iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Learn about using police employment and misconduct data housed in the National Police Index and Police Records Access Project, two new databases for use by journalists, attorneys, researchers, and members of the public. We'll be presenting at @ire.org's AccessFest this weekend.

Session card for an IRE AccessFest panel on "Utilizing new police misconduct and employment databases"

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

This story has been cited in a brief today filed on behalf of a coalition of news media organizations — including @invisible.institute, @startribune.com, @mprnews.org, @axios.com, & @propublica.org. Read the full brief, and selected other filings, here: www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

According to a review by the Invisible Institute, one of the members of the Coalition, “all but three” of the officers that were designated
as undercover “had information online linking their given name with being a police officer in Minnesota before the release” of the POST Board data. Sam Stecklow, Undercover Minnesota cops suing oversight board have public LinkedIns, discipline and shootings, Sahan Journal (Sept. 24, 2025), https://sahanjournal.com/news-partners/undercover-minnesota-police-officers-post-board-mppo-lawsuit.

The District Court’s characterization of the data is especially concerning because, as the Invisible Institute’s analysis demonstrates, “undercover” designations may be outdated or unreliable. The MGDPA includes no definition or requirements for what qualifies as an “undercover assignment” for the purposes of Minn. Stat. § 13.43, subd. 5. There is also no oversight of decisions to designate officers as “undercover,” in terms of time, scope of the work, or third-party review of that designation. Once the “undercover” designation does attach, all data regarding the officer that would otherwise be public under Minn. Stat. § 13.43, subds. 2 and 3, becomes private data. Agencies, therefore, could misuse the designation to hide bad actors from public scrutiny or to prevent outside oversight of a police department. For example, nothing in the MGDPA prevents an agency from assigning an entire police department as “undercover.” The District Court’s decision, therefore, sweeps far too broad in the data it purportedly protects.

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

See if your state has released police employment history data here: invisible.institute/national-pol...

A color-coded map showing various levels of access to police employment history data across the U.S.

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

RIP South Side Chicago artist Turtel Onli. He founded a Black comics movement in Chicago, and on a personal note, created some of my favorite covers and other illustrations while I was managing editor for @southsideweekly.bsky.social. www.hpherald.com/evening_dige...

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Launching today on the National Police Index: police employment data in New Mexico, plus five other states. Access your state's data here: national.cpdp.co

A color-coded map showing access to police employment history data across the U.S., and announcing that new data is available from several states on the National Police Index: national.cpdp.co.

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

This was, of course, not true, and contradicted by records that we obtained from CO POST. POST had actually specified that its database software should have query capabilities, which its vendor promised to provide. That led to a multimillion-dollar contract. www.documentcloud.org/documents/21...

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

He held a hearing to consider the second question. Deputy AG Natalie Hanlon Leh testified that POST's IT told her that "you can't just export data from these databases," and therefore POST couldn't reasonably remove potentially undercover officers. www.documentcloud.org/documents/23...

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Since then, all that has been released about his decision to decline charges have been 1-sentence emails made public only after #FOIA requests. "If you are required to do a FOIA request to receive the information, it has not been publicly released," said an expert w/ @impactforequity.bsky.social.

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

More evidence that the Massachusetts POST Commission’s public police misconduct database has major gaps: a state trooper with a history of substantiated misconduct was all but missing, except for the case he was criminally charged in, @bostonglobe.com reports. www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/01/m...

Gladu’s history of offenses were unaccounted for in other ways: Until he was criminally charged, he was never listed on the police accountability database run by the state Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission, even though that database is supposed to report substantiated cases of police misconduct, including those that are not criminal.

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

After we published this story in @southsideweekly.bsky.social, I got back records from IDOT confirming the lease (and forwarded them to you). Unfortunately, we didn’t pursue it further to my memory. A historic fumble.

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Yes. Chinatown activists told @elaineywchen.bsky.social for this story that they suspected the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce knew the lot was going to be sold. 1/ southsideweekly.com/taxing-divid...

SSA opponents have also scrutinized the Chamber’s motives for proposing the SSA. In the second hearing, Hoy claimed that the Chamber has an ulterior motive, basing his claim off a line in the Chamber’s initial SSA application: “SSA revenue will also help [the Chamber] replace the lost parking revenue.” The Chinatown Parking Corporation, a nonprofit organized by many Chamber board members, runs the parking lot across from the Chinatown library. Hoy believes that some Chamber board members want to develop that parking lot for private commercial use and would use SSA revenue to make up for the parking revenue lost when developing the lot.

Chamber and Parking Corporation board member Raymond Lee confirmed to the Weekly Monday that the lot will likely be developed. Developing the lot, which sits along what will be the Wells-Wentworth Connector, was officially proposed in the 2015 Chinatown Vision Plan authored by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, CBCAC, and Solis’s office—and which Lee was on the steering committee for. If the lot is developed, Lee said, then the SSA would serve to provide services that revenue from the lot currently funds, such as street garbage pickup.

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 29/01/2024

One of his disciplinary cases: a 7-day suspension for conducting himself "unfavorably" in a 2008 domestic violence incident with an ex-girlfriend, a Chicago police officer. Tyler and the girlfriend pulled their weapons on each other and were separated by backup that she called.

An excerpt from an Illinois State Police investigation relaying an eyewitness account of now Champaign Police Chief Timothy Tyler pulling his ex-girlfriend by her utility belt during an argument. She responded by saying, "You fucked up, you put your hands on me, don't make me shoot you." They were separated by backup that she called.

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 15/12/2023

A version of the story also ran as Salt Lake City Weekly's cover story: www.cityweekly.net/utah/one-of-...

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 15/12/2023

In another case, in Florida state court, a judge found that Wallentine's opinion claiming that police had no choice but to shoot a man in a mental health crisis who was aiming a rifle at himself was “not credible based on common sense, physiology, and physics.”

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Sam Stecklow @samstecklow.bsky.social · 15/12/2023

He became a VP for LexiPol, and testified that their use of force policies don't “go out the door without my fingerprints all over” them. Then and since, LexiPol has been criticized for discouraging police from limiting use of force beyond what the Supreme Court requires.

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