In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice released the results of its sweeping investigation into the Memphis Police Department. The investigation found that MPD engages in a pattern or practice of excessive force; unlawful stops, searches and arrests; and discrimination against Black people and people with behavioral-health disabilities. The DOJ later retracted the report’s findings under the Trump administration, but the original report remains publicly available.
Some of the most significant findings concerned what happened after officers engaged in misconduct. The DOJ found that MPD’s accountability system was fundamentally deficient. The department routinely failed to properly investigate complaints of officer misconduct and, even when misconduct was substantiated, failed to impose appropriate discipline. From 2018 through 2022, MPD’s Inspectional Services Bureau opened full investigations into only about one in five complaints. Investigations failed to pursue witnesses and evidence, and discipline was often delayed, reduced, or imposed inconsistently.
In one case, after an officer shot a teenager, another officer struck the disarmed and seriously injured teenager repeatedly on the head with his handgun and fist. Prosecutors later told MPD that they had seriously considered recommending criminal charges against the officer but left the matter for the department to handle internally. Federal investigators found no evidence that MPD conducted any further investigation or imposed any discipline. The officer remained employed by the department.
In another case, an internal affairs investigation substantiated an excessive force violation after an officer pepper-sprayed a handcuffed man in the back of a police car. At the disciplinary hearing, however, the finding was reduced to an equipment violation because the hearing officer considered the officer’s conduct “understandable.”
The DOJ’s findings pointed to a systemic problem with how MPD investigates misconduct and holds—or fails to hold—officers accountable.
That raised several questions: What would MPD’s own disciplinary records show? Are the same officers repeatedly accused of misconduct? How seriously are complaints investigated? What happens when allegations are substantiated? And why do officers with repeated findings of misconduct remain on the force?
The Tennessee Public Records Act, or TPRA, gave me a way to begin answering those questions. The law rests on a simple principle: the public has a right to access government records unless the law specifically provides otherwise. That principle is especially important in policing, where officers exercise extraordinary authority.
In the months following the DOJ report, I began requesting disciplinary files of MPD officers involved in incidents of public concern. I wanted to better understand how MPD’s disciplinary system actually works — or, as the DOJ’s findings indicated, how it fails to work.
The records were supposed to be publicly accessible. But getting them proved remarkably difficult. The city imposed multiple obstacles to accessing the records. My requests were marked “fulfilled” on the city’s online portal even though no records had been produced. I was told that I would have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to obtain the records, though the city refused to provide written cost estimates. The Office of Open Records Counsel — a state office that advises on Tennessee’s public records laws — confirmed that the city’s practices were unlawful. Yet the city continued to refuse to produce the records, eventually claiming that I would have to secure the personal approval of the city’s chief legal officer before they could be released. When I followed up with the chief legal officer, I was advised to take the matter up with the courts.
So, on July 28, 2025, I sued the city of Memphis.
Three months later, and just days before the court was to hold a hearing in the case, the city finally produced approximately 3,500 pages of records. The eleventh-hour production did not, however, erase the violations that had already occurred. At the hearing, the court found that the city violated the TPRA and did so willfully, meaning that it failed to act in good faith. The court ordered the city to reimburse my litigation costs and granted an injunction requiring the city to comply with the TPRA.
While the case was still awaiting a written order, another controversy involving MPD unfolded. On March 28, 2026, a “No Kings” protest took place in Memphis. What began as a peaceful march ended in a confrontation in which MPD officers allegedly threatened, tackled, maced, beat, and arrested peaceful participants. The charges against those arrested were quickly dismissed. But those dismissals did little to address the serious questions raised by MPD’s response to the protest. Who were the officers involved? Had they been accused of misconduct before? And if so, what had MPD done about it?
I again turned to the public records process, submitting new requests for the disciplinary records of the officers involved in MPD’s response to the No Kings protest. Soon after I submitted those requests, the court entered its written order, formalizing its earlier finding that the city had willfully violated the TPRA. Yet even after that ruling, the city refused to produce disciplinary records for my new request.
So I returned to court, arguing that the city’s continued refusal violated the TPRA and the court’s order. Then the pattern repeated itself. As another hearing approached, the city began producing the records it had previously withheld, releasing approximately 12,000 additional pages in the days before the hearing. By the time of the second hearing, the city had produced approximately 15,000 pages in total.
There is much to be said about what those records reveal about MPD’s disciplinary practices, and there will be more to come on that. But there is an equally important story in what it took to obtain them. Twice, I sought police disciplinary records that the public has a right to see. Twice, the city resisted producing them. Twice, I had to go to court. And twice, thousands of pages were finally produced only as a court hearing approached.
That raises a larger question: Why does the city of Memphis fight so hard against producing police disciplinary records?
The TPRA exists because government accountability depends on the public’s ability to see what its government is doing. But a right of access means little if ordinary citizens must endure the time, expense and burden of litigation simply to obtain records the law already entitles them to see. And when government chooses to fight those lawsuits, taxpayers bear the cost—as they did in my case, when the city retained an outside law firm and spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars fighting the release of records that should have been public.
Police accountability cannot exist without transparency. Without access to the records, the public cannot determine whether misconduct is taken seriously, whether discipline is appropriate, or whether recurring problems are being identified and addressed. Memphis does not need another promise of transparency. It needs a government willing to practice it.
