Utah judge grants access to police records of shooting West Jordan fought to keep secret

Four years after West Jordan police officers shot and killed 23-year-old Michael Glad, a judge has decided the public can finally learn why the officers pulled the trigger.

The Salt Lake Tribune has been fighting since 2021 for internal records of police interviews from the shooting, known as Garrity statements. Such interviews are conducted as part of the agency’s own review of police shootings and cannot be used against officers in criminal court. But in some cases they became public.

Although he won access to the documents in May 2021 by the State Archives Commission, West Jordan declined to release the interviews to The Tribune. Instead, the city took the news organization to court, asking a judge to determine whether the interviews were a public record.

In a ruling filed Friday, 3rd Circuit Judge Vernice Treese found that the public’s right to access the records in this case “substantially” outweighs West Jordan privacy concerns raised.

“Citizens entrust law enforcement officers with the authority to use deadly force to maintain public safety and order and to protect others,” Treese wrote. “Because of the significant trust placed in law enforcement officers and the severe consequences associated with the use of deadly force, there is a clear, strong public interest in ensuring that officers use deadly force only appropriately and within existing laws and policies.” . “

“Releasing the Garrity interviews would enhance that interest,” she continued, “by giving the public an opportunity to appreciate the use of deadly force here.”

Treece was also unpersuaded by West Jordan’s argument that the interviews should be classified as private employee records and that releasing the records would prevent a “hypothetical” future judicial or administrative proceeding.

Tribune attorney Michael Judd called the decision “a victory for the public.”

“We thought these records should never have been withheld. That was The Tribune’s position, and we pushed hard for it,” Judd said. “And, unfortunately, sometimes it takes a long time to come to that conclusion … but better late than never.”

When asked for comment, West Jordan Public Affairs Director Tawny Barker said in a statement on behalf of the city that, “We appreciate the steps state leaders took during the 2022 legislative session to provide additional clarification to [the Government Records Access and Management Act] to avoid this type of litigation in the future.”

Utah law states that any records not expressly deemed private or protected are considered public records. The 2022 law change designated Garrity’s records as protected records.

Barker said the city has not yet decided whether or not to appeal the court’s decision. She said officials “will continue to analyze each request GRAMA receives on a case-by-case basis and will post records based on current state status.”

Arguments “in conflict” with public records laws

Garrity’s statements are named after the 1967 US Supreme Court decision in Garrity v. New Jersey. This ruling protects public officials from prosecution based on information provided during these interviews, which can be forced, ruling that this would violate the employees’ rights against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.

In the Glad case, West Jordan police officers Tyrrell Shepard and Josh Whitehead invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to explain their actions to Salt Lake County prosecutors reviewing the 2018 shooting, so little is known publicly about exactly what they caused them to open fire.

Glad robbed a convenience store and pointed a gun at police before getting behind the wheel of a police truck that day, authorities said. The officers fired at him after he started driving.

Four shots hit the truck and one hit Glad in the neck. He later died. His family said he struggled with mental illness and believe that played a role in his behavior the day he was killed.

The Tribune requested the statements from Garrity’s West Jordan officers as part of a larger police shooting data collection project called Shots Fired.

That request sparked a series of disputes between The Tribune and city officials over whether or not the records should be released, leading to the State Archives Commission hearing.

West Jordan rejected this decision and filed a lawsuit in June 2021 to prevent their release. The city presented a number of arguments during the litigation, including this:

• The records were “similar to performance appraisals in that interviews were used to review employee performance.”

• Releasing the tapes would be a “clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy” because they “include deeply personal thoughts and feelings related to the shooting,” which officials were told would remain confidential.

• Releasing the records would “create a risk of depriving a person of the right to a fair trial or fair hearing” if the case resulted in a civil lawsuit.

The judge was unconvinced by these arguments, agreeing with The Tribune that they were “too general.” Treese acknowledged that the two sides must work together to redact some of the employees’ personal information from the records before they are released.

But she noted that under the city’s reading of state law, a state record can be categorized as private simply because the record either includes a statement by an employee or because it relates to an employee’s statement or actions.

“In practice, this would be no restriction at all and would make most government records private,” she wrote.

West Jordan’s argument that release of the records could affect a “hypothetical” future proceeding would end similarly, she wrote — effectively placing all records under protection whenever the government “speculates that a civil lawsuit might be taken to some unknown time in the future’.

That is “contradictory” to the purpose of the state’s open records laws, she wrote.

Challenging to obtain, but not unattainable

The Tribune’s pursuit of Garrity documents from West Jordan and other police agencies prompted a change in the law earlier this year to limit public access to those documents. Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, sponsored the bill, which Gov. Spencer Cox signed into law in March.

Supporters of the bill argue that Garrity’s statements contain private information and worry that state officials will be less candid in those reviews if they fear the information may later become public.

“Ask yourself,” Wilcox said during the lone committee hearing in February discussing the bill, “how likely an employee is to disclose a difficult matter, perhaps one in which he made a significant mistake, if, after the interview, the content of that important conversation be used to sell newspapers?’

Approximately 60 people attended the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee meeting, some in law enforcement uniforms. Among them was West Jordan Police Chief Ken Wallentine, who said he had been up until 2:30 a.m. the night before, crying with an officer about his K-9, which had been killed.

“That’s the content of a lot of these interviews,” he said.

Tiffany James, the mother of a 19-year-old who was shot and killed by police in Cottonwood Heights in 2018, opposed the bill. Garrity’s statements in her son’s case, revealed during her family’s civil suit against the city, show that Officer Casey Davis used deadly force twice against her son, striking him with his car before shooting him.

Prosecutors, who are required by law to investigate deadly uses of force by investigating officers, were unaware of this first deadly use of force because that officer refused to speak to prosecutors after the shooting. and no one else was on the scene. The ministry says it has no footage of the shooting.

“It’s just unacceptable,” the mother said, “for the government and law enforcement to expect that they can have a crisis that’s going on and not be held accountable for it, not have to share all the information or be selective about the information you are “

Since these details of Garrity’s statement were released in her son’s case, another officer revealed he knew about the crash, and the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office has reopened its investigation into the 2018 shooting. Prosecutors ruled in May that the first, previously unknown use of force was unjustified, but declined to file charges. The office had already found the shooting justified.

At least seven others prepared to speak against the bill were not allowed to testify as the committee moved the bill to the end of the agenda and time ran out. The bill was never given a public hearing and passed the Senate, under suspension of rules, on the penultimate day of the session.

Wilcox did not return a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

Judd, an attorney for The Tribune, said the representative’s bill follows a tradition where “every time the public comes in and tries to get some information that somebody doesn’t want to be available, GRAMA is amended and another category of documents is added to a list of exceptions that make it difficult to access certain documents.’

However, this decision shows that Garrity’s records are available — although obtaining them now will be more of a challenge, he said.

“Creatures still have to recognize this just because they can put a [protected] label to them in the new bill, [it] doesn’t mean they can keep them from the public forever,” he said, “especially when they’re showing something that’s really the public’s business and the interest in keeping it secret is pretty minimal.”

Judd said this decision may not prevent someone from going through a lengthy and expensive lawsuit, as The Tribune did, to access those records. The news organization spent about $100,000 to fight for those records.