submit a staff report to the city council, and the city council approves or disapproves the records destruction.”
The problem social justice activists have with the city’s decision is that the records to be destroyed have never been made public. In January 2019, a new California state law would have required the city to make those records public. That includes not only shootings by police but also sexual assaults, false statements and other infractions Inglewood police committed while employed.
Noted activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson stated to media that the city’s action “continues a pattern of lack of accountability…This action sends a terrible message that lack of transparency is still the policy in Inglewood.”
Butts has stated that the timing of the destruction of the records has nothing to do with the implementation of the new law. Some of the records date back to events in 1991, and a 2010 administrative action required that reports on the use of force involving officers be kept for 25 years after the close of an investigation. Records of other internal investigations were to be kept for six years.
Citing the cost and space required to keep the old files, Butts stated to the Los Angeles Times, “Then how long do you keep these records? Do you keep these records forever? You’re not going to do that.”
